One of the great challenges today is the search for new socio-educational paradigms; archetypes capable of favoring a joint participation that allows all people to contribute to a better quality of life for all. Indeed, the greening of the school should be, today, a core point towards which to direct the course.
In recent decades, mainly experiences developed in Anglo-Saxon and Central European countries, document the benefits for children of ecologically diverse school spaces, especially those educational territories that include spontaneous playgrounds, habitats for wildlife, hiking trails, environmental interpretation, but also educational centers that have transformed their environments, Raised gardens of diverse nature, orchards, small forests, among other actions.
Children who have the opportunity to develop in school areas with scenarios such as those described, are more physically active, more aware of who they are, of their eating processes, more respectful and empathetic with each other and more creative. Similarly, the greening of school territories results in greater involvement of adults and other members of the educational community, generating learning spaces in which the circulation of knowledge has a transversal and democratic perspective.
What these experiences, therefore, reveal to us, is that a greener school offers a greater range of learning possibilities, promoting, at the same time, inclusion, the global development of our capacities, as well as the promotion of social skills that are so dejected by this time.
Another positive impact of green school grounds is on their teachers. Research shows that teachers express a renewed enthusiasm for teaching, are awakened in them greater pleasurable emotions and the passion for teaching is accentuated. At a time of increasing teacher burnout, the impact of green schools and outdoor education on teachers should not be underestimated. They also deserve the restorative benefits of an eco-school.
This new paradigm requires a socio-educational exercise of collective responsibilities and in this act the rights of a citizenship that is actively incorporated into the decision-making process that allows opening new spaces in which the protagonists are the change and transformation of people from an ethical and environmental level must be claimed.
Finally, advocating a critical formation of thought that allows us to approach reality with a questioning of the prevailing values, in order to seek creative and possible answers to a new educational reality to the existing one, must be an imperative that we cannot and must not renounce. Our own survival demands it.
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The content expressed in this opinion column is the sole responsibility of its author, and does not necessarily reflect the editorial line or position of El Mostrador.
