Ecological Education

Abstract

The era of the scientific-technological revolution has confronted scientific and social thinking with the task of developing a concept of interaction between society and the environment that will replace notions that nature is inexhaustible, and the doctrine, based on them, of man's conquest of nature; both of these ideas have revealed their bankruptcy. In the 1980s, society has realized the importance of developing such a concept as a task that is not only social-economic and technological but also moral in character. It incorporates the necessity of shaping an ecological consciousness, of new value orientations in dealing with the only environment that people can live in. The schools are called upon to instill "a nature-study worldview" in the rising generation. One of the ways to shape such a worldview, in the opinion of S. Zalygin, is to organize lessons in which nature study materials are organically combined with the Russian classics. This will enable students to develop an integral understanding of the Earth and will awaken their sense of love, goodness, and responsibility for all living things (S. Zalygin, Sobesedovaniia [Conversations], Moscow, 1982, p. 206).