Teaching Values: Despite the fact that educators often try to be neutral and objective this is impossible.  All schooling is values laden as even the New Zealand Curriculum Framework acknowledges (p. 21).  The fact that environmental education is not compulsory in schools is itself a values statement. The curriculum framework and the education and economic systems in general ‘value’ competition.  There is no need to go on about how complex values issues are.  The point of drawing attention to this is that Environmental educators may be in a position of putting forward values positions that challenge the status quo in a variety of ways, so knowing this, what do we do?

A first step is to be clear about what these values are, in other words, clarify your own values in a clear and succinct way that is easily communicated to children.  Remember the old game of Chinese whispers.  What you tell children may come back to visit after it has been passed on a number of times so keep it clear and simple.  Complex messages are more prone to misrepresentation.

A strategy that has been advocated in the literature is that of ‘committed neutrality’.  This involves making your own values clear and explaining why you hold them, but then treating all positions as neutrally as possible.  This means your own views, along with all others, are open to discussion and scrutiny.  If this is done fairly it is difficult to be accused of indoctrinating.  The word indoctrinate is itself rather values laden.  It usually arises when people discuss values that the accuser does not subscribe to.  People do not accuse anyone of indoctrinating children with views they agree with.

Good quality environmental education should critically review values.  If you are charged with indoctrinating students, a simple answer is this.  “Children are being indoctrinated every time they turn on the radio or television.  What we are doing in class is taking a balanced look at a range of values positions, this is absolutely the opposite of indoctrination”.  What I want to do here though, is to avoid this possibility by anticipating problems and acting to prevent them happening.

Anticipating problems:  The first step here is being well planned and while this item is not about how to develop quality topics in environmental education, a couple of points on planning are pertinent.  Use resource material from sound public sources as the basis for class discussion and work, and make sure these come from a range of perspectives that represent the issue as fairly as possible.  There are two points here.  The first is that all this material is open for scrutiny and review.  The second is that it is harder to get distracted or to be misrepresented, and this is true regardless of the age of the class.  Another important point is that whatever you do must have clear links to the curriculum.  Since the curriculum is quite flexible this is not a problem.  The issue is that the teacher must be very clear about these links.

If you have any concern that you are undertaking a controversial topic that might raise comment beyond the classroom, it is probably wise to seek advice from the school management.  This might take the form of approaching the Principal and explaining what you intend to do.  This might occur along these lines:  “ I am planning a cross curricular unit for my class and I hope the children will be going home and discussing the issues we raise in class.  So that there will not be any misunderstanding I am planning to send a letter home to explain what I am intending to do.  Perhaps you could look over my planning and the letter for me, I would appreciate your advice”.

This is a quietly assertive stance and should be watertight if your topic has direct links to the curriculum and is properly planned.  You are asking for advice, which is also asking for approval.  If there is a problem, well, I guess it is better to know where you stand from the start.  If you have to make minor adjustments, you are in a stronger position because it would be quite hard for the boss not to support you if you have made such adjustments on her advice.

If you inform parents about what you intend to do and give them the opportunity to discuss things with you if they wish, it would subsequently be hard to see anyone being able to sustain a complaint about your programme.

Some wider issues:  Rachel de Lacey’s essay on this Forum signalled four sets of issues that confront environmental educators.  Relating to the first of these, the work involved in planning is not diminished by these strategies.  The strategies here do target the third and fourth issues. They are a defence against lack of support within and beyond the school.  They will not be of much help if there is strong and deep-seated opposition from the principal or the community, but that is an unlikely situation, especially if your topic targets the curriculum very strongly.  The strategies suggested here are short-term, however, in that they hold for the particular topic at hand.  I would hope that if you make sure that such units engage children deeply, the community in general will come to recognise a quality programme is in place and this process would become easier with time.

You can see how important it is that environmental education topics are well planned, completely justified under the curriculum, and contain robust and defensible engagement with the issues.  Teachers are most at risk if they are involved in whimsical and poorly developed topics that do not explore beyond a narrow opinion base.  In the end, a ‘green’ perspective will only prevail if it provides a superior argument.

The big issue of the hidden messages transmitted by school, the media, and in wider society is a truly vexing one.  This is the second issue raised in Rachel’s essay.  Elliot Eisner wrote about the ‘implicit curriculum’ in 1979.  Michael Apple called it the ‘hidden curriculum’ in claiming that the hidden messages in schools reproduce existing injustice.  Unfortunately, in the two and a half decades since, little advice has emerged about how to confront these messages.

We all need to develop the ability to recognise these other messages, to acknowledge them and to learn to expose these to scrutiny in constructive ways.  We might learn to point out that it is hard to look after things when we are in competition, or, that driving cars everywhere uses lots of resources and that a good public transport system is much more efficient.  There is an implication here that in the first instance we as teachers need to walk the talk and that down the track, schools and families might need to think about this too.

Some of this can be done within teaching topics, which takes us back to the stating point for this article.  We might have to learn matter-of-fact ways to alert students to the fact that not everyone practices what they preach but that living in more sustainable ways might mean we have to sacrifice convenience in the common good, that we can’t always have exactly what we want.  This kind of discussion needs to reach beyond the classroom though.  Some issues of school practice that transmit contradictory messages may need to be challenged in the staffroom.  In her essay, Rachel de Lacey drew attention to school management systems that rely on extrinsic motivation.  To use this as an example, one might initiate a discussion on this topic at a staff meeting.  “If we want our students to be lifelong learners, how can we develop school approaches that develop intrinsic motivation?” might be a key question in this regard.

Like many other issues surrounding environmental education, this is not easy, nor is it something that can change overnight.  Learning and classroom management styles are linked to the social skills and life experiences children bring with them and these change from school to school and class to class, sometimes even day to day in the same class.  I will venture an editorial opinion here, having been involved in teacher education for some time, and having had the privilege of visiting hundreds of classrooms.  I have noticed that if there is a quality programme in place, and children know that they are leaning something that is worth of their attention, most of the management issues fade in significance.