SAMPLE LESSON ON ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION

Activities of Oil companies, and Environmental degradation in the Niger Delta.

The widespread damage to the ecosystem in the Niger Delta caused by oil spills, and other uncontrolled exploration related activities, led to a campaign by the Movement for the Survival of Ogoni Peoples (MOSOP) in the 1990s to raise awareness about the problems faced by inhabitants of the region. The campaigned was aimed at getting local authorities, multinational oil companies and global organizations to intervene and ensure effective steps are taken towards compensation, repairs to the damaged environment and a change in the mode of operations of the oil companies.

AUTHOR: Ibrahim Oyekanmi

TIME: 3 Lesson periods (2 hours X 3)

GRADE LEVEL AND SUBJECT: Advanced Computer application packages classes, Basic Multimedia Presentations using Ms PowerPoint.

MATERIALS: - Wikipedia pages on Ogoniland
- United Nations Report on the environmental degradation in Ogoniland caused by SHEL Plc’s activities in the region.

METHODS: Readings, Reflections and discussion sessions within groups and the whole class; using Google News to search for information, and using Ms PowerPoint to create a Presentation to highlight the damage to the environment caused by activities of SHELL Plc and the efforts of the social justice movement that struggled to get SHELL to accept responsibility.

CONCEPTS: Effects of exploration and extractive activities on the environment; taking action; existing international mechanisms for pursuing environmental causes; possible success of nonviolent protest if kept up; environmental degradation and the attendant structural and physical violence.

OBJECTIVES: Learners will:
 Learn to use Ms Powerpoint to create a presentation detailing the timeline of the environmental issues of Ogoniland.

 Understand the link between the activities of oil companies and environmental degradation.

 Understand the ways in which environmental degradation leads to violence.

 Learn that effective mechanisms exist for pursuing environmental claims.

 Understand that, even if it takes long time, unflinching persistence and determined commitment to cause will certainly bring victory at the end.

PROCEDURES:
0. General background lecture on Ogoniland and its environmental problems.

Learners will be guided to:


1. Get Wikipedia articles on Ogoniland.

2. Search for the news itemS on the UN report using Google News.

3. Sift through the search results to get the appropriate pages with useful details of the contents of the report.

4. Print relevant pages of the report that contain the main highlights.

The class will be divided into small groups and each group given a copy of the printouts from the report to study for a week before the next class with emphasis on the following themes:

 The people of Ogoniland before oil was discovered.
 Environmental degradation from activities if Oil companies,
 Efforts of social groups at getting the problems addressed.
 The responses of the government and the Oil companies to the efforts of activists.
 International organizations involved in investigating environmental issues.
 Achievements of the campaigns;
 Expectations for the future.


In the next lesson period, the reports will be discussed in a session to be facilitated by the teacher.

Students will be asked to raise their questions and comments on their understanding of the documents. These questions and comments should be thrown open to the whole class. From the various the submissions that come out of the discussions, 3 – 4 paragraphs-long submissions should be written out for each theme.

The written submissions for each theme should form the content of a slide in the presentation to be creates using Ms PowerPoint in the final lesson period.

REFERENCES
http://www.mosop.org/14_UNEP_OGONI_ENGAGEMENT_012008.pdf
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-14391015

Social Justice Issues and Environmental Degradation in the Nigerian Niger Delta - My Reflections

The Nigerian Niger Delta is rich in Petroleum and its allied resources. The uncontrolled extractive activities of the oil companies working in the region has resulted in widespread environmental pollution.

This contamination has had a negative effect on farming and fishing, which are the main traditional occupations of the inhabitants of the region. Farmland and rivers have been rendered waste as a result of contamination from oil spills from the pipelines which crisscross the whole area.

Wells and local streams which serve as sources of fresh water for the people of these areas have also become contaminated.
Reports also suggest that in some areas in the Niger Delta, the air itself is contaminated and inhaling this contaminated air is believed to be the source of many diseases experienced by locals.

