You will witness the demand and the excitement, and most especially the great hunger for the hands-on experiential, intensely relevant environmental education programs that will fill these courses to capacity. . . if you will accept our offer to collaborate in bringing environmental literacy to the forefront of North Carolina's education policy. Environmental education resources in North Carolina represent an invaluable support system for the educational system. Through environmental education a child's sense of belonging, their connectedness to place and community is discovered. Not doing so will result in students continuing to graduate without knowing how to think in whole systems, to understand the interconnectedness of all things. I think we have seen dramatic evidence of that imperative.
Environmental education is lifelong learning.
It is relevant to one's life, one's own back yard. It is interdisciplinary, and promotes systems thinking. It is ideal for geographic information systems and thus the access to research quality North Carolina data through computerized mapping for teaching science, math, language arts, social studies and other disciplines. The environmental education infrastructure is in place. The state must not be so foolish as to give a token nod to a curriculum that has so much to offer - simply for the asking.