Although students from disadvantaged areas report a slightly lower level of overall environmental knowledge ("a lot" and "a fair amount" combined) than students from non-disadvantaged areas (56% vs. 63%), the fact that over half of the students from disadvantaged areas consider themselves knowledgeable is encouraging, given the other concerns and priorities in their lives.
There are no large differences for reported knowledge among the various grade groupings of students from disadvantaged areas. For example, by grade among students from disadvantaged areas, highest among ninth and tenth graders (60%) and lowest among fourth and fifth graders (54%). Among students from non-disadvantaged areas, however, grade is a distinguishing factor: 70% of non-disadvantaged students in grades 6 through 8 say they know a lot or a fair amount about the environment, a figure that drops to 65% of non-disadvantaged students in grades 9 and 10, 58% of those in grade 4 and 5 and 56% of those in grades 11 and 12.
Knowledge about environmental issues and problems is consistent across the four regions of the country and similar in urban and rural areas for both disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged students.
There appears to be a strong correlation between overall environmental knowledge and environmental education in school, as shown in the table titled "General Knowledge of the Environment, by Amount Learned in School." Thus, students from disadvantaged areas who say they are learning "a lot" about the environment in school, are likely to also report they are leaning "a lot" about the environment in school (23% answered "a lot" for both questions). On the other hand, just 8% of those who are learning "only a little/practically nothing" about the environment in school say they know "a lot" about the environment in general. The same pattern is true of students from non-disadvantaged areas: 25% who are learning "a lot" about the environment in school also say they know "a lot" about the environment in general, while 13% of those who are learning "only a little/practically nothing" about the environment in school also claim to know "a lot" about the environment in general.
Turning again to the path analysis (described in-depth in Appendix B), we hypothesized that demographic characteristics would have an effect on overall environmental knowledge. While the four general regions of the country and a studentÕs urban / suburban / rural background do not significantly influence environmental knowledge, disadvantaged / non-disadvantaged status does have implications. In particular, students from disadvantaged areas appear to have significantly less environmental knowledge than students from non-disadvantaged areas.
B. Estimation of Adult's Environmental Knowledge
The level of environmental knowledge young people say they personally have and the environmental knowledge they attribute to parents and other adults in the household is remarkably similar. Accordingly, as 56% of students from disadvantaged areas say they know either a lot or a fair amount about the environment, 61% of disadvantaged students say their parents know either a lot or a fair amount about environmental issues and problems. The same is true among students from non-disadvantaged areas: 63% report that both they and their parents know either "a lot" or "a fair amount" about the environment.
The similarity between felt environmental knowledge of young people and the knowledge they attribute to their parents probably indicates that some of the environmental knowledge reported by young people was learned at home, from their parents. Students from disadvantaged areas who report they themselves know "a lot" or "a fair amount" about the environment appear to credit their parents with greater levels of environmental knowledge (73%) than do youth who report knowing "only a little/practically nothing" on the subject (50%). (Among non-disadvantaged youth, the results are similar: 76% versus 48%.) This trend is also to some extent supported by data concerning young peopleÕs current sources of environmental information, which places "the family" fourth after television, school and newspapers (see Chapter 4, Section A: Sources of Environmental Information). Alternately, these results could also suggest that students who do not currently know much about the environment are unlikely to turn to their parents as a source of further environmental education, since they do not perceive that their parents are particularly more knowledgeable than they are, thereby suggesting the need for other sources of information and education.
One hypothetical relationship examined in the path analysis was between the amount of environmental knowledge students attribute to their parents and a studentÕs own self-reported environmental knowledge. The path analysis indicated a strong, highly significant positive relationship between these two variables, as predicted.
C. Learning About the Environment in School
Along with the home and the media, school is a major influence and shaper of the opinions and attitudes of young people. How much do students feel they learn about the environment in school, and in what types of classes does that learning take place? First, students were asked to think about all of their classes and to say whether they were learning a lot, a fair amount, only a little or practically nothing about the environment in school. Interestingly, students from disadvantaged areas report learning more about the environment in school than non-disadvantaged students, 48% versus 38%.
Still, large numbers of students from both disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged areas report learning "only a little/practically nothing" (47% and 58% respectively) about environmental issues in class. In other words, approximately half of all students do NOT feel that school contributes significantly to their environmental education.
Grade level again is a key to understanding the results. Examining the combined "a lot" and "a fair amount" scores, formal classroom education about environmental issues drops dramatically as schooling increases, from three-quarters of fourth and fifth graders from disadvantaged areas to under a third of those in ninth grade or beyond. (The same pattern is true for students from non-disadvantaged areas.) This trend may be due to a changing curriculum in school as young people get older, or perhaps to a broader knowledge through experience of the natural world among older children. Or, it may reflect the fact that environmental education is just beginning to be introduced into schools and that younger children are benefiting more from this trend than older children.
As with parental environmental knowledge, the path analysis demonstrates that the amount of learning about the environment in school influences overall environmental knowledge (Appendix B). This relationship, while not as strong as that between parental environmental knowledge and self-reported knowledge, is statistically significant and supportive of the hypothesis that environmental education in school does influence overall environmental knowledge. Increasing the former, then, should lead to some increase in the latter.
Beyond the overall quantity of environmental education in school, students from disadvantaged areas were asked to name the various ways they have learned about the environment in school, as well as the one method they consider the most effective method. (These questions were not asked of students from non-disadvantaged areas.) The vast majority of these students say that a regular science class is one of the ways they have learned about the environment in school. This is also far and away the number one way students feel would be effective in their learning about the environment.
