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A former UN Secretary-General, Ban emphasizes the importance of ecological Education at Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education.

Cho Hee-yeon (Superintendent of Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education, Korea) says, “Need a future curriculum incorporating ecological education.”

The Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education

On July 22nd, The Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education will host the Ecological Education Transition Forum and Ban Ki-moon, Chairman of National Climate Environment Conference for the fine dust problem (Former UN Secretary-General), will emphasize the importance of ecological education at school. Participating experts suggest that we need ‘a new environmental curriculum’ that integrates ecological education distributed in society, science, and so on. According to the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education on the 21st, Chairman Ban will be a keynote speaker for ‘the 2nd Ecological transformation Education Forum” held at Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education.

The main theme of the forum

The theme of the forum is ‘the development of school curriculum to strengthen environmental education.’ The forum is going to be held in hybrid style with online and on-site simultaneously. It is also going to be lively broadcasting through the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education’s Facebook page. Chairman Ban encourages the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education’s mid- to long-term plan for ecological transformation and emphasizes the importance of education in response to climate crisis. Chairman Ban met with Prime Minister Yoo Eun-hye for Social Affairs and Minister of Education in December of last year and proposed to systematize environmental education with including how to deal with climate change and fine dust in the regular curriculum and strengthening teacher expertise.

recently established a mid-to-long-term development plan for ecological transition

The Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education has recently established a mid-to-long-term development plan for ecological transition, such as strengthening school’s environmental education and introducing a vegetarian meal option and is promoting it till 2024. This forum seeks a direction for restructuring the curriculum which can strengthen the sensitivity in climate change, environment issues and ecological transition at school in different levels complying with the plan. Particularly, the forum will focus on the proposal that suggests reorganizing the ecological curriculum with recognizing the lack of numbers of the teachers who can teach the ecological curriculum.

curriculum for environmental education

Lee Sun-kyung, chairman of the Korean Committee for Sustainable Development at UNESCO (Professor of Cheongju National University of Education), who is in charge of the presentation, will present the result of her recent analysis in the environmental education in the curriculum which was revised in 2015. It also suggests that a new integrated ‘environmental education’ curriculum and programs need to be created. The environmental subjects are selected as general topics in the curriculum, and middle and high schools can adopt them as an elective subject. However, it pointed out that there are few schools that are actually adopted the curriculum, and there is no systematic education with not equipping teachers who can teach in environmental issues.

Cho Hee-yeon, a superintendent of Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education

Following discussion with Cho Hee-yeon, a superintendent of Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education, also proposes a plan to integrate environmental contents such as climate change issue and ecological transition into the ‘future subject.’ In the discussion, Ahn Byung-ok, chairman of the National Climate Environment Conference (former vice minister of the Ministry of Environment), Lee Soo-jong, a science teacher in Seoul, and Dr. Ji-hye Shin, a member of the School Fine Dust Professional Support Group, School Health Promotion Agency in Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education will join together.

They will introduce the enhanced plan for environmental education proposed by the National Climate and Environment Conference to the ministry of education, explain policy directions, and support the ecological education plan to be established in the school.

The original article’s link is here.

EcoCiv Korea has been working with Cho Hee-yeon (Superintendent of Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education, Korea) in developing a curriculum for ecological transition in education of Seoul. We will continue to work in the path with Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education.

This article is translated by Heeyoung Jung, staff of EcoCiv Korea and edited by Dongwoo Lee, Director of EcoCiv Korea.