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Environmental education: In the jungle, the mighty jungle...New Straits Times » LearningCurve Daily
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Environmental education: In the jungle, the mighty jungle...
30 Sep 2006
Sumitha Martin
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A recent national-level nature camp for school-goers celebrated a 15-year-old environmental education initiative of the Malaysian Nature Society.
THE hall at the Kuala Selangor Nature Park is filled with teenagers on a Thursday night.
The group of 221 members of the School Nature Club (more popularly known as Kelab Pencinta Alam), is listening intently to a youngster conducting a power-point presentation on the characteristics of a tropical rainforest.
Another teenage presenter takes over and with a commanding voice, describes the wonders of a peat swamp forest, pointing out the flora and fauna which the group might sight on excursions during the next three days of the camp.
After a quick dinner, a third teenage presenter takes over, gaining the most attention because his explanation on fireflies precedes a field trip this very night to watch the insects at nearby Kampung Kuantan.
Pratab Ganesan, 17, from SMK Sultan Sulaiman Shah in Batang Berjuntai, Selangor, talks informatively on the insects including their life span, synchronised blinking, and then, mating, inevitably drawing laughter and giggles from the audience.
Pratab and his two colleagues are among 31 student facilitators who were chosen from KPA members nationwide to undertake environmental education projects under the guidance of KPA teacher advisers and Malaysian Nature Society (MNS) officers and volunteers — the MNS is the parent body of the KPA.
The projects were precursors to the four-day national-level KPA camp which features field trips to the Forest Research Institute Malaysia in Kepong, and Batu Caves, and of course, an investigation into the mangrove forest where the nature camp is being held.
This year’s camp is being attended by students from 76 schools nationwide and 46 teacher-advisors.
The aim of appointing student facilitators is to "make you understand what we grown-ups can’t make you understand", explains MNS senior education officer (School Nature Club programme) Evelyn Lim to the teenagers at the introductory session.
Traditionally, the biennial event sees teacher-advisers acting as facilitators.
An additional benefit of this arrangement, which the organisers are banking on, is the motivation students receive to take a proactive role in the learning process when they see their contemporaries in facilitator mode.
If all goes well, the pioneer batch of student facilitators may be appointed as future trainers, Lim adds.
The change gets the thumbs-up from Pratab who says "it’s a good chance for us to learn to guide our friends and we can help arrange camps in future".
There is yet another advantage to the student facilitator scheme — the many rehearsals in presentations have given him confidence in public speaking.
The new arrangement seems to have worked judging from the enthusiastic registration welcome party manned by students and a fun ice-breaking session, also conducted by student facilitators with teachers nearby.
Student leadership and enthusiasm is also evident during field trips when student facilitators get to play teacher and share their new-found knowledge with their colleagues.
Accordingly, at the Forest Research Institute Malaysia, Norsyuhadaizzaty Mohd Anuar, 15, from SMK Seksyen 19, Shah Alam, and a colleague conduct a trek along the one-kilometre Engkabang trail with the ease of naturalists, pointing out features of a dipterocarp forest including poisonous plants and telltale trampling marks of wild boar.
Similarly, at Batu Caves, a quartet from Malacca High School knowledgeably informs their colleagues on various rock formations, cockroaches and bats.
All of this, says Lim, encapsulates the progress made by MNS’ education initiative begun 15 years ago with the establishment of the KPA in 12 schools in the Klang Valley.
Today, the KPA has 12,000 members in 296 schools across the country — 80 per cent of this number comprises secondary schools.
Teacher strength has increased too with about 300 teacher-advisers, among whom are state MNS coordinators — the post was introduced six years ago and appointees serve as links between MNS and state education departments.
One such coordinator is Hashimi Ismail, a Science and English teacher with SK Kuala Jengal, in Dungun, Terengganu.
A marine science graduate who was a scientific officer with World Wildlife Fund Malaysia before becoming a teacher, Hashimi believes the KPA initiative is vital because it helps to fill the void in environmental education in the Malaysian school curriculum.
Environmental education is not taught as a separate subject. It is merely "integrated into other subjects" such as science, geography, English and Bahasa Melayu, laments Hashimi.
Also lauding the efforts of MNS is Malacca High School science teacher Nor Aini Abdullah who says the society "has done a lot to raise interest in caring for the environment".
A KPA teacher adviser since 1997, she attests to the benefits of nature-oriented activities for male students, including their function as an innovative discipline tool. "My students will do everything as instructed because their interest has been captured."
Naturally, camps to various parts of the country — Gua Kelawar in Perlis, Taman Negara in Pahang, and Batu Maloi in Negri Sembilan, to name a few — are an annual affair for the school’s KPA movement which has grown from less than 20 members to more than 100 today.
Ooi Lean Seng, KPA teacher adviser at SMK Kuala Perlis, Pahang, believes nature activities and environmental education as a whole, make students "realise that the environment and we humans are not far apart".
He hopes a pre-camp socio-economic project which took four of his students to the Kampung Simpai Orang Asli settlement in a peat swamp forest in south-east Pahang, "opened their eyes to how the Orang Asli depend on the environment for clothing and food and that hopefully, this will make them (students) learn to conserve the environment".
Ooi will take comfort from the fact that one of the quartet, Adik Nor Isnaini Abd Malek, 16, says she was happy to partake in the way of life of the Orang Asli.
The great outdoors has touched many other students too.
For Upper Six student, Roseline Henry Penguang from SMK Kapit, Sarawak, the camp has given her a delight for the diversity of plant life and the goodness of fresh air!
To Pratab, being a KPA member since last year, has heightened his love for nature’s “calmness and peacefulness”.
The Kuala Selangor Nature Park is in fact, his “second home” because of his many visits here there.
For Diyana Sabrina Redzuan Lim, 14, of SMK Section 5 Wangsa Maju in Kuala Lumpur, an urban lifestyle and a terrace home has not prevented her from developing a passion for bird-watching which took root when she attended her first state-level MNS camp last year.
The avid birder, whose first sighting was a black-naped Oriel in her housing estate, has had 173 sightings to date.
The teenager has even attended MNS excursions such as the raptor watch in Tanjung Tuan, Malacca, which was such a delight that she made a second visit, this time with family members.
There has been more than nature appreciation going on at the camp — fourth former Khairul Che Hassan from SMK Agama Melor in Kelantan, says his first-time attendance at a national-level camp has given him “friends of other races and religions”.
The benefits of nature gatherings are obviously many but for educators like such as Hashimi, they cannot compare to the widespread advantages for Malaysian society as a whole, if the environment was recognised as a subject worthy of study in its entirety.
* The camp was sponsored by the Education Ministry, United Nations Development Programme/Global Environment Fund, Department of Environment, HSBC Bank Malaysia, The Coca-Cola Company, Majlis Daerah Kuala Selangor and the Kuala Selangor Nature Park.
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Blue1moon
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Sounds like a fabulous program obmar!
How exciting!
Would have enjoyed something like that myself as a kid (or now for that matter).
[Wonder what Coke gets out of it though?]
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