Environmental Issues

 Sustainability is one of the major issues being discussed worldwide. The core of the debate consists of which factors essentially affect the ability of nature to sustain the human population. The west (industrialized countries) and the south (third world countries) have opposing arguments towards the issue. The west perspective maintains that population is the biggest culprit for environmental degradation. View from the south, on the other hand, maintains that over-consumption by the western countries lead to environmental degradation.

While the debate remains unsettled, a school and a non-profit organization in the US have together taken an initiative to start providing solutions to the issue of sustainability in their own little way. King Middle School Principal Neil Smith and Chef Alice Water of Chez Panisse Foundation collaborated to build the Edible Schoolyard in 1995, on a one acre land in Berkeley, California. The goal of the collaboration is to teach students the idea that our food choices actually affect natures welfare. In the course of learning, the students will develop better appreciation of how food goes to their tables, as well as about the food itself.
The Edible Schoolyard (ES) program draws striking similarities from the teaching ideas advanced by Paulo Freire. Fraire believes in a five-fold scheme of educating students informal teaching approach, praxis-centered activities (informed actions), development of a consciousness that has the ability to execute changes, hands-on learning (application to day-to-day life), and transcending the traditional stiff mentor-student relationship. The ES program enables students to grasp the essentials of the concept of sustainability based on an everyday life situational approach (i.e. meal preparation). They learn from the hands-on works in the schoolyard rather than from a mentor speaking the ideas, as what occurs in a traditional classroom setting.