A BRIEF NOTE ON THE OUTCOME OF THE SYMPOSIUM ON

“NEED OF ENVIRONMENT EDUCATION IN OUR SCHOOL SYLLABUS ”

Organised by : PVI Nagaon, Dist. Nagaon

Location : Nagaon Town, Dist. Nagaon
Venue : Swahid Bhawan
Date :

A two days long symposium on “ NEED OF ENVIRONMENT EDUCATION IN OUR

SCHOOL SYLLABUS ” was organised by PVI Nagaon in collaboration with the Department of
Education under the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India at Swahid
Bhawan, Nagaon
The objective of the symposium was to create awareness and sensitise the high and higher
secondary school teachers of the district towards the concept and relevance of introducing
Environment Education at school level and to initiate the process of operationalising the same in
cooperation and participation of teaching staff, guardians, communities, NGOs and other
academic institutions.
The technical sessions of the symposium was designed accordingly to provide a holistic
introduction of the concept of Environment Education, the methodologies involved, the role of
teacher etc. to the participants. The workshop also had a session of facilitated group interaction
among the participants and with the resource persons. The discussions also encompassed the
whole gamut of pollution, ecology, bio-diversity, conservation of nature and allied subjects.
The symposium evoked tremendous response from the target groups i.e. the teacher
community. Interactive participation of the 144 teachers from 72 high and higher secondary
schools across the district in the deliberations made the symposium lively and result oriented.
The broad outcome of the whole exercise during the two days of the symposium could be
subsumed under three heads as follows.

1. KNOWLEDGE AUGMENTATION:
a. The participants got enlightened with the basic concepts on environment as a
whole, the parameters and indicators thereof and recent trend in conservation
aspects nationally and internationally.
b. The participants understood the need and urgency of introducing environment
education in schools in congruence with the global movement on conservation of
environment and nature.
c. They understood that to impart environment education to the school students it is
not imperative to have subject experts and that the conservation works do not
necessarily require high technology input.
d. The participants are infused with the knowledge on methodologies to be adopted
to impart environment education by optimisation and affective use of local
knowledge and capacity.

2. INFLUENCE ON MINDSET:
 a. The symposium eliminated many a wrong notions regarding environment and
allied issues from the minds of the participating teachers.
b. The brainstorming and the knowledge received in the symposium initiated a
change in the mindset of the participants on the whole concept of environment.
c. The symposium acted as a catalyst to spearhead the thought process of the
participants towards imparting Environment Education to the school students in a
positive way.

3. INSPIRATION TO ACT:
a. The symposium left the participants with a passion to act on their own and
develop further in the field of environment education and knowledge base.
b. Charged by the deliberations on the urgency of educating students in Environment
related issues the participants expressed their willingness to start the programme
in their respective schools as soon as possible.
c. The participants showed keen interest in establishing both horizontal and vertical
linkage with other institutions for information and knowledge sharing regarding
environment education.

It can therefore, be concluded that the impact and outcome of the symposium was affirmative
and result oriented.

Based on this experience PVI is looking forward to work more in this field with renewed
vigour.

The environment education programmes for school students will be started under supervision of
PVI, Nagaon who will also shoulder the responsibility of monitoring the activity and progress of
the programmes in the respective schools in cooperation with Centre for Environment Education
(CEE), Assam Science Technology & Environment Council (ASTEC) and arrange for further
inputs as and when required.

Date: (MUKUNDA MADHAB SARMA)

Place: Nagaon Director, PVI