Field trips to museums, parks or zoos place a distant second followed closely by some other class such as English or Social Studies. Relatively few students from disadvantaged areas have taken a special class about the environment or joined a club that meets during or after school. Although few students have experienced or been part of a special environmental class or group, these methods are perhaps the keys to greater opportunity, education and involvement among students from disadvantaged areas, as they are ways that students can learn or work with their peers to share and increase environmental knowledge.
Just as they reported learning the most about the environment in school, the youngest students are the most likely to name most of these eight methods as a way they have learned about the environment in school. Once again, this suggests either that many schools are already encouraging and giving their youngest pupils an opportunity to learn about the environment, a trend exhibited in the amount various groups are learning about the environment, or older students do not feel they are learning from the programs being offered to them to the same degree that younger students do.
Whether a disadvantaged student is from an urban or rural location also affects to some degree the means of environmental education used in school. Students in rural areas are more likely than their urban peers to report learning about the environment in regular science class (78% vs. 71%), to participate in recycling or clean-up programs with their school (28% vs. 22%) or to learn about the environment in a geography class (26% vs. 20%). Urban students, however, are somewhat more likely to say they have gone on a field trip to a museum or park (46% vs. 39%) or to have been to an assembly regarding the environment (27% vs. 22%).
As might be expected, disadvantaged students who feel they are learning "a lot" about the environment in school are more likely to report having had each of these opportunities than those who report learning "only a little/practically nothing" on the subject at school.
D. Specific Issues American Students Know Most About and Want to Learn More About
Regardless of where they gather their knowledge of the environment, whether from home, from school, or from both places, young people perceive themselves as better educated about some environmental issues than they are about others. Students from both disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged areas were asked which of nineteen environmental issues they feel they know the most about. (These are the same issues about which students were previously asked their concern, see Chapter One, Section C.)
Air pollution and too little recycling are the two issues young people say they know the most about. A second tier of issues students know the most about includes endangered animals, plants, insects, damage to the ozone layer, littering of trash and garbage, and destruction of the rainforest. A third tier of issues includes pollution of lakes, rivers, streams, polluted ocean waters and unsafe beaches and shortages of good drinking water.
Only two issues vary significantly among disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged students: destruction of the rainforest and shortages of good drinking water. Greater numbers of students from non-disadvantaged areas (33%) than students from disadvantaged areas (22%) say destruction of the rainforest is one of the issues they know the most about, while the opposite holds true for shortages of good drinking water, cited by 16% of disadvantaged students and 10% of non-disadvantaged students.
Unlike the reasons for protecting the environment, water and reducing litter (where girls favored the "larger picture" and boys the "here and now"), when it comes to current knowledge of specific environmental issues, the attitudes of girls and boys are reversed. Among students from disadvantaged areas, more girls than boys say the lack of recycling is one of the issues they know the most about, by a 34% to 25% margin. The same holds true for littering of trash and garbage (25% among girls; 19% among boys). Boys, on the other hand, are more likely than girls to claim destruction of the rainforest (27% vs. 18%) as an issue about which they know the most, supporting an earlier result that indicated boys are more concerned about the destruction of the rainforest than are girls. (Girls, however, were not especially more likely than boys to be concerned about the recycling and trash issues.) The same gender differences hold true for students from non-disadvantaged areas for these issues Ñ recycling, littering, and destruction of the rainforest Ñ with the addition of endangered species as an issue about which more girls than boys feel knowledgeable. In other words, girls tend to know more than boys about issues affecting the "here and now." There are no outstanding results by grade, region or urbanicity among students from disadvantaged areas.
Not only were young people asked which two or three issues from the list of 19 they know most about, they were also asked which two or three of those same issues they would most like to learn more about. Though the rank order differs somewhat, the same four issues are the top priorities students from disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged areas say they want to learn more about: damage to the ozone layer, destruction of rainforests, global warming and endangered plants, animals, insects.
The desire to learn more about the rainforest is noteworthy. While this figure is fairly similar among students in non-disadvantaged (34%) and disadvantaged (30%) areas, it is very different from current knowledge of the issue, which was significantly higher among students from non-disadvantaged areas (33%) than among students from disadvantaged areas (22%).
The seriousness attributed to various environmental problems is often linked to the desire for further knowledge of those same environmental problems. As seen in Appendix B, considering an environmental problem serious generally translates into the desire for further knowledge about the environment. This was true for 16 of the 19 problems asked about. There is a positive relationship between these two variables. Thus we find support for the hypothesis that considering an environmental problem "serious" leads to the desire for further knowledge.
A related hypothesis, that the desire for further knowledge of various environmental issues would lead to greater overall environmental knowledge, as shown in Appendix B, does not prove true. While there is a positive relationship between these two variables for 10 of the 19 issues, in no case is the relationship statistically significant. In other words, the hypothesis is not supported by this cross-sectional data.
Interest in learning more about these issues varies little by gender or region among students from disadvantaged areas.
Among students from both disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged areas, there are several issues where interest in learning more far exceeds current knowledge, as well as issues for which current knowledge far exceeds the desire to learn more. Some of these issues may be considered "mature issues," meaning youth and the public as a whole have had the opportunity to become accustomed to them. Mature issues include recycling, litter and air pollution, where the differences between current and desired knowledge indicate that students feel they know enough already, and relatively few want to learn more (thus the "+" in the "Difference" in the adjoining table). For "emerging issues," including global warming, acid rain and destruction of wetlands, the differences indicate that students want to know more than they know now (thus the "-" in the "Difference" column in the adjoining table). These are clearly issues for educators and policymakers to focus on when planning environmental education programs for young people today.
A few issues are high in terms of both current knowledge and interest in knowing more. These include: endangered plants, animals and insects; damage to the ozone layer; and destruction of the rainforest. These may also be issues future efforts should address.