A recent United Nations reported indicted a multinational oil company that is active in the Niger Delta of intentional negligence in the case of the oil spills in the area. The report further stated that it will take up to 25 years to clean up the area and revive the ecosystem that is dead!

Consequently, most of the residents of this area live in abject poverty despite the colossal income generated by the government from the petroleum resources extracted from the area.
They lack basic social infrastructure like good schools, hospitals, access roads, etc.

Apart from being deprived of their basic rights to a healthy environment, residents of this region are thus also deprived of their sources of livelihood and suffer a painful form of structural violence by being denied their basic rights to good education, health etc.

Over the years, some individuals of the region and local groups have started campaigns to protest these injustices, but instead of the authorities looking into their claims, they have been subject to direct physical violence in the form of arrests, executions and massive brutality in the hands of the military joint task force which is in charge of security in the region.

This oppression and the attendant injustices should be discussed in classrooms and students given an opportunity to understand that, while oil could be a major source of income to a country, the way and manner in which it is extracted, refined, and transported could have negative effects on the lives of local communities.

Among the issues that learners could be introduced to, are:
 Relationship between oil extraction activities and environmental pollution;

 Effects of environmental pollution on the economic lives of local communities;

 Relationship between oil exploration and violence;
 Relationship between oil exploration and illiteracy;
 Relationship between oil exploration and personal health.

Guiding learners to become aware of the various environmental issues outlined above, will:
 Make them aware of the need to strike a balance between economic prosperity and environmental sustainability in public policies.

 Guide them to cultivate a motivation to take action to ensure the environment is protected.

 Make them aware of the relationship between the activities of oil companies and social justice issues.

So, while the largest proportion the government’s income from export comes from this region, the inhabitants of this area face a disproportionate amount of discrimination and oppression.

By denying them good schools, the children from this region largely grow up uneducated and thus denied deprived the opportunity of acquiring quality education that could possibly have placed them in good stead to rise to positions from which they might possibly have been able to effect changes in the plight of their people.
They are thus condemned to lives as searching for nonexistent jobs as unskilled labour!

REFERENCES:
http://www.insular.com/~tmc/politics/africa/ogoni.fact.html

Relationship between Environmental Education and Social Justice - My Reflections

Upon reflection on the relationship between Environmental education and social justice, we’d see that the aim of Environmental education is to equip learners with knowledge and skills that will make them aware of their environment and its allied problems. Environmental problems have direct and sometimes indirect effects (positive or negative) on our daily lives, and in many cases, linked to derivations, discriminations and outright occurrences of violent conflicts!

In aiming to create a world population that is consciously aware of environmental issues, Environmental education strives to prevent, reduce, or where possible eliminate possible causes of social injustice in the society.

A society that is aware of the environmental consequences of industrialization on their lives for instance, will certainly make proactive efforts to ensure industrial growth and development plans are made with due consideration for possible environmental effects.

Apart from guiding people to be committed to taking proactive stances on issues, Environmental education, if properly implemented, will guide people to adopt Environmentally-friendly attitudes and values. By adopting a lifestyle that seeks to protect the environment, people will be indirectly protecting and promoting the rights of others to good environment.

Many conflicts across the globe are caused by environmental issues like resource control, environmental degradation and direct marginalization of indigenous people. Many forms of structural and direct physical violence are perpetuated as a result of these conflicts. With Environmental education, people will acquire the capacity to critically examine environmental issues and upon due reflection, seek for civil nonviolent methods of effecting transformation.

With a society that is consciously aware of their rights and responsibilities towards the environment, governments will also have to place top priority on environmental considerations when initiating and implementing various policies.

Environmental education strives at the equitable and sustainable usage of environmental resources the earth. Its efforts really help in ensuring social justice finds a place in the dictionary of world leaders.

KEY PRINCIPLES OF ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION

Like all of Peace education, Environmental education is education for, or/and about peace. On one hand, Environmental education aims at equipping with knowledge and skills that will lead to awareness and concern about the total environment and its associated problems. On the other hand, it also aims to guide learners, by virtue of the acquire skills and knowledge, to imbibe attitudes and values that will motivate them to become committed to work individually and collectively towards solution of identified current problems, and the prevention of the occurrence of new ones.

