State of the Art: International Proposals in Favor of Environmental Education in the 1980s

During the decade under study, the main international agency concerned with environmental problems was undoubtedly UNESCO and the specific programs created by it. It was also UNESCO that first expressed the need for the education systems of different countries to consider these problems and, therefore, to introduce content on the protection of nature at all levels of education, both inside and outside the classroom.⁵ Good examples of this were the recommendations put forward at the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm (1972), at the International Seminar in Belgrade (1975), at the Intergovernmental Conference in Tbilisi (1977), and in the environmental education programs sponsored in countries on five continents via the IEEP.

However, let us not forget that in 1980 the MacBride Report⁶ had just been published and approved by UNESCO. This report addressed the democratization of communication and the media in order to make public demonstrations of political decision-making more transparent and less dependent and arbitrary. In the words of its UNESCO's director general, Amadou-Mahtar M'Bow, the report offered the public the opportunity to “participate in the process of collective thinking” and to help “shake the prevailing inertia.”⁷ Such a far-reaching and important issue, in such a polarized world, annoyed the leaders of the more developed countries so much that, according to some specialists, this issue, and the repercussions it had at the international level, became the main reason for the United States’ withdrawal from the organization in 1984 along with its funding (some 22 percent of total contributions).⁸

It was also a time of revision and distancing from Keynesian economic policies, from the postulates of social justice and solidarity among peoples that had been defended until then, and a time that saw the rise of the individual and the free market, and the dismantling of the welfare state.⁹ Ronald Reagan went so far as to state on the day he was sworn in as president in 1981 that “in the present crisis, the government is not the solution to our problems, the government is the problem.”¹⁰ Margaret Thatcher, who had come to power two years earlier, declared that her “government had reduced the frontiers of the state” via her formula of “popular capitalism” and asserted that “there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families.”¹¹ The so-called New Right took control of power in some states, following the monetarist economic indications of Milton Friedman,¹² and in others its influence was manifested via the participation of social democratic parties in their governments (New Zealand, France, Portugal, Spain). The world was changing and with it the priorities to be defended. The environment and natural wealth were becoming a bargaining chip in a scenario where everything could be bought and sold on the great global market.¹³

UNESCO's proposals did not falter and continued to shape the future of environmental protection issues. Nevertheless, its scope, support, and effectiveness were seriously affected by the decline in funding and by the disparity of political criteria that began to emerge around them, something that was becoming increasingly evident.

One of the initiatives promoted in the early 1980s was the World Conservation Strategy. This proposal was created in 1980 jointly by UNESCO, UNEP, the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN), the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), and several international organizations interested in the conservation and maintenance of natural spaces. Although their interest did not focus exclusively on environmental education, their importance in protecting living resources and achieving the broadest possible sustainable development was considerable.¹⁴

One of the initiative's meetings took place in Ottawa in 1986, where it was decided to defend a central idea—namely, that “spreading the message” of the agreements adopted was as essential as the environmental conservation carried out. Out of this came a commitment to value environmental education not just as an isolated element in the curriculum but as knowledge that should permeate all teaching subjects. In other words, “environmental education related to the students’ environment . . . and not merely conservation education.”¹⁵ The implications were different from those advocated so far and recommended that all national education systems review their curricular contents and make them more “transversal” and sensitive to environmental issues.

In 1980, there was the second European Conference on Environmental Education (the first had been held in London in 1977). Organized by the Institute of Environmental Sciences of the United Kingdom and the World Environment and Resources Council, this time it took place in Switzerland and was attended by more than one hundred experts from twenty-five countries, many of them from outside Europe. The theme of the meeting, on this occasion, was “environmental education and its applications.” As stated above, it was necessary not only to theorize about environmental problems, but also to understand their origin and to act on them, following the research carried out during the previous decade. One session was devoted to “problem-focused environmental education” and another to “environmental education policies and strategies.”

At that time, several countries, including Japan, Uganda, the German Democratic Republic, Thailand, Poland, and the Soviet Union, had put in place very interesting working strategies on environmental education.¹⁶ This was the response of many countries to the call of the IEEP in its third phase (1981–1983) following the UNESCO General Conference held in Yugoslavia in October 1980. There, the proposed activities were formally approved in relation to Objective 7.7, which was to “contribute, through general education and public information, to improving individual and collective behavior with regard to the human environment and the perception of its quality.”¹⁷ Expected results included gathering information and assessing emerging trends in environmental education, assessing progress in environmental education in the member states, and, above all, the incorporation of environmental education into educational processes via the preparation of specific content and new teaching methods.

