The environmental movement of the 1960s made educationists in some parts
of the world aware of the significance and importance of ecology in
curricula at all levels of education, from kindergarten to
post-secondary. A great deal of progress was made in the early 1970s in
incorporating environmental awareness programs into educa- tional
systems go that what was once considered a fad was gradually becoming a
part of formal education in a number of institutions, especially in
Canada and the U.S.A. It was therefore appropriate that an international
scientific body devote some time to the issue of ecology in education.
Early in 1976, I suggested to the International Association for Ecology
(Inteco1) that a symposium on Environmental Education be included in the
program of the Second International Congress of Ecology scheduled to be
held in Jerusalem in September 1978. In the first draft program of the
Congress, the topic was included as a poster session. I considered this
inadequate and appealed to the Congress Steering Committee to focus
greater attention on environ- mental education. The first draft program
contained phrases like "utilization of resources", "conservation
problems", "environmental moni toring", and "irreversible changes".
These phrases more or less assumed that people in general understood
ecological principles. Literature on environmental education seems to
suggest that a wide gap separated most of the professional ecologists
from a large portion of mankind primarily because we the ecologists have
paid scant attention to the ecological education of world's citizens.