Abstract
The Japanese Society for Environmental Education may consider pollution education as a sort of “demon's gate” (i.e. something to be avoided). The actual practice of pollution education falls under the category of adult education/social education, distinct from formal school education. Keeping in mind pollution education is the origin of Japanese environmental education and that it has evolved into local/community-building studies, we may reevaluate its “unlucky” status as, rather, a fortunate one. The establishment of the Japanese Society for Environmental Education (JSEE) in 1990 coincided with a turning point at the teacher-based, ground level of formal school education, whereby “pollution” moved toward “environmental” education. By the 1990s, pollution education was no longer a subject of interest for JSEE members. Assuming pollution education is essential to our view of local/community-building education, there are three cases in point that environmental education should take from pollution education: 1. The scientific nature of pollution education 2. The role of teachers in pollution education 3. The “post-pollution education” study of new community movements As environmental education's target issues of nature conservation and maintenance have become global environmental problems, the narrow sense of what constitutes environmental education expands to include the concept of education for sustainable development (ESD), encompassing development and poverty issues. Environmental education's grasp of the issues as an unambiguous human-to-nature relationship must shift to one that accounts for human-to-human and human-to-society (community) relationships. Keeping in mind the potential of pollution education from a community-building education standpoint, we should examine local community movements and pollution education in tandem.