Shortly afterward, in 1983, UNESCO and UNEP published a preliminary report entitled “Trends, Needs and Priorities in Environmental Education since the Tbilisi Conference.” Sponsored by the IEEP, it compiled all the information that was available up to that time plus the results of a questionnaire sent to UNESCO member countries carried out a year earlier. The report specified that “it is absolutely true that, at the international level, interest in the environment has increased in recent years, but it has not done so uniformly within each country.”¹⁸

Nor, it seems, had it done so in the same way in all countries. The peculiarities were many and made it necessary to further strengthen the work carried out. The incorporation of the environmental dimension into education programs, it was claimed, had been achieved via the “infusion of content relating to different aspects and problems of the environment, especially resource conservation, health and nutrition and the different forms of pollution into curricula.”¹⁹ However, there was still no interdisciplinary approach; there was also a lack of experts in the field, teachers lacked adequate preparation, regional imbalances were very marked, and the non-formal sphere had made little progress. In short, environmental education in all countries and regions of the world needed to be further supported and strengthened.²⁰

One of the measures developed during these years was the creation of UNESCO's Medium-Term Plan, established for the period 1984–1989, which was initially adopted at the fourth extraordinary session of the organization held in Paris from 23 November to 3 December 1982. The plan had been prepared in response to global problems in consultation with member states. Paragraph 10 of the plan (or Major Program 10), which was devoted to the human environment and terrestrial and marine resources, stated that,

Environmental education is an important component of education and deserves to be included in curricula at all levels and in all types of education, with the dual purpose of promoting a better understanding of the problems and of arousing a desire for active participation in solving them.²¹

In addition to these initiatives promoted by UNESCO and UNEP, an international meeting on environmental education, the Congress on Environmental Education and Training, was held in Moscow in August 1987. In commemoration of the tenth anniversary of the Tbilisi Intergovernmental Conference on Environmental Education, this meeting, which brought together more than 300 specialists from eighty countries, served to review progress and trends in environmental education. It assessed the state of the environment and its implications for education and training, established environmental science programs in relation to education, and presented the design for an international strategy for environmental education and training for the 1990s. Furthermore, in order to intensify these actions, to compile all existing knowledge, and to order the strategy to be followed, the IEEP developed a computerized information service with the collaboration of INFOTERRA, an environmental information network.²²

Three months later, in November 1987, an international symposium on the use of technologies in the environmental field was held in Munich. Its conclusion, which could not have been more positive, was that “the ways and means of delivering the message of environmental education as a determining factor for the preservation and improvement of the global environment have never been better.”²³ Thus, education, communication, and training remained the focus of policy attention generated by international agencies, though they were not equally embraced by all governments and all states.²⁴ In fact, a new international impetus had to be given.

At the United Nations General Assembly on 19 December 1983, and more specifically in its resolution 38/161, the idea of setting up a special commission to report on the environment and world problems, with a work projection up to the year 2000, was adopted. This group of experts took the name of the World Commission on Environment and Development, and its report, published in 1987, was called Our Common Future. It was chaired by Gro Harlem Brundtland, leader of the Labor Party and Norwegian prime minister (formerly environment minister). The report spoke of a threatened future, the quest for sustainable development (the term “sustainable development” was introduced for the first time), a sustainable economy, food security, conservation of species and ecosystems, renewable energies, sustainable industrial development, and world peace, and called for action. The authors of the report argued that “money spent on education and health can increase human productivity” and that “economic development can accelerate social development by providing opportunities for disadvantaged groups and by spreading education more rapidly.”²⁵ They spoke of “human productivity” and not “economic or financial productivity” as the great world powers were doing. The “Brundtland Report,” as it was called, would become a conservationist lifeline in the midst of an ocean of denialism, disbelief, and the defense of private economic lucrative interests.

