To Educate Environmentally Conscious Generation

Being a large city St. Petersburg has got a lot of ecological and social problems. To shape the future of our environment right now we need to bring up a new generation of environmentally conscious citizens. A unique structure called Complex training-research expedition of the schoolchildren of St. Petersburg "ECO-21" is just created.

The project represents an original model of continuous ecological education closely connected to state system of science education. The main object of the expedition is to form an ecological outlook of the schoolboys on the basis of their research activity. Experienced researchers from the Universities of St. Petersburg teach young people a lot of techniques of studying the environment but their main task is to form an appropriate approach of children towards environment, to make them having civil responsibility for the future of their city.

The expedition has two main tasks. First – social, that means cultivating among youth civil responsibility and ecological outlook, second – environmental as the researches of pupils under the guidance of professionals are of big interest for ecological institutions and organisations. In years 1996-1999 the expedition has collected and analysed a lot of objective data in the Valdai National Park, the map of landscapes of the preserve was made, two rare plants from the Red Book were found, a social profile of the territory was described. The expedition also provides a wonderful intellectual summer rest for children.

Today the pupils work on seven scientific directions: geological botany, geology, cartography, hydrology, hydrochemistry, sociology, and ethnic ecology. Field researches take up to one month. After the field researches members of the expedition process the data and write a scientific report, which then is defended at the open session of the Russian Geographical Society. On the basis of this report the schoolchildren write their own articles and projects to participate on every possible competitions and contests.

Especially important for the socialising of a person appear to be the two directions of research: sociological monitoring of studied territory and ethno-ecological researches on location. Here the pupils learn to understand opinions of different people of various social positions, to analyse them from ecological point of view. The directions of research for years 2001-2002 are studying the role of St. Petersburg in life of Valdai region (Valdai National Park is located about 400 km. from St. Petersburg, most of summer population here are citizens of St. Petersburg) and development of a new direction of researches – gender ecology.