yet again ... getting lost ... then enjoying self-discovery ...

Questions in search of answers Review of a book which in some ways takes off from Ken Robinson’s much quoted line “ We are living in revolutionary times, but our educational system is a relic of the 19th Century Industrial Age ” published in the February 2018 issue of Teacher Plus. The review on Teacher Plus here and the book on MGIEP here . Thanks are due to Teacher Plus and Nirmala. Title: Textbooks for Sustainable Development: A guide to embedding Year of publishing: 2017 Publisher: United Nation Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Education for Peace and Sustainable Development Pages: 186 Over the years as one dabbled in education (especially environment education) one faced a number of questions. Questions which were critical but which did not have clear answers and did not get the attention they deserved. Questions like why was our education so fragmented and removed from our lives? Was this data dr...

This article finds place in Teacher Plus’ March 2017 issue here . It first appeared in Firstpost on October 18, 2016 here . Thanks are due to Teacher Plus and First Post. Reimagining Environment One of the plenary speakers at a recently held conference on Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) in Ahmedabad highlighted the need for Environment Education (EE) to be political. EE had been away from politics for long, and this she said had rendered it weak. Participants were quick to raise questions on the risks this could pose of complicating the issue further, especially given the ability of the facilitators to deliberate on such topics. The speaker’s response was unambiguous. On the one hand, students today have access to a lot of information – from the Internet and other sources. On the other, the onus lies on the facilitators to upgrade their skills and communicate issues responsibly. In other words, not talking about the topics is neither an opt...

Abstract title: Planning to educate, educating to plan: Conservation Education in an ecologically critical landscape. Conference: ESD for transforming education for children and youth Authors: Nimesh Ved, Jayanta Pathak, Firoz Ahmed & Bibhuti Lahkar Communicating author: Nimesh Ved: nimesh.explore@gmail.com Abstract text: Conservation education efforts across the country have been severely restricted by lack of adequate resources and absence of long term planning. As a corollary we have well intentioned individuals and organizations organizing disconnected events during wildlife week and environment days. Stress has been on generating stand alone materials and reaching out to higher numbers as opposed to coming up with a cohesive long term plan and strengthening capacities to implement the plan. We understand there is a dire need to have a long term plan for conservation education in place. A plan that is not only sensitive to loca...