The first UN conference on environmental education in Tbilisi (1977) endorses some guiding principles for environmental education.


According to the Tbilisi Declaration, environmental education should:

 Consider the environment in its totality—natural and built, technological and social (economic, political, cultural-historical, ethical, esthetic);

 Be a continuous lifelong process, beginning at the preschool level and continuing through all formal and non-formal stages;

 Be interdisciplinary in its approach, drawing on the specific content of each discipline in making possible a holistic and balanced perspective;

 Examine major environmental issues from local, national, regional, and international points of view so that students receive insights into environmental conditions in other geographical areas;

 Focus on current and potential environmental situations while taking into account the historical perspective;

 Promote the value and necessity of local, national, and international cooperation in the prevention and solution of environmental problems;

 Explicitly consider environmental aspects in plans for development and growth;

 Enable learners to have a role in planning their learning experiences and provide an opportunity for making decisions and accepting their consequences;

 Relate environmental sensitivity, knowledge, problem-solving skills, and values clarification to every age, but with special emphasis on environmental sensitivity to the learner's own community in early years;

 Help learners discover the symptoms and real causes of environmental problems;

 Emphasize the complexity of environmental problems and thus the need to develop critical thinking and problem-solving skills;

Utilize diverse learning environments and a broad array of educational approaches to teaching, learning about and from the environment with due stress on practical activities and first-hand experience.

The Classroom as a Gender inclusive environment - My Reflections

I feel my perception of women, at both the personal and professional relationship levels, is that of equal partners who are as capable as I am. I know that just like I have my strengths and weaknesses, they also have theirs!

Upon deep reflection, I have arrived at the understanding that we are created complementary by nature. In any field of human endeavor, it is the combination of the unique strengths and outlooks of both sexes that could lead to the emergence of a successful complete whole.

With such a disposition, I see the students in my classes generally as human beings, each with his/her unique stories, intelligences and strengths which could be nourished to guide the individual student and the class as a whole to reach their potentials in their chosen fields.

Even in my professional relationships with female colleagues, I have realized that they are sometimes able to bring a refreshing different perspective to issues which, I must be sincere, I, as a man may not be aware of. We may be different, but I know we are equals who need one another to ensure a successful existence.
In diving students into groups at the beginning of the programme, it is my usual practice to ensure the groups, while created with the perceived intelligences as the primary consideration, are made up of both boys and girls. Such pairings/groupings allow the students to learn and work together in a cooperative manner. This in turn, allows them to cultivate a sense of mutual respect and understanding for one another.
By appreciating the qualities or capabilities of one another, they go through the programme seeing one another as equal partners.

Even in a conservative society like mine which is male dominated, the initial prejudices of looking down upon the girls, which the boys have grown up with, wears off after some time of learning and working with girls on group tasks and assignments.

Another good way of promoting gender equality in the classroom is assigning leadership roles to the girls when they are proven to be capable. This boosts their self-confidence and as time goes on, wins them the respect of the boys. A female group leader who is able to excellently coordinate the activities of her group is quickly accepted by the boys as an equal who is consulted in issues other than curricular activities.

In designing our learning materials, I usually consider the general interests, intelligences and emotional disposition of the various students. By ensuring there are parts of the learning activities that every student can relate to, regardless of sex, race or other differences, everyone is able to contribute to the discussions and assignments.

A more direct method could be to raise societal issues that border on gender inequality, and throw them up for general discussions during our free periods. Examples of such questions include:

 There are more men than women in politics; would it make any difference if we had more women?
OR
 Should there be any occupation that is strictly reserved for women?


Such questions would provoke deep reflections among the students and diverse opinions will certainly crop up, giving me an opportunity to learn more of the outlook of the students towards gender issues, and thus be able to guide the class clear long held prejudices borne out of misconceptions and false myths.