During these years, the United Nations continued to conduct seminars about both formal and non-formal environmental education in order to address environmental challenges.²⁶ Georgetown (Guyana), Behna (Egypt), Botswana, Finland, the German Democratic Republic, Senegal, Bulgaria, Japan, Oman, and Jamaica were some of the countries where these seminars were held, and the decisions taken there would set precedents for subsequent seminars.²⁷ In addition, in the early 1990s, a consultation meeting was held between the United Nations and other intergovernmental and NGOs related to environmental education. Convened by UNESCO in the framework of the IEEP, the meeting took place in Paris from 6 to 8 November 1990. One of the main objectives addressed was the cooperation and coordination of Environmental Education and Training (EET) among agencies and other world bodies. Its results were to be preparatory for the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, which was to be held two years later in Rio de Janeiro, coinciding with the twentieth anniversary of the Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment.²⁸

As we have just mentioned, meetings increased, agreements multiplied, and actions in favor of environmental education were constant and unequivocal, but the commitments made did not bind the most-polluting countries or erode their expansionist and speculative policies. With these conservationist proposals on the one hand, and the fact that many influential nations refused to apply them on the other, we must analyze what happened in Spain under the social democratic government.

Specific Spanish Proposals in Favor of Environmental Education

The first initiatives on environmental education in Spain started in the 1970s. In fact, some changes in regulations produced notable curricular modifications, as we have reported elsewhere.²⁹ At the same time, there seemed to be an increasing commitment on the part of Spain to participate in international forums where issues related to this subject were being dealt with. However, we can see that there was still not much momentum during this decade. In fact, it was not until the 1980s that there was a greater intensification of actions undertaken in favor of the environment. This occurred, on the one hand, via political action and, on the other, via the involvement of social, academic, and educational actors who were increasingly aware of their opportunity to address an issue of such importance for the future of society.

Thus, on 7 October 1982, an agreement was signed between the Ministry of Education and Science and the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food that created a Coordination Commission for Environmental Education. The aim of this commission was to promote the initial and ongoing training of teachers in environmental education and to encourage pupils at different educational levels to gain a better knowledge of nature and its resources, thus fostering greater respect and care for the environment and the appropriate use of natural resources. The commission would also ensure, as required by the Ministry of Education and Science, the creation of a network of educational “reserves,” whose land and facilities were provided by the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and ICONA. Moreover, the commission was also to “prepare, publish and distribute educational materials, both written and audiovisual, to facilitate the dissemination of the objectives of environmental education.”³⁰

On 10 June of the following year (1983), the commission was constituted and one of the items on its agenda was the creation of the above-mentioned network of educational “reserves” to promote environmental education. Around this time, the possibility of creating an institution to be called the National Center for Information, Documentation, and Environmental Education was also raised, which could carry out joint actions with the General Subdirectorate for Teacher Training to provide greater support and coverage for everything related to this subject. In 1987, this became a reality with the creation of the National Center for Environmental Education (CENEAM), as we shall see below.

In Spain, ICONA was responsible for organizing, developing, and disseminating all activities related to nature and environmental education in coordination with the General Subdirectorate for Teacher Training, until it was replaced by the National Institute for Agricultural and Food Research and Technology in 1991. In April 1984, for example, ICONA, together with the Regional Department of Public Works, Regional Planning, and Environment of the Autonomous Government of the Canary Islands, requested the support of the Ministry's expert, José Ramón Sánchez Moro, to carry out an environmental education program intended to raise awareness among unemployed young people on the island of Tenerife. The deputy director general of teacher training, Pilar Pérez Más, gave the go-ahead to this request.³¹

As a result of this and other collaborations (for example, the one between the Directorate General for the Environment, the Barcelona Provincial Council, and numerous NGOs), in October 1983 the First Environmental Education Conference was held in Sitges. At this conference, which was a pioneering event in Spain in terms of environmental education, four framework papers and eighty-five communications were presented.³² It was the first time that such outstanding social and academic interest in environmental education had arisen in the country. Papers were presented by Jaume Terradas (a professor of ecology), Harry Walse (a municipal administrator for The Hague), José Ramón Sánchez Moro (in charge of the Ministry's environmental education program), and Fernando González Bernáldez (general subdirector of the training program of the Ministry of Public Works). In addition, studies were presented by biologists and environmental specialists, teachers and pedagogues. Such was the impetus given to these educational activities related to the environment that the Ministry of Education and Science announced 2,000,000 pesetas in grants for the development of proposals to support environmental education.

The European Year of the Environment (EYE) was scheduled for 1987. Prior to this, in November 1986, a meeting was held in Spain to present the objectives of the EYE, which was attended by the heads of educational programs as well as those in charge of environmental education programs in Spain's autonomous regions. The document drawn up for the occasion stressed that “it is necessary to remember, once again, that the most important objective of EYE, as far as awareness-raising tasks are concerned, is to ensure that environmental education forms part, in practice, of regular programming in educational institutions.”³³ Moreover, it was also considered essential to draw up an inventory of what had been done so far, to transmit as much information as possible in order to join forces in this area, to request projects from educational centers, to produce educational units on environmental studies, and to “contact Regional Environmental Authorities, the National Employment Institute (INEM), Agriculture, Youth or Town Councils quickly, in order to find out about their resources and coordinate our initiatives with them.”³⁴

In 1987, a cooperation agreement was signed between the Ministry of Education and Science and ICONA. The first clause of the agreement reads as follows: “ICONA, in accordance with the functions entrusted to it, establishes among its objectives the intensification of environmental information and educational activities at all levels in the area of its competence.”³⁵ For its part, the Ministry of Education and Science undertook to maintain “preferential attention to the environment and to raising pupils’ awareness of its conservation” in the new compulsory education reform programs. Therefore, both institutions guaranteed collaboration in the “implementation of a Training Program for Teachers of Environmental Education . . . which will favor the further motivation of pupils in schools.”³⁶ A week earlier, CENEAM had been inaugurated in Valsaín (La Granja, Segovia).

And it was in Valsaín where, with the support of ICONA, the Second Environmental Education Conference was held. But on this occasion, there was less demand for reflective and theoretical approaches and more demand for experiences based on everyday practice. In fact, the organizers noted that “this Second Conference will preferably bring together people who can contribute to the analysis and evaluation of their experiences, in order to present their reflections to all those interested in environmental education.”³⁷ The European Union and UNESCO itself also requested solvent projects. Thus, the Second Conference was to be devoted to presenting results in this sense. After all these efforts, initiatives, and proposals, the organizers reached the conclusion that “environmental education should not be a simple addition to education; rather, it should be integrated as a clear perspective in designs, to which very specific activities will correspond.”³⁸

With this impetus and political commitment, the First International Congress on Environmental Education was held in Madrid between 23 and 26 March 1988, organized by the Faculty of Philosophy and Educational Sciences and the Institute of Environmental Sciences of Complutense University. It was attended by, among others, A. M. Lucas (University of London), L. Emmlin (University of Lund), and R. Richardson (University of Oxford and the Open University). A few months later, between 28 November and 1 December 1988, a seminar entitled “Environmental Education in the Educational System” was held at the Castillo de Magalia in Navas del Marqués, Ávila. This event was organized by the Education Group of the Spanish National Commission for Cooperation with UNESCO, which provided 4,000 dollars in funding. Both the Ministry of Public Works and ICONA supported and subsidized the event with a contribution of 600,000 pesetas. It was a way of establishing better coordination in environmental education on the national level, which had been relatively week until then.³⁹

The environment, as an official educational topic, was starting to gain traction. In fact, there was a shift in the organization of gatherings: while put on by pedagogical renewal groups in the late 1970s and early 1980s, they were put on by international and academic institutions in the late 1980s and early 1990s. However, the capitalist economic model on which the reality in Spain (like in the rest of Europe) hinged continued to contradict the postulates defended in these meetings, seminars, and workshops. Indeed, this model often seemed to silence the complaints of bodies such as UNESCO and the IEEP. The only organizations that upheld these more genuine principles of conservation and education were, on the one hand, ICONA, with the activities it regularly organized and, on the other, the schools themselves, with the organization of conferences, roundtables, exhibitions, school trips, and projects of all kinds. But what was actually happening inside the classroom and what curricular content did textbooks offer in environmental education?

School Curricula, Textbooks, and Environmental Education

The regulatory basis governing the teaching of General Basic Education (EGB) in the 1980s was contained in the so-called “Renewed Programs.” These addressed the updating of pedagogical guidelines for the curricula in the General Education Act (LGE, 1970), the aim of which was to stop using educational principles from the period of the Spanish dictatorship and to update knowledge regarding the new democratic framework that was emerging. As a result of several Ministerial Orders (MOs) and Royal Decrees (RDs),⁴⁰ in 1981 and 1982 so-called “Blue Books” were published in three volumes dedicated to the different educational stages, namely, Preschool Education (for pupils from three to five years of age), Initial Cycle (from six to eight), Mid-Cycle (from nine to eleven), and Upper Cycle (from twelve to fourteen). These volumes contain the guidelines for new teaching methods designed during the democratic transition, and they focus both on didactic forms and content.⁴¹

The authors of the new curricular guidelines address the environment in sections devoted to the basic reference level of social and natural experience (Unit 2). Indeed, in one of their explanatory statements, the authors write:

The ideal will be to create an environment around the child that is as natural as possible. However, it is utopian to think that all the schools can be in the countryside, in Nature. In the absence of this, we will try to bring Nature into the classroom, to enable the children themselves to have opportunities to take care of plants and animals there.⁴²

No other reference is made to these activities. In the second volume, devoted to the Mid-Cycle (specifically, in Unit 3 on knowledge of the environment), the authors specify that their aim is to encourage learners to “get used to respecting and caring for the environment (to participate in campaigns on environmental protection, reforestation, protection of endangered species).”⁴³ In addition, in Unit 7 on civic and social behavior the authors state the importance of “collaborating in the conservation of the environment (in the classroom, at school, at home, in the street, in the countryside).”⁴⁴ In the third volume, dedicated to the Upper Cycle, it is only in the area of natural sciences (specifically under the topic of “scientific and technological development”) that there is a section (3.4) corresponding to “conservation of the environment.” This section looks at objectives related to the effects of industrialization, the felling of trees, the indiscriminate use of chemicals, and the technical means used for environmental protection (such as sewage treatment plants and waste management). In fact, Objective 3.4.3 is to “take responsibility for environmental problems with respect for plants and gardens, conservation of buildings, and public services.”⁴⁵

Following this review of the existing legislation and the Renewed Programs, we carried out an analysis of how this content were made explicit in the textbooks for the subjects of social sciences and natural sciences (given that these subjects were the only ones with units related to environmental education as we described above) for EGB in the 1980s from the most used publishing houses.⁴⁶ For this purpose, and considering research on school textbook analysis,⁴⁷ we carried out a search for related content and a selection of textbooks that contained topics related to environmental education (see the textbook bibliography at the end of this article).

We found that the curricular guidelines contained in the Renewed Programs of the 1980s fell short of the momentum achieved in the 1970s after the publication of the pedagogical guidelines in social sciences textbooks. Having carried out a detailed analysis of different books and subjects, we were able verify that the momentum achieved in the 1970s after the publication of the guidelines in the LGE⁴⁸ did not continue into the 1980s. Moreover, in these years the environmental education content was mostly transferred to the subject of natural sciences and almost completely disappeared from the social sciences textbooks.⁴⁹

Although all publishers, despite their different ideologies, incorporated ethical and civic education and road safety content as complementary subjects (following the pedagogical guidelines contained in the MOs), they did not include specific content about the environment or environmental education beyond what was foreseen in the curricular themes of the natural sciences. In other words, we can say that implementation of the pedagogical guidelines was meager and not very appreciable considering the importance that the issue of the protection of the planet had in international forums.

In the books of the Initial Cycle, hygiene and respect for our surroundings are mentioned, but there are no major references to the natural environment. By contrast, in the Mid-Cycle (fifth year of primary school), the environment is mentioned three times, in the social studies textbook edited by Casals S.A. y Calpe, in a section dedicated to “men, places, and maps.” When talking about forests, the author observes that

fire is the great enemy of the forest. Forests, in their natural state, burn with difficulty, but if man opens roads, lights fires, or leaves bottles and rubbish in the forest, he favors and even causes fires. We must respect the forest for many reasons, not least because it produces oxygen, which is necessary for life.⁵⁰

Elsewhere, the text describes how

deciduous trees provide quality timber, and the decaying leaves improve the soil, but pulp mills need softwoods and fast-growing trees, which is why beautiful deciduous forests have been cut down to plant pine and eucalyptus. These trees can be cut after ten years, but far from fertilizing the soil, they impoverish it.⁵¹

Finally, when talking about energy sources, the author writes that coal and oil “pollute the atmosphere”, that with nuclear energy “any failure could be very dangerous,” and that solar energy is “hardly used in industry.”⁵² As we can see, although the text discusses nature in general and energy (polluting and sustainable) in particular, there are no specific references to the environment.

In the social sciences textbook for year six, published by Onda, the section on the city contains a heading dedicated to the problems faced by urban inhabitants. The authors state that “the agglomeration of a large number of people and economic activities in a very small space generates many problems to which citizens have to find solutions.” Among them, the text mentions supplies, energy, green spaces, and “problems related to pollution.”⁵³ Another social sciences textbook for the same school year from another major publisher, Anaya, explains, in a section devoted to the waters of the sea, problems concerning the extinction of whales and uncontrolled dumping. The comments are, in fact, strongly worded, as can be seen from the following passage:

In the height of stupidity, many nations have been dumping barrels full of burning waste from nuclear reactors into the oceans, a new kind of waste that will be lethal for at least a thousand years (probably longer than the barrels, some of which have already broken).⁵⁴

The information was originally taken from the book Only One Earth by Barbara Ward and René Dubos, and it arose from the results of the 1972 Stockholm Summit. This reference represents a noteworthy exception to the rest of the textbooks and social sciences books. The color photos on the subject show oil slicks, oil rigs, and whales trapped in the middle of a hunting campaign.

For this same school year, another textbook, this one for natural sciences, should be highlighted. The authors of the textbook Nature devoted their penultimate topic to “the environment and quality of life.” Here, they discuss air pollution, water pollution, soil erosion, food quality control, the correct use of resources, and the importance of the balance of ecosystems, stating that “it is important to realize that the deterioration of ecosystems is slow and unspectacular, but continuous and, if not stopped in time, irreversible.”⁵⁵ The illustrations show a half-sunken oil tanker with tar washing ashore and birds getting covered in it. Other images show the pollution in society, the felling of trees, or a closed water tap with the sign “save energy.”⁵⁶ This is probably the clearest demonstration of environmental advocacy in a year-six textbook.

For first-year pupils, the social studies textbook published by Anaya highlights some content on nature. In Topic 1, entitled “The Natural Domains of the Globe,” the authors discuss issues such as the existence of marginal lands, the exploitation of tropical forests, the intensive exploitation of nature, and the advance of deserts. Many of these sections are, once again, written by world-renowned specialists in climatology and geology (such as Fredrick Kenneth Hare and others), with references and quotations from some of UNESCO's journals, such as Le Courier. Their reasoning, as can be seen from the following passage, is highly suggestive:

Are these changes due to an impoverishment of the world's climate? Can we do anything to stabilize it? . . . Only a judicious and rational use of the earth and its resources can prevent the great calamity that will be a serious problem for countries that are poor and ill-equipped to deal with it.⁵⁷

The textbook's iconography depicts deserts, inhospitable valleys, and sawn tree trunks, contrasting with tropical forests and meadows of green grass.⁵⁸

To conclude this “textbook tour,” we should mention some year-eight textbooks (for student ages thirteen to fourteen) devoted to natural sciences, since there are no explicit references to the topic of the environment in the social sciences textbooks. One natural sciences textbook includes a section titled “Environment: Air and Water. Weather.” Under one of its headings, “Pollution and Its Remedies,” the authors observe that “the producers of air pollution or poisoning are, above all, motor vehicles, factories and workshops with furnaces and chimneys, heating in the winter months, and any vehicle or industrial installation that releases dirt into the air.”⁵⁹ In order to reduce these effects, they suggest installing scrubbers, monitoring the operation of engines, improving the efficiency of fuels, reducing the use of motor vehicles, and smoking less often. The illustrations again incorporate pictures of polluted cities, smoking chimneys, trucks dumping rubbish in landfills, and polluted sea water.

The textbook Natural Sciences: 8th year EGB (Ciencias de la Naturaleza: 8º EGB), published by Interduc/Schroedel, contains a topic devoted exclusively to ecology. Although it only covers nine pages, it contains five headings, among which we must highlight three (“The Work of Ecologists,” “The Ecological Balance,” and “The Cycle of Matter in the Ecosystem”). The authors note that

a similar equilibrium exists in ecosystems, which is called “ecological balance.” The alteration of this balance, by the disappearance of species or by the increase of some of them, can seriously affect the ecosystem, and can even destroy it.⁶⁰

The photos that the textbook contains depict forest animals, fish, and plants in permanent natural equilibrium.

Despite a thorough review of the indexes and contents of forty-nine textbooks, no other references to nature, the environment, or its protection appear. References to a subject as specific as environmental education are even fewer.

Conclusion

In the 1980s, there were major international meetings to promote environmental education following the momentum achieved in the previous decade, mainly by UNESