The social mapping in school environments - seeking a critical environmental education

Abstract

The environmental education ensures space in Brazilian schools as an important proposal to discuss the environmental problems, however, usually has a conservative perspective and to be disconnected from local realities. Therefore, the article aims to analyse the environmental education taught in school environments in the Diamantina County, Minas Gerais State (Brazil), in order to update it temporo-spatially. The environmental priorities surrounding of nine elementary schools were enrolled through the participatory mapping and the textbooks these spaces were analysed to identify and characterize their environmental approaches. In general, the cartographic products accounted issues associated with solid waste, wastewater and water, noise and air pollutions, without bringing elements that point to the relations of power and the consequent conflicts by hegemony that structures the modern society. And the teaching materials presents environmental themes in its composition, but most simplified and decontextualized way, which contributes to the results achieved in the participatory mapping activities. How creative and collective construction, the critical environmental education urges before the environmental crisis and, thus, the temporal and spatial updating of environmental issues becomes, since now, a necessary task.