Glynne Mackey
Glynne Mackey at Totaranui
Lecturer, College of Education
Should our generation ultimately be successful in generating a shift of consciousness with regard to our relationship with the earth, it will be the children growing up now who will require the physical and mental capabilities to implement our vision.
As an educator specialising in Early Childhood Education (ECE), Glynne Mackey understands the importance of educating young children about sustainable living. Glynne has been involved in teaching ECE at a tertiary level since 1990, when there was a marked increase in demand for qualified teachers. Almost twenty years later, qualifications are required at most ECE centres, and by 2012, all early childhood teachers will need to be qualified.
Glynne has taught environmental education to ECE student teachers since the mid 1990’s. Previously, it has been taught as an option, but in 2009, it is a required course for third year students. Glynne believes that environmental education is integral to a child’s exploratory nature, and as such, learning is encouraged through tactile play.
“I don’t see it as science”, she says. “I see it as connection with the environment and connection with nature, so it is really around children exploring their relationships with nature and with people.”
Infants, toddlers and young children are instinctively drawn to nature. For a three year old, watching a row of ants march across a pathway is exciting. Whereas their older brothers and sisters might prefer to be educated about nature via a screen, for young children, their immediate surroundings are already an endless series of miracles. Thus, teaching the value of sustainability to children at this age can be a thoroughly rewarding experience.
Glynne says that this age group are particularly important to the community, and as such, have a lot to contribute. “In ECE, we see children as not becoming a part of a community, but as actually being part of the community. They are participants, and they will do what they can at that particular time of their lives.
“There are ways in which you can look at something in a small and practical way with children. They don’t have to be weighted with the huge issues of global warming necessarily, but can understand that this particular action will mean that our world is going to be a better place. You can bring it down to this level.”
In terms of learning, children this age may well be ‘sponges’, but Glynne says that they also have a lot to teach adults. “Most parents are pretty keen to fall into line if their three or four year old says ‘Mummy, you’re not supposed to throw that out’ or ‘you’re not supposed to use plastic wrapping on the sandwiches.’”
Glynne has found that students enrolled in ECE have a wider range of ages than most courses of study, and that there is also a higher average age. Thus, many are well informed, and for some, sustainability is already a part of their thinking.
“Our students have got some great things to contribute”, she says. “Some of them are supplying us with resources that they’ve come across, like a good website. It’s not like a course where they just come to class, maybe do a few readings, and churn out an assignment.”
“In our first session we look at what we might call our ecological identity and talk about a place that’s special to us, and usually that place is related to holidays – all the family being together, relaxed.” For many students this place is a beach, or a river, or a campsite: “some sort of experience where life was slower, and life was meaningful because you had time with your family and you weren’t involved with a routine around work or school”.
Glynne notes that although sustainability is about “our interaction with nature, or the non-human environment”, the course also looks “very closely at social justice areas, which is also about sustainability”. As such, the students who are learning how to teach sustainability to children are encouraged to embrace the philosophy in their own lifestyles.
“We do talk a lot about experiential and transformative education”, says Glynne. For those unfamiliar with the term, transformative education requires changes to behaviour on a long term basis. In their first assessment, students are asked to take transformative action and present a rationale about why the area they have chosen to focus on is important. “So this is not just one day that they might decide to do something”, she says.
For Glynne, many of the practices associated with sustainable living have long been a part of her lifestyle, and she tells me that when her own family were young, she sewed and mended, and even remembers unpicking old jerseys to knit up into something else (if you’re going to try this yourself, plain knitted items are the easiest to unpick).
She was also an early recycler, sorting her waste into piles that could be recycled at the refuse stations. “I can remember before the green bin recycling came in, my garage was always full of things to go to be recycled”, she says.
More recently, reducing car use has become a priority, and Glynne either takes the Orbiter bus home, or works late so that she can ride share with her husband. “I’m very conscious of planning trips. I like to read on the bus and then I get my exercise by walking up the hill at the other end.”
Glynne confesses to having had a “wee lapse with junk mail” since she shifted house, but she tells me that she composts, plants native trees, is very conscious of energy use, uses vinegar to clean, and likes to “make things last”. She notes that some young people have begun to question the habits of the older generations, and believes it is important for her generation to set an example.
“I have heard from other academics that there is this feeling in some areas that the younger generation are saying to the older: ‘Well you’ve had all your cars. You’ve had your boats and you’ve lived the good life, so why can’t we? And now you’re telling us to pull in our horns and to be more caring of the environment.’ So they are looking at what the next generation have actually done.”
Glynne, by teaching the mix of students who will educate our youngest members of society, is contributing in the drive towards sustainability in ways that are likely to have continuing effects for many generations to come.
Profile by Sharon McIver