Developments & Challenges in Australian Environmental Education

Abstract

This year of 1990 is an appropriate time to review the place of environmental education in the Australian school curriculum. After a period in the mid 1980s when environmental issues and political attention to the environment were on the back burner in comparison with economic issues, the environment is again a top international political priority. With Green victories in a number of European elections, even the hitherto unmindful Thatcher government in Britain is claiming an environmental concern and announcing several conservation measures, albeit with rather distant targets compared with a number of their prospective partners in Europe.The Hawke government in its third term sensed a growing environmental disenchantment among its supporters, and appointed one of its heavy-weights to the Environment portfolio. This move, and the strong action he took over several sensitive issues, were enough to keep the Green preferences in line and ensure in 1990 a fourth, unprecedented Labor term of office.The first Australian government involving official Green support appeared in Tasmania and in most of the other states the governments have upgraded Conservation and the Environment among their ministries.Most Australians, according to a poll conducted late in May (The Age, 15 June, 1990), feel that the threat to the environment is real, and that its protection should be put ahead of economic growth. Such strong public support for the environment would have been unthinkable a decade ago, even though the evidence for much of the now widely recognised damage to the Australian and global environment was available.