Education for sustainable development - Lapus Advocates

Department of Education (DepEd) Secretary Jesli Lapus today cited the urgency of tapping both formal and informal learning systems in an effort to incorporate sustainable development and environment education in the Philippine public school curriculum.

In the Consultative Workshop on EFA Towards Sustainable Development at Club Filipino, San Juan, the Education Chief challenged local policy-makers and officials to make this Decade of Education for Sustainable Development meaningful to all.

Lapus, who is also the National Education for All (EFA) Committee Chair, said that "DepEd has directed its efforts towards the provision of basic learning tools which include care of the environment for sustainable development. Yet more needs to be done."

The United Nations – Decade of Education for Sustainable Development is a vast undertaking that requires involvement of all education stakeholders in government, civil society, educational institutions, and private organizations.

Teacher training in the areas of environment education that draws on local inputs, contexts, and values, as mentioned by Lapus, will be "strategic to meeting our Education for Sustainable Development goals."

The workshop sought to provide a platform for creating awareness of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) as a development strategy, and discuss ESD performance indicators. It also featured a discussion on the definition of ESD and how its accomplishments are measured by the Asia Pacific ESD Performance Indicators.

Further, Lapus said that "we education stakeholders have to ensure that sustainable development – which is the watchword of the century - should be well incorporated in the lessons and values we teach our children. They have to learn early on that nature is finite and there's a lot of catching up to do in terms of reviving the environment."

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