A MEMÓRIA DOS IDOSOS NA EDUCAÇÃO AMBIENTAL EM CONTEXTO ESCOLAR PONTA GROSSA

Abstract

This research is based on the principles that the environmental education (EE) must be a practice adopted by all citizens and that the memory of the elderly has fundamental importance in this educational method. Theoretically, we compare the paradigm of scientific rationality and technology, which unifies and elect the experts in knowledge. In short time, we ask: in what conditions are the elderly considered as subjects of EE? What is the contribution of change and environmental knowledge obtained in the elderly's memories for EE? What are the teaching-learning strategies that contribute to the integration of agent elderly in EE in school contexts? To answer these issues, we established the following general goal: to research the possibilities for integration of the elderly as environmental educators of children and young people. Our work was also guided by some specific goals: describe conditions for integration of the elderly as subjects of EE from their memories about the environmental changes; discuss the environmental changes caused in human actions, using time as part of EE; report contributions brought by environmental mapping that resulted from the application of oral history in situations of EE. The methodology was qualitative, with two stages to obtain the information: the first consisted of interviews of open character, made with the elderly to guide the intergenerational meetings, in the second stage meetings were held between senior citizens and students, which occurred in two moments. The first meeting happened in 2005, with two classes of fifth graders of elementary school, and in 2006 with the sixth graders. Besides the interviews obtained in the meetings, we counted on:questionnaires answered by students, post-meeting interviews with the elderly and educational interview with the coordinators. Among the results we achieved it is the value given to the elderly by the students and the use of their memories as a strategy for teaching and learning in EE and recognition, by the elderly, of their capacity to act as environmental educators subjects who can establish links between their knowledge and scientific knowledge. The meetings provided the students a greater understanding of environmental changes in the community and led them associate environmental problems to the increase of social inequalities, breaking the paradigm that human beings and nature are separated. Through this research, we have broken with a practice in EE- the children 'educating' the adults - and we began to understand the possibilities of entering the elderly as environmental educators from their memories.