An Initial Study Of Experience And Inspiration Of Environmental Education About Elementary And High Schools In US.

Since 20 century, the scientific technology of the world has been making great progress. It has greatly enriched the material wealth of people, enhanced the living standard of people and promoted the advancement of the society. However the extensive use of scientific technology has brought serious environmental issues to the mankind in the same time, such as the waste of resources, the exhaustion of energy, the loss of water and erosion of soil, the greenhouse effect, the environmental pollution of the earth and so on, which made people in the world have to face the living crisis that they had never met. Therefore it has attracted the people 's attention, how to make mankind agree with environment and let the protection of environment harmony with the progress of economy. Because of its effective, protracted and extensive nature, education takes the responsibility of training the citizens to have the correct consciousness and value outlook on environment and making people beyond the harmful act habits to the environment and the ecological balance. Under the condition of caring about environmental quality, advocating protection and improvement of environment throughout the world, international organizations, state governments, educational world and environmental circles began to attach importance to the Environmental Education, which has developed quickly. As the very important stage to form act habits and characters of people, the elementary and high schools especially have received much attention, whose Environmental Education becomes the important part in this field.United States is the earliest nation carrying out the Environmental Education all over the world. It set up the earliest Act of Environmental Education. After tens of years' development, the lever of its Environmental Education has become high, the part of elementary and high schools also grows vigorously and gathers many educational experiences. However the development of Environmental Education in our country doesn't meet our demand, because it began much later. From the point of using and studying the experience, this paper introduces and summarizes the main experience of Environmental Education about elementary and high schools in US. What's more it analyses the causes from different social points in order to combine the actual condition of our country and give some advices to the development of Environmental Education about elementary and high schools inChina.This paper has four parts. The first explains why to do the research, introduces the researching situation of this issue in homeland and overseas and defines the word "Environmental Education". The second part firstly introduces the history of Environmental Education in US., then explains experiential details from several points including relative laws, curriculum model, teaching methods, teachers training, irregular channels of education and the theory study of Environmental Education. The third part mainly analyzes the causes making the elementary and high schools of US gather the experience of EE. It includes the environmental condition of US., strong economic power, clear outlook of law, a variety of cultural and educational traditions and advanced science and technology. On the ground of the above parts and the shortcomings of EE in our country, the forth part gives some advices to improve and develop Environmental Education about elementary and high schools in future.