Training Children Environmentalists in Africa: The Learning by Drama Method

Abstract

The world's attention has been drawn towards the urgent need for the preservation and maintenance of the environment as it is faced with the daunting phenomena called Global Warming and Environmental Degradation. The urgency for dealing with this situation is very much needed in Africa. This recent global challenge demands that everybody has to work together in checking the looming and preventable environmental disaster. In this light therefore, this paper attempts to bring to the fore some potentials that children as integral part of African society have to become environmentalists for the benefit of the present and future environmental preservation and development. Involving African children in environmental protection and development projects is a mission towards ensuring environmental development and sustainability. This paper frowns at the belief that African children are minors and therefore, should be left out of what is termed by adults as ‘serious issues’. It argues that African children are symbols of the future in every society; therefore, any society that leaves them out of development issues is visionless. The germane concern of this paper is to explicate the pedagogy of how African children can be factored into veritable tools for environmental maintenance and sustainability via the learning by drama approach of Theatre for Development. One major finding in this research is that children can learn, understand, and appreciate intellectual issues concerning their environment, its preservation and protection. Children also demonstrated their potentials to impart knowledge about their environment to other children.

Keywords

• Sustainable
• Environment
• Degradation
• Children
• Drama
• Environmentalist
• Preservation
• Africa

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