In every territory crossed by environmental pollution and its consequences for health and habitability, the question for integral environmental education (EAI) is not an abstract question for teachers, it is a daily urgency. What does EAI mean in these territories? How are children and adolescents, when their families live daily with pollution or with the threat of layoffs for defending labor rights? Can you talk about the atmosphere without talking about work? These questions should be part of the pedagogical conversation in schools, if we want environmental education to be more than a school decoration, it is critical of social relations and with the environment that capitalism develops and a strut to think about the transformation of society. And this implies starting from the concrete problems of the territories, incorporating multiple dimensions (ecological, political, social, geographical, economic, cultural), to propose significant learning, tool builders, which serve the subjects to be able to question their reality in order to transform it. Can the school fulfill something of this role?
In it Ceamse San Martín and in him Ceamse EnsenadaQualified SECCO workers captured methane gas to turn it into clean energy. That work, although minimal, reduced emissions, mitigated climate change and supported essential services against emergencies, since in turn they were traveling hundreds of kilometers from their homes to deal with emergency situations such as fires or floods, which affect the energy service. Thus they won the epithet, the calls Light Firefighters. If we talk in the past it is because the company closed one of these plants, that of Ensenada, saying goodbye to more than thirty workers.
His campaign to recover jobs travels the country. They count among other supports with environmental references such as Guillermo Folguera, Maristella Svampa y VIALE ENRIQUEhundreds of other struggles with which they coordinate as the workers of the Garrahan Hospitalstudent centers such as UNSAM science and technology. The Kicillof strainer endorses the closure in the province of one of the few experiences of transformation of garbage into clean energy with dismissals; The adjustment of millei embolden to a company that is far from any economic crisis, but full in new businesses to do so. If all this is also part of the landscape we inhabit and in which we teach, SECCO in struggle and the CEAMSE in the environmental network of AMBA are an invitation to approach the EAI. In this context of adjustment but also of resistance, including the voices of workers in school is not just a gesture of solidarity in itself necessary. It is a pedagogical act. It is teaching to read a conflict, to recognize interests in struggle, to take a position. It is building bridges between school knowledge and popular knowledge, between curricular contents and the experiences of the world of work. Next, I share some experiences of teachers of April 9 – La Brón.
San Martín and the CEAMSE: Welcome to Ciudad Garbage
What does it mean to teach comprehensive environmental education in the district that has the largest open -air garbage throughout Latin America? In San Martín you are literally in junk city, because here the CEAMSE Norte III complex is located, which receives more than 430 thousand tons of waste already daily, some 17 thousand: almost 40 % of all the garbage generated in Argentina y More than 80 % of the AMBA.
As Nehuén Brat points out, there are other possible processes for the treatment of garbage, but here we continue. In San Martín, The fillings extend on a chain of neighborhoods built many of them on the landfill itself. From Costa Esperanza, Libertador, Lanzone, Carcova, Barrio Nuevo, Barrio Independencia or Curita more than 100,000 people are exposed to contaminated air, soil and water. I receive daily many experiences of students who come to the schools in downtown San Martín, the least, or I have received them in the schools of the neighborhoods in previous years. Therefore, far from being a transversal content of others, they quickly investigated and worked collectively.
Among the axes to address the CEAMSE San Martín from EAI you can think about Chronic contamination —More of 100 episodes of methane gas supply in the last five years, one of them equivalent to the emission of 36 million cars in an hourwhich results in the high rate of respiratory and skin diseases; CEAMSE AND INEQUALITY —Are it is presented as “ecological manager”, its functioning replicates the logic of capitalist inequality: the garbage always ends in the poorest neighborhoods, with poor services and health risks – and the danger of liquidation of minimal but significant experiences of clean energy such as that of Secco —The case of the SECCO plant that operates in the CEAMSE NORTE III Can it run the same fate as that of Ensenada? This panorama of waste, pollution and inequality is articulated with other issues that can be taken as axes, since make visible other actors. We can track an excellent resource in a note that is already a few years old, written by Natalia Gelós with the Cartography of the collective of iconoclasist artistspublished by amphibia. A very good material for the classroom. Brat’s same aforementioned note brings extremely interesting data in this regard and has good exhibition fluency.
