CHAPTER SIX: DISCUSSION
6.3 FRAGMENTALIST APPROACHES OBSERVED
Initial responses from schools to Project WATER were varied. Unlike the case of Graeme College, many teachers who received the invitation ignored it and did not consult other staff members or pupils to find out whether they would be interested in getting involved in the project. In the hierarchical system of the school, it appeared to be acceptable for teachers to make decisions on behalf of pupils without consulting them and, likewise, for senior teachers to make decisions on behalf of their junior colleagues.
Most high school teachers I spoke to did not see the need to get involved in Project WATER with their classes. They were concerned about covering the syllabus and preparing pupils for examinations and did not see the project helping them to achieve these objectives.
Extremely busy school programmes and structured time tables allowed little flexibility to involve whole classes in project work. At best, teachers encouraged pupils to get involved extramurally, in which case the project did not interfere with classroom teaching but enabled pupils to pursue an individual interest.
This general reaction seemed to imply, firstly, that few teachers recognised a need for environmental or holistic education. Had they done so, it is likely that they would have recognised the potential of Project WATER and responded more positively. As it was, Project WATER seemed to be perceived as just another project competing for space in a rich and demanding school programme. Secondly, the demanding and inflexible nature of the school programme mitigated against teachers embarking on the project unless they were particularly committed to the idea of environmental or holistic education. If they were not,
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it was unlikely that they would persevere in overcoming the obstacles commonly mentioned, such as time and syllabus constraints.
It is not surprising that teachers find difficulty in incorporating interdisciplinary projects such as Project WATER into the curriculum. Most schools are organised along fragmentalist lines, with knowledge being divided into separate subject disciplines, and links seldom being made to other disciplines. For instance, consider the concept map constructed by the B.Prim.Ed. students to illustrate 'Water' as a topic in Standard Three and Four Science (Section 4.2.1, Figure 1). The students did not make links between the factors they had chosen to show how they were related, nor did they mention 'non-science' aspects of a study of water. At high school, increased subject specialisation and complicated time tables make it difficult for teachers to embark on interdisciplinary projects with their pupils. Pupils consulted during the evaluation seminar (Section 4.3.6) recognised that work done at school was usually predefined and felt that teachers were resistant to change. They saw the project becoming institutionalised and routine if it became incorporated into the syllabus and suggested that it remain part of the extramural programme for this reason.
As local coordinator of Project WATER in Grahamstown, my perception of Project WATER and decisions I made influenced the way in which the project developed locally. I wanted to see Project WATER develop in Grahamstown but found teachers reluctant to get involved.
Therefore, when teachers from Graeme College indicated that pupils wanted to make use of the kit in their Biology projects, I suggested this approach to other high schools. Few of these pupils were concerned about water quality but needed to complete a project and saw the water kit as a means to this end. The kit proved to be a very flexible resource in the hands of pupils who used it to undertake a wide variety of projects and to form and test hypotheses. However, with the emphasis on science projects during this phase of project development, I did find myself starting to view Project WATER as a kit to enhance science project work rather than as a tool to encourage active participation in addressing an environmental problem.
In schools, the emphasis is usually on competition between individuals rather than on group cooperation. Evidence for this can be seen in the layout of many classrooms, the
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predominant systems of evaluation and the tendency to rank pupils according to achievement.
Whereas Project WATER is well suited to ongoing cooperative work by groups of pupils, in the high schools the kit was mainly used by individuals or pairs of pupils to complete school Biology projects. In general, these pupils were not interested in continuing their investigations after submitting their projects. Some pupils stated that they saw the water kit as a resource that would give them a competitive advantage in the Schools' Science Expo competition. This view of Project WATER reflects the approach of the present school system which encourages pupils to work towards goals such as passing examinations, after which no further interest in that particular aspect of the subject is expected of them.
I found little evidence of community-based environmental project work being done in schools. Where pupils were involved in addressing environmental or social problems, this was done extramurally and on a voluntary basis. Only two schools attended the annual Wildlife Society environmental projects competition for Grahamstown high schools and only one of these had been involved in ongoing environmental projects serving the Grahamstown community. This separation of the interests of the school from the needs of the wider community was most dramatically illustrated in the attitude of the H.D.E. student who considered water pollution in Grahamstown streams to be a "long-term educational problem"
and therefore not his responsibility (Section 4.2.2). Robottom (1987a) believes that environmental education should be community-based, involving students in a process of active collaboration to address real community problems, effectively narrowing the gap between school and community. Project WATER provides tools to enable teachers and pupils to investigate and address local water-related environmental problems. However, if teachers do not recognise environmental education as their role and if potential project participants do not see community action as their concern, Project WATER may become no more than a resource stimulating interesting school science projects and enhancing pupils' achievements in project competitions.
It was my experience during the course of the research that many teachers perceived environmental education in general and Project WATER in particular as something extra to be added to an already overloaded curriculum. De Lange (1992, pers. comm.) believes that teachers need to take a new look at curriculum content and to "drop some of the baggage"
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(her quote) that prevents them pursuing holistic approaches. Environmental education should not be added to the curriculum as another subject, complete with syllabus and examinations, or as an optional extramural activity; nor should it be seen to be the responsibility of only the Biology and Geography teachers at the school. Rather, I believe environmental education should be an approach to the curriculum which seeks to question and provide alternatives to the dominant fragmentalist approaches of educational institutions. These alternatives should include the development of relevant, integrated syllabi, participatory, experiential and critical teaching and learning approaches, democratic teacher-pupil relationships and closer school- community links.