Environmental education is the process of recognizing value and classifying concepts in order to develop skills and attitudes necessary to understand and appreciate the interrelatedness of man, his culture and his biophysical surrounding.
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Also it entails practice in decision-making and self-formulation of code of behaviour about issues concerning environment quality (Anon 1970).
The rapid strides of scientific and technological advancements have no doubt brought revolutionary changes in our everyday life and information technology has shrunk the whole world into a global village with access to information sitting in one corner over the Internet.
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But in this frenzy for development and mad race for progress perhaps man has become too materialistic, self-centered and over ambitious that the desired ideals of a real good life have been pushed to the background. Value based education thus has a very significant role in proper direction to our youth, to inculcate a positive attitude in them and to teach them the distraction between wrong and right.
It teaches them to be compassionate, helpful, peace loving generous and tolerant so that they can move towards a more harmonious, peaceful, enjoyable and sustainable future.
Value education encompasses human values, social values, professional values, religious values, national values, aesthetic values and environmental values. Value education increases awareness about our national history, our cultural heritage, national pride, constitutional rights and duties, national integration, community development and environment.
Value education has different phases i.e., value awareness, value orientation, value appraisal, value selection, value commitment and value action. The basic aim is to create and develop awareness about their values, significance and role.
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After knowing them the student’s mindset would get oriented towards those values and he will try to critically analyse the same and then select the values which really appeal to him. This will be followed by commitment that needs to be re-affirmed over and over again so that every action is taken keeping those values in view.