Educating Adults through Today's Youth: The Status of and Potential for Environmental Education Organizations in MN to offer Opportunities for Children to act as Catalysts of Adult Education

Abstract

Environmental education has been around for many years, yet environmental problems still exist. While many environmental education organizations focus their programming on children, it is often not within children’s capabilities to implement the necessary behaviors that will minimize human impact on the environment or alleviate current environmental issues. It is the children’s parents and other community adults that possess such capabilities. Instead of creating more environmental education programs for adults, it has been recommended that organizations use their current programs to not only teach children, but also teach children's parents and adults in the community. This study therefore describes the current extent and potential for environmental education organizations in MN that focus on child environmental education to also provide adult environmental education through the programming offered to children. The results suggest more work could be done in the environmental education field to educate organizations about the potential for children to act as catalysts of adult education as this study found most organizations believe learning is reciprocal between children and adults, but do not often plan for children to share their learning with adults.