Start articulating these experiences, such as community cartography and surgeon narratives with those of workers in SECCO in strugglethat also transit CEAMSE, it can be a very valuable tool towards a much more critical integral education. Today they are a strut Because they are fighting, coordinating, they do not resign. From curricular spaces such as literature it is possible to work narratives, chronic, among other forms of discourse, to address the transverse contents of the EAI that I counted above.
Ensenada: SECCO in fight gives class
Since last year, as soon as the layoffs in the SECCO of Ensenada, Sebastián, who is a geography professor and militant of the teacher, April 9 – the Brown and Environmental Red Alert had begun, stood on his shoulder as on other occasions the task of a campaign in schools, to spread the double dimension of this conflict, The work y The environment. Within the framework of a project located, together with other colleagues, they organized two workshops in secondary schools, around transverse contents of the EAIsuch as energy transition, climate change and environmental pollution. The workers, many of them with higher studies linked to science and technique, went to give those talks, true pedagogical meetings of the crossing of knowledge.
Sebastian tells that the kids asked many questions, even one asked if they, that generated energy with garbage, what happened if there was no more garbage, if they were left without work: “I remember the workers, I also liked them very Learning experiences located and open to the working community It is that many of the kids claimed the very plain language, very clear, of the charlists. And that generated enormous sympathy from the students themselves, because they usually go professionals, which is not bad, but the distances in the records are very deep and often get bored. ”
Sebastián has more to count. “Ensenada is a place with enough experiences of environmental conflicts and resistancethat’s why teachers are more active with these issues. The reception among teachers was excellent; They asked us for didactic material to be able to face them the transverse contents of the EAI, especially calling them attention to obtain energy from garbage. We are pending to prepare an environmental recursum to do it, of audiovisual and written material from April 9 – the brown”The Campaign in Ensenada by the hand of the EAI continued itinerant and transferred the schools. Conversations were held together between the environmental assemblies and the workers of SECCO in struggle. The campaign continues.
Villa Luzuriaga: How to talk about atmosphere without talking about work?
When classes in the School attended by the sons and daughters of workers such as those of Seccothat day by day operate in adverse conditions within the CEAMSE plants, and when they are also unfairly dismissed, integral environmental education cannot be split from education in the right to work, and the solidarity of teachers to families is key.
In Villa Luzuriaga, The educational community of Technical School No. 8 “Jorge Newbery” He sent his support to the more than thirty dismissed workers. A school student is the son of one of them and José is one of these teachers.
Delegate in La Matanza for Brown – April 9, José was carrying this solidarity to the support meetings that workers held, as was last month at the University of San Martín. He counts in a video that when they found out at school, the teachers quickly joined and took pictures with posters to send them the support. “They are the families of our students and are an example for the entire community”.
SECCO: A conflict that crosses atmosphere and work deserves to enter all schools
National Law 27,621 establishes that the EAI must be transversal, located, critical and transformative. However, without a budget or training and with the wedge that supercontaminant companies put to wash the face green, bringing talks to schools, it causes in practice to reduce most of the time to individual initiatives, to ephemeris and recycling campaigns that fall on the teachers of the curricular spaces of natural or exact sciences. However, the other subjects are not vetoed to incorporate it into the disciplinary contents. On the contrary. The conflict in SECCO and the role of the CEAMSE in the environmental framework of the AMBA become an interpellation and a challenge for its approach. The experienced experiences that I had, varied and unique, realize that starting from the affected territories, the entrance door can be different knowledge and learning, in the classroom, in wider talks, with other teachers and also in the dimension of the streets and the protest. That is why today the teachers will accompany the SECCO workers on another day of claim, on the way to the good ayre, José León Suárez, San Martín. With clean energy workers, environmental education wins. Force SECCO in struggle!
Source: www.laizquierdadiario.com
