Early Education on Environmental Sustainability

Running head: EARLY EDUCATION ON ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY
EARLY EDUCATION ON ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY

1EARLY EDUCATION ON ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY
Part A: Past experiences
‘Animals too have emotions’
The experience that I would like to share regarding my views of the environment is from
my early days when I was in just eight years old. I used to live with my parents at a small
country town in Victoria, Australia. My father was a farmer and my mother used to assist him in
the farm we had. Cattle rearing were one of the most important parts of my father’s job. In our
farm, we used to have variety of animals from dogs to cats, hens, ducks, cows and even horses.
Apart from that, the open spaces around our house with vegetable and fruit gardens used to be
my best place for playing, enjoying and relaxing. I had no siblings and hence, the animals and
the trees used to be my best friends. I was in love with the beauty and grandeur of nature and in
awe of the emotions, the animals used to show. These early years largely shaped my view of the
environment. However, when I gradually grew up and realized that my own father was
slaughtering the hens and cows at our own house, I was devastated and disillusioned. When I
was younger, I did not have any idea that the meat I ate, came from the merciless killing of the
animals.
One day I found that one of the cows with which I had a strong bond was being
slaughtered for beef and I could not be witness to that. I shouted my throat out to stop father
from killing her but he did not. My mother later tried to console me saying it is the rule of nature
but it did not help. After that incident, I used to remember those eyes of my cow when she was
being slaughtered and it used to keep me awake at nights. I decided that I would never ever eat
meat again. When I was 15, I moved to high school and chose environmental studies as my
subject. During one of the projects assigned by our teacher, we had to visit a farm in Queensland

2EARLY EDUCATION ON ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY
and study the impact of land mining and beef cattle farming on our environment. The project, I
must say, turned my life around as it was that moment when I decided that I would pursue
teaching career specializing in socio-ecology. I even made the decision that I would take my
students to cattle farms and let them see the emotions that these animals have by looking into
their eyes. I am now an early educator teaching young students about the importance of saving
animal life and the environment. I also work as an animal rights activists and I am working on
my book titled Animals too have Emotions.
Part B: Analysis of memory
The experience that I have shared has largely influenced my decision to become an
environmental teacher. In shaping my experience, my family had a huge role to play apart from
my teachers and peers. In addition, I must include that my society and community has also
contributed to my experience. As I have mentioned, my family has been the biggest influence in
my experience about the environment and its sustainability. They were the first who made me
realize that animals also possess emotions and that nature is the best gift humans could have.
Growing up amidst the trees and animals made me realize the importance of having a clean and
pure environment. My family was also the one that made me take up the environmental
sustainability issue seriously after the incident that I had described earlier. In school, my teachers
helped me be closer to the environment and learn in deep about the things that I could do to
protect it.
Further, I must include that the environmental issues that I saw during my experience as a
child and as a teenager have not been addressed correctly in my country as and the world as well.
Environmental sustainability, I found, rarely included the lives of animals. Most interventions