APPENDIX 33
Memorandum from the Railway Land Wildlife
Trust and Research Fellow at the University of Sussex
1. INTRODUCTION
1.1 I hope that my skills and experience
both on the ground and through research may be of relevance to
the committee. I founded a Trust in 1988 to provide an educational
role for former railway sidings in my home town of Lewes, East
Sussex. The area had become "derelict" and subject to
a three week planning inquiry. A reduced development of the site
resulted, and the Trust has taken a lead in a number of ways,
especially in giving children a voice in many aspects of the site.
For example, in 1996, a Junior Management Board was set up to
illuminate aspects of the site for the District Council management
committee. Board members have tackled issues such as adjacent
sports floodlights left on late at night, the design of a children's
leaflet, leading an opening ceremony of a signal box ecology centre
by David Dimbleby and meeting the Environment Minister, Michael
Meacher who publicly stated that he would like to see initiatives
like this "rolled out across the country".
1.2 As a founder member of the FERN Environmental
Education Research Network and a research fellow at the University
of Sussex, I was a contributor to the 1998 "Education for
Sustainable Development in the Schools Sector" which played
a role in establishing ESD within the revised National Curriculum.
In addition, as a Citizenship Tutor for Secondary post graduate
teacher-training, I have professional and practical insights that
underpin the voluntary work described above as well as the submission
which follows.
1.3 This submission is based on the importance
of action and empowerment, as opposed to tokenism, on the ground
at a very local level. This can fall within a national strategy
posed in question two of the inquiry but it emphasises the significance
of very local conditions which the inquiry is urged to consider.
The recent announcement of new sustainable communities could provide
a starting point for such an approach.
2. BUILDING ON
THE WORK
OF THE
SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
EDUCATION PANEL
2.1 The work of the Panel has helped to
establish education for sustainable development in the school
curriculum but one key component is underplayed. This is the ability
for young people not only to experience wildlife areas close to
their homes but to contribute to the management of such places.
Such an emphasis on the natural world within the three-legged
sustainable "stool" of environment, society and economics
is deliberate and will demand some imaginative and coherent thinking.
There are both constraints as well as opportunities at the current
time.
3. THE CONSTRAINTS
3.1 The school curriculum is still dominated
by important, but limiting, Government strategies. This pressure
on time has resulted in a narrowing of the curriculum underlined
in paragraph 111 of An Evaluation by Her Majesty's Inspectorate
of the National Literacy Strategy which states that, "the
most worrying aspect of the reduction of time for the foundation
subjects is the tendency of schools to cut back the very aspects
of subjects, notably practical and investigative work, that enable
pupils to apply and refine what they have learned and that provide
vitality and challenge. This represents a serious narrowing of
the curriculum." (HMI No.332. 2001) Fewer children are getting
the opportunity to experience natural areas within a social and
learning setting and unless we reverse this trend, we will have
a generation that do not even have the capability, let alone the
will, of understanding why such places might matter.
3.2 Another constraint is the lack of facilities
to serve urban wildlife sites or, where such sites exist, the
continual pressure to raise money to run them.
4. THE OPPORTUNITIES
4.1 The introduction of Citizenship provides
a window of opportunity within the school curriculum and beyond,
through the notion of "active citizenship". The wish
to develop "alternative inclusive approaches in planning
and delivering parks and green space services" (paragraph
96 of the Interim Report of the Urban Green Spaces Taskforce,
2001) also offers an opportunity beyond that of the school curriculum.
4.2 The inclusion of robust wildspace areas
within the Government's sustainable communities initiatives in
the Thames gateway and elsewhere, served by a variety of education
centres that are an integral part of the planning gain, would
provide a radical but practical approach to learning the sustainability
lesson, from which best practice would emerge. Funded and conceived
from the very start of the process instead of a bolt-on idea towards
the end of the development, such centres would become the hub
of debate, experience, exchange of skills, recording of change
and evolving approaches to the emergence of sustainability as
a core value of our nation. There is now a firm research base
(eg Journal for Environmental Education Research) that could inform
such developments, including the increasing use of information
technology within and between such centres and communities.
4.3 Such an approach would go a long way
to countering two key points identified in Cultural Trends
No. 38, "Local Authority Historic Parks in the UK,"
published in 2001: namely, the loss of records to inform the
running of such sites and the loss of the sense of ownership by
key workers as a result of Compulsory Competitive Tendering (p.69).
4.4 Campaigns and national strategies will
play their part in delivering sustainable development but unless
local people are engaged at a local level, they will founder.
Key places such as the Centre for Alternative Technology, the
Barnes Wetland Centre and Bishops Wood Environment Centre provide
leadership and inspiration which needs to be translated to a more
local level. New communities that are provided with the means
to shape and influence "natural" environments within
their development from the start could provide crucial insights
for existing communities and an inquiry such as Learning the Sustainability
Lesson could be the catalyst to bring such thinking about.
February 2003
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