Article Review

At the beginning of this article, the author, Chris Ohana, points out that the purpose of science education is to prepare students to make informed individual and political decisions, and fu... See More

At the beginning of this article, the author, Chris Ohana, points out that the purpose of science education is to prepare students to make informed individual and political decisions, and further indicates that these decisions are indisputably involved in various environmental issues. As the first Earth Days have germinated, taking potentially disastrous influences of alarming environmental trends such as global warming into consideration, it is of enormous significance to corporate an environmental education into elementary knowledge and schedules in order to develop students into caring citizens. In terms of how to achieve that, this article next provides some brief notes aimed at different themes. From my point of view, as a future educator, although there are no specific procedures about solving environmental problems in each activity of this article, what inspires me most is that no matter what the topic is, we can always link relevant knowledge to students’ environmental awareness. For instance, the exploration for spatial skills can be connected to protecting animal habitats; taking students to carry out field trip to learn about diverse plants can help them obtain a better understanding; while imparting the knowledge of trash, we can guide students to express and share their own ideas about how people deal with waste and pollution in their daily life through direct observation as well as encourage them to list the environment effects that may be produced according to their everyday experience. What is more, referring to the caring and knowledgeable citizens mentioned in this article, I have realized that we teachers should not only instill in a wide variety of knowledge to our students, but also attach importance to teaching them to become a socially-responsible individual with political consciousness. In other words, elementary children need to be taught the necessity and ways of caring our common earth, preserving natural resources, protecting the environment, and paying attention to environmental issues that happen around ourselves or even in other places.