ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE : FIELD TRIP 251
- Environment Service Project
The pupils for civic welfare involving individual activity of an integrated mental, physical,
emotional can take up Environment Service projects and spiritual nature, Service-projects
are of educational value to the pupil as well as to society.
Examples of Service Projects
- Social service among the backward population of the town. This includes cleanliness,
‘anti-mosquito campaigns, bathing young children, attending on the sick. - School labour service being organized on special occasions. These may be Republic
day, Independence Day, Gandhi Jayanti and Gandhiji’s Death Anniversary. Activities
like planting of trees, road repairs and erection of platforms, cleaning of drains,
digging of manure pits and drain, may be taken up. - Animal welfare. This may be done through provision of water facilities, fodder and
medical aid. - Beautification of villages. This may be done through’ planting of trees, laying out
of avenues, clearing up of public paces like streets, temples, drains, etc. - Relief Parties. Relief parties consisting of teachers and pupils may go out in the
service of the Environment at times of natural emergencies such as floods, epidemics,
fire, earthquakes, etc., They may leave their classrooms to plant trees in out-of the
way places of the Environment. They may help the Environment on fairs, festivals,
and elections. They may undertake anti-mosquito campaigns, attend the sick, etc.,
or work on fund raising for the welfare of the poor.
Advantages of Environment Service Projects
- They lift education from the dull routine of leading each generation in the footsteps
of its predecessor, to earnest yet joyous adventures in cooperative welfare. - They help in raising the status of the pupils. Their all-round growth and development
is stimulated. Service projects help in making world citizens out of provincial
youngsters because they lift the imagination from personal matters of the moment
of the enduring life concerns of all peoples everywhere. - Children have a hunger for participation, which may be fed by experience.
Schoolroom walls should disappear. The school and Environment must combine to
meet the challenges of the crises that may beset the Environment so often.
Precautions in Use of Environment Projects
- Service projects undertaken by the school should not be too complex, costly,
dangerous, involved or delicate. These should be discovered through Environment
surveys and other informational learning activities. - Education weeks, clean-up weeks and youth weeks, projects in public safety, civil
beauty, health, agricultural and industrial improvement, local history and protection
of resources are some of the projects through which the pupils and Environment
can mutually benefit. - Teachers of foresight and patience shall do much to provide functional, realistic
and democratic education through such Environment service programmers.