Anthony Itodo Samuel is a mathematics teacher at MaryMount College II, in Agbor, Nigeria. He is teaching there for a year as part of the National Youth Service Corps.
His hobbies include reading detective novels, watching detective movies, and writing (poetry, essays and short stories). As a member of Junior Chamber International (JCI), he strongly believes that "service to humanity is the best work of life."
Essay Question: How would you improve your school so that it prepares future leaders to protect the planet?
CHANGING STUDENT ATTITUDES AND PROMOTING ACTIVE YOUTH PARTICIPATION IN ENVIRONMENTAL
ISSUES
INTRODUCTION
Often when I travel by road in a vehicle, this scene plays out: Passengers eat
food items and hastily, without a second thought, hurl the waste through the window
of the moving vehicle (usually polythene, cans, plastic bottles, etc.).
I eat bananas and keep the peels; I take oranges and the waste stays with me;
I drink a Coke and the can stays with me. A "good" passenger often volunteers
to help me hurl the waste through the window, but I decline. I gather the waste
into a polythene bag and place it on the floor of the vehicle or in my bag until
I can find a waste bin for proper disposal. Passengers look at me with bewilderment
and I can hear them say in their hearts, What is wrong with him? But I have an
almost sacred kind of respect for the environment!
Individually, in our respective houses we don't dump refuse in our rooms. No!
It is inappropriate. However, the roads are not our rooms, they are "bushes,"
they are "outside," they "don't matter." That is the attitude
of many Nigerians toward the environment.
A STUDENT, THE ENVIRONMENT AND ME: A SCHOOL SCENE
The National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) is a scheme in Nigeria that mandates graduates
of tertiary institutions to serve the country for one year. Corp members are posted
to various areas by the government, about 80 percent of them to rural areas and
a further 90 percent or more of that to secondary schools as teachers. Presently
I am a mathematics teacher under the scheme, with Marymount College Agbor.
Once at school a student from my class walked by drinking a sachet of water. I
watched her, waiting to see how she would dispose of the sachet when done. She
did not disappoint me. As soon as she was done, she hurled it like a basketball
over an imaginary hoop, straight into the nearby flowers. Then she strode away
like she had just won a Nobel Prize for Peace. Immediately I stopped her. Where
did you drop that? She looked at me askance. What was wrong with her choice of
refuse bin, she obviously wondered. "Do you know where the refuse bins in
the school are?" I asked. She identified three of them for me. Then I asked
her to pick up the sachet and go dispose of it properly. She picked it up, after
a rigorous search, and said, "But sir, it was not even showing."
Yes, improperly disposed waste may not be "showing" to make the environment
unsightly, but the unseen consequences are far reaching. The next day I spotted
the same student voluntarily picking up sachets and taking them to the refuse
bin-an attitudinal change, the beginning of environmental consciousness and revolution
among young students, putting a premium on the long-term protection of our immediate
environment and the planet at large.
AS A TEACHER, WHAT CAN I DO?
Teachers owe it as a responsibility to society to educate students in all ramifications,
to model their own lives, and to show them the appropriate paths to undertake.
As teachers our jurisdiction goes beyond the syllabus: We need to ensure our students
are found worthy in both character and learning.
I belong to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) Awareness Creation (MAC) Volunteer
Group of the NYSC. During my one-year national service period, as a member of
this volunteer group, I am expected to facilitate progress toward attainment of
the MDGs in my immediate community. For convenience and due to personal interest,
I have undertaken to facilitate attainment of the following goals:
Goal One: "To eradicate extreme poverty and hunger," through the stimulation
of student interest in agriculture via the Farmers Club of my school; by initiating
a communication network between my group and other corps members in other communities
and relevant agricultural and rural development agencies. This will provide information
for farmers on productive agricultural practices and improve market access for
rural farmers.
Goal Three: "Empower women and promote gender equality," through the
initiation of computer literacy for some of my students, who are all girls. This
program aims to expose them to the use of computers and the internet for basic
research to access relevant information.
Goal Seven: "Ensure environmental sustainability," through the use of
an "Earth Club" as a platform with programs designed to address three
challenges which I have identified with respect to the sustainability of our environment:
- A lack of awareness of the consequences of treating the environment without respect.
A lack of participation of youths in environmental sustainability movements.
THE EARTH CLUB: A PRACTICAL FRAMEWORK FOR ADDRESSING YOUTH ATTITUDES AND ALLOWING
PARTICIPATION
To set the framework for attitudinal change, I founded the Earth Club at the end
of this past term, thus proper functioning of the club commences in January 2011.
At Marymount College, students belong to different clubs (Science Club, Literary
Club, Farmers Club, etc.) and meet in groups every Wednesday. Similarly, members
of the Earth Club will meet weekly to discuss environmental issues, and to fashion
modalities for educating fellow students on environmental consciousness and enlisting
their participation in the sustainable environment movement.
The programs I have outlined for the club include:
- Paper Presentations: Students of the clubs will carry out research on environmental issues and make presentations weekly during meetings for the benefit of other students. For example, research on the impact of certain practices, like uncontrolled waste burning, on the environment and human and animal life can be carried out. By allowing students to do research and make presentations, an environmental consciousness is engendered in the researcher and the student population. Students would be mandated to take turns with presentations so that all students are actively involved.
CONCLUSION
The school setup is a viable tool in nurturing future leaders who are more responsible
to their immediate environment in particular and to our planet in general. By
forming an environmental club, the Earth Club in Marymount College Agbor, I intend
to address the challenges of environmental sustainability: a lack of awareness
of the consequences of harmful environmental practices, attitudinal nonchalance
of young people toward the environment, and a lack of youth environmental consciousness
and active participation. With appropriately tailored content, as highlighted
in this essay, we can be certain of raising a group of youth who are willing to
protect our planet.
This contest was part of the Council's second annual SEPTEMBER SUSTAINABILITY MONTH, which kicked off a year of
events and resources on sustainability. Generous funding of the Carnegie
Council's 2010-2011 sustainability programming has been provided by
Hewlett-Packard and by Booz & Company.
