From environmental education to Education for Sustainable Development in Germany

Abstract

This contribution analyses the development of educational efforts to engage with ideas about the position of humans within the environment. It seeks answers to the question: in which ways and intensity can educational work in schools match different stages of general societal discussions on environmental problems? It is often said that school and school teaching suffer from a general ‘cultural lag’—that is, that they lag behind current social problems. It is argued in this article that there is a remarkable parallelism between public discussion of environmental issues and their consideration in school teaching. This analysis goes back to the roots of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). Contrary to some current positions, it is argued here that ESD not only has roots in nature protection education and environmental education, but also that it goes beyond those roots. The article starts with a short overview on environmental education policy in Germany that complements the accounts of programmes and research projects found in the contributions of de Haan, Seybold & Riess and Scheunpflug & Asbrand in this volume.

Notes

The quotations in this article from reference works in German are the translations of the authors of the article and/or the Editors, unless otherwise indicated.