Since the industrial revolution, posing as conquerors human beings have been using all sorts of convenient excuses to excavate the earth and the sea for resources and to rob Nature unscrupulously. This has resulted in today's numerous natural disasters. If we looked back over the last hundreds and thousands of years, we would see that our ancestors had once lived in harmony with Nature and had revered Nature with humility. There were less terrible natural disasters such as what we have today.
Meanwhile, human beings have their root in nature. However, modern education has been trying to push us to destroy nature. Our ancestor was born in rural village and grown up on the land, whereas education has always encouraged us to stay away from our homeland and soil. Academic curriculum that separates human from nature is absolutely not conducive to nurture our future generations.
PCD has its mission to reconnect people's heart with nature. Over the last few years, we have been constantly experimenting on nature education in an attempt to explore the principles and approaches of nature education by drawing on our own experiences. We have been working with various communities to revive the connection between people and Nature and to find ways to practice sustainable living. We find that love and respect for Nature is not something that can be taught. One can only feel and comprehend the interdependence between human beings and nature in one's own life experience.
In our exploration on nature education, we have undertaken all sorts of initiatives with an open attitude. For example, we have made use of more popular approaches such as environmental education and ecological education developed on the basis of scientific knowledge and information. Besides, we also organized experiential activities based on traditional community culture and ecological view. Recently PCD also began to explore the ideas behind Affective Nature Education (ANE)[1] and its methods.
We found there's an escalating interest in nature education from the public. We would like to share with you stories from 5 of our nature education facilitators to let you learn about their exploration on nature education and personal transformation. We hope their experience will bring about inspirations and useful ideas to you.
1. Affective Nature Education (ANE) refers to the method developed by the GAIA Association Hong Kong based on the Flow learning originated from the famous nature educationalist Joseph Cornell. ANE places more emphasis on rousing people's affection so that they develop care and love for all things and for all beings. It also aims to nurture the will for action.