|
Importance of Geoscience education in schools particularly in developing countries like Nepal is grossly underestimated. To mitigate the effects of many types of natural disasters ensuing from geological and hydro-meteorological processes such as earthquakes and tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, landslides, debrisflows, floods and draught, cyclones etc; and related environmental issues such as global warming, effects of soil erosion and deforestation etc needs a better understanding of earthscience subjects by common people. This can be only achieved if geoscience education gets adequate emphasis at the school level. The watershed management, groundwater and surface water pollution control, water resources management, exploitation of mineral resources and fossil fuels, sustainable infrastructure development, etc need input from earthscience fields. In the 21st century with the explosion of population the stress on earth's environment is going to its limit resulting into the extreme pressure on its natural resources. The global warming is going to bring larger number of world population with ever increasing frequency and severity of the natural disasters. Adequate earthscience education in schools will greatly help in mitigation of these already serious problems of the world. A well informed society on these issues certainly can take more sensible decisions on these matters.
Nepal's school curriculum (I to X grade) has very limited content of earthscience topics. They are inadequate, incorrect text in most cases and due to lack of trained earthscience teachers, invariably the topics are not taught in the class. There are no earthscience courses in XI and XII grades. Out of over nearly three hundred thousand teaches in the government schools of Nepal, there are only a handful of teachers graduated in earthscience. Therefore, training of science teachers will greatly help better teaching of earthscience in schools. In this regard, Tri-Chandra Campus, Tribhuvan University has conducted three such trainings to school teachers with the help of UNESCO and local support and has become a very successful program. Lack of funds has hampered the training on a regular basis. A three-week training including both theory and practical classes to science and geography teachers with graduate degrees is given at the department of geology. Field training of 2-3 days is also given to acquaint them with various geological processes and identification of rocks and minerals. During the field work, the teachers also collect a set of rocks and minerals for practical classes in their respective schools. For the training to become sustainable, the education ministry should provide fund on a regular basis to geoscience departments for the trainings.
|