Gender, Socialization, and Violence – My Reflections

The socialization process in my immediate community is built upon a strong chauvinist tradition that has relegated women to the backseat in all spheres of human existence.

On a general note, while boys are trained from birth to aspire towards economic independence by acquiring academic and vocational skills, the girls are conditioned to prepare for a life of total dependency on the males, as full time, unskilled, uneducated, and unemployed housewives.

The average member of the society here holds the belief that the place of a woman is simply in a husband’s house, without much inclination towards empowering them with any occupational skill that could make them become productive members of the society. The only production they are seen to be fit for being only the production of babies!

This mentality leads to many families not inclined to put in much resources and effort towards educating the girl child. The enrolment rate for girls in schools is very low. Despite the fact that the last National census showed that the population of women is higher than men in Nigeria, more than half of the girls don’t get to acquire Secondary education. The main cause is because their education is not regarded as being important since they’d end up simply becoming housewives producing babies in some man’s house.

Girls thus conditioned to prepare themselves for life by learning to make themselves attractive to get a husband, do household chores and take of babies. Not much importance is placed on their schooling, the few who go beyond secondary school level have to work extra hard to survive in the male dominated and controlled schools.

Being so completely dependent upon the men folk and not equipped with much occupational skills to fend for themselves, many girls go through life silently enduring all forms of physical and psychological abuse in their husband’s houses.
They are usually married off at very early ages, sometimes as young as 12, thus they are often physically and psychologically not matured to handle the complexities of marital life. These girls are not able to do anything even if when faced with various kinds of abuse from husbands who see them as properties they acquired for their personal pleasures and to take care of their houses. The societal conditioning makes the girls themselves to simply accept all the abuse as being normal, they believe that is how it should be and that there is nothing that can be done to effect change!.

In many homes, their acceptance of tradition supported discrimination makes it a taboo for girls to aspire to higher education. Most girls end their academic pursuits at the primary school level or at best, the secondary school level.

There is a widespread belief among many people that if a woman is given access to higher education, she will not be humble and subservient to her husband as their perception of tradition requires.

The few girls who manage to go ahead to universities, polytechnics, or colleges of education mostly aren’t allowed free choices in their courses of study. Pressures from the home or from those around them condition them to go for ‘lady-like courses’. Though not officially acknowledged, the schools themselves seem to have an entrenched discriminative policy in place which places higher priority on admitting more boys than girls into institutions of higher learning.

My observation is that the girls grow up believing in and upholding the traditional view of their role being mainly limited to the domestic tasks. consequently, they tend to grow up accepting these false beliefs, and acting with the wrong conviction that they must tailor their values and attitudes to be in tune with the society’s expectations of them, even if it is dehumanises them!

Gender related violent crimes like rape and sexual harassment in schools and the workplace are bye products of the society’s definition of what the woman is.
The social stigma attached to rape makes most rape incidents go officially unreported. Many victims of gender related violent crimes simply suffer the physical and psychological trauma in silence. The few government agencies and Nongovernmental Organizations involved in women rights issues, are not well funded and equipped to carry their activities. And they laws of the land do have prescribe stiff penalties for gender related crimes even if perpetrators are convicted. Rehabilitation facilities are virtually nonexistent.


Though it is quite complicated and enormous, the task of effecting transformation has potential possibilities for achieving success. Many females have worked hard through the unfavourable system and made a success of their professional lives in diverse field, without in any way neglecting their roles as wives and mothers.
These women serve as role models whose achievements can be used to guide girls to see the possibilities that exist for them if try!


Viewing socialization as an ever evolving process, there is cause for optimism. The emergence of many women in leadership positions in diverse spheres of societal activity places them in position to make sure public policies are designed and implemented with due consideration for gender equality.

Currently, there are many serving female ministers in the Federal cabinet who have really proven to be equals (if not betters) of their male counterparts (Prof. (Mrs) Ruqayyatu Ahmed Rufa'i of Education and Dr Okonjo-Iweala of Finance are examples).
A host of other notable women are also holding top management positions in both the public and private sectors. The contributions to the national policy debates have in many ways being helpful in getting policies being designed and implemented with consideration for gender equality.

