“A Comparative Study of Environmental Awareness among Male and Female Prospective Teachers (B.Ed. Students) on the Basis of Age, Education and Location in Haryana State, India” (original) (raw)

Before the Industrial Revolution, people and animals had to do all of the work whether it was farming or factory. The societies started using machines to provide the energy and efficiency to do most of the work. Industrialization and globalization has created both interrelated and interlinked world generating opportunities and also throwing up challenges because despite their obvious benefits, each wave of technology creates a set of waste previously unknown by humans: toxic waste, radioactive waste, electronic waste, etc. Waste consists of recyclable materials like paper, glass, plastic and metals; toxic substances like pesticide, paints, used medicines and batteries; compostable organic matter like fruits, vegetable and food waste and soiled waste such as disposable syringes, sanitary napkins and blood stained cottons. While there is consensus about the severity of environmental degradation taking place worldwide, there is little consensus about what can, and should be done to avert future environmental catastrophe. Understanding global environmental issues and taking action to confront them are challenges that need to be addressed not only by educators but also by planners, economists, policy makers, natural and social scientists, and the general public. The managing of environmental crisis will depend upon changes in environmental values and lifestyle choices. Individuals may not be aware of common pollutants in their surrounding environment. The problem exists in the fact that individuals may not realize the long-term negative health effects from environmental pollution, nor understand the link between pollutants, nutrition, and disease state. Education should seek to persuade people to adopt a prevention oriented lifestyle by providing them with information and understanding of prevention issues so that they can make their own well-informed decisions, and act on them, assuming responsibility for their own health. After collection of the data, the responses have been scored on a scale of 1 to 5 based on the weight, merit and significance of the answers. The sum of scores from all the questions for each prospective teacher gave the environmental awareness score of the respective respondent. If we as educators want to help children obtain extensive knowledge of the environment and problems, our prospective teachers must know more than the students. In the case of this study, the researcher was particularly interested to gain an understanding of what the prospective teachers have been doing in terms of raising awareness of chemicals and their hazardous nature in the Haryana State. Study was done to measure the effects of age, education and location on environmental awareness of prospective teachers i.e. B.Ed. students.