Relationship Between Environmental Awareness And Intellectual Development Of School Children

This paper studies the environmental awareness of primary school students from two public schools in urban areas with different socioeconomic conditions in the city of São Carlos, São Paulo, Brazil. One hundred students of ages between 6 and 16 were selected for the investigation employing various tests. The students were submitted to tests based on symbolic representations to determine their awareness of environmental responsibilities. The context of a watershed and water pollution was chosen for preparation of the symbolic representations. Piagetian tests were also applied to determine intellectual development of the children and to establish its relationship to their moral development. The results show that children below age 11, while undergoing intellectual development, show little awareness of environmental norms. Large majority of children above 11 present heteronomous moral attitudes in obedience to prescribed norms. No case of autonomous moral development as related to environmental questions was observed in the survey sample. It is hoped that the results obtained in this study are useful in developing ideas for environmental education of school children as well as in planning environmental science courses for engineering degree students.