Most importantly, these women’s outstanding performances in their professions coupled with their proven moral integrity, is certainly having an affect on the societal perception of a woman’s worth and abilities. This will go a long way in changing the society’s perception of girls. Though it is a long process, it is one which is sure to make a change as time goes by.

The many faces of Gender Inequality – My Reflections

Many societies have diverse forms of gender inequalities entrenched into their cultures as a result of their perceptions and interpretations of religious guidelines.

Looking at it from my local context in a multicultural environment with a dominant Muslim population, Most of the apparent occurrences of gender equality are actually not based on evidences of any religious text

Because some religious positions (Mostly Priesthood) are reserved for men does not in any way mean are second-class citizens. The various religions have opportunities to play full active roles in the spiritual tasks.

Islam as a religion holds that women are not in any way inferior to men but were originally created from the same soul. (Holy Qur’an 4:1). Women are granted equal rights in Islam as well as equal responsibilities.

In marriage, Islam grants women the right to be provided for by their husbands, but there is no Islam text that prohibits a woman from going out to work, provided she conducts herself in morally accepted ways in the course of working.

Examples abound in Islamic history of women who engaged in business or were devoted scholars in diverse fields. The Holy Prophet Muhammad never prohibited women from participating in all activities during his lifetime.

Various cultural prejudices handed down over the centuries have however found their way into our societies and are paraded as being Islamic practices. These include limiting womenfolk to only household chores and child bearing/rearing.

Due to the important influence faith has in our societies, many of these cultural practices have become entrenched in the society to the point that even the women have become conditioned to accepting the discriminations and prejudices against them as being in line with the teachings of Islam.


The media (both local and global) play a very big role in the perpetration of gender inequality. Use of gender specific language, projection of women in stereotype roles and the overwhelming portrayal of female images as sex symbols in adverts.

Instead of girls growing up to see themselves as equal partners, and behaving/aspiring to be seen as such, they are unconsciously conditioned for life as sources of sexual gratification for men and as home keepers. So instead of priming up their minds to aspire to become successful in various fields like the boys, they are made to feel they were not created for that, and blindly guided to believe the opportunities are not there for them!


Starting from the home, there is a great misrepresentation of the roles of males and females. Instead of seeing the different household roles as complementary and equally essential to the peaceful and effective functioning of the home, the males are guided to believe that because they are assigned the physical tasks while the girls carry out the household chores, they are superior!

Even the conservative families will benefit positively from a better understanding that allows everyone’s everyone contribution to be seen and accepted as being a vital part of the home system. If the man works to bring in food for the family, it is the woman’s contribution of cooking the food that turns the supplies into the delicious meals the family enjoys.
While the boys chop wood for fire, it is the plates/plates washed by the girls that are used for the cooking.

This understanding should also be extended to show that any of the roles could be reversed, there are no laws against a woman working to bring food for the family or the boys washing plates while the girls chop the wood; it is simply a matter of every family member supporting the family with his/her contribution to ensure the family maintains a functional and happy home.

Many employers of labour still have reservations about employing women into some male dominated positions in their organizations. Though it might not be publicly acknowledged, many organizations all over the world have silent unwritten rules that are ensure gender bias in the employment process, even if the best qualified applicant is a woman, some flimsy excuse is created to drop her in favour of a less qualified male simply on account of her sex.


Gender inequality is detectable in our school system right from the curriculum. in laying out the diverse general objectives, you’d detect gender specific objectives and activities.

Though this may sound radical, but I am not in support of allocating a fixed quota to girls in the admission process. The educational system should provide a level playing ground that will be well designed and implemented be to guide learners to strive for achievement and excellence with no discrimination or prejudice.

Employment into both private and public sector positions should be based on merit, with fair and equal opportunities for both sexes with no prejudices and institutionalised discrimination. No concession or prejudice should be introduced. With assurance of a level playing ground in which everyone has equal chances of success, the girls will see the various possibilities that exist for them to achieve and excel just like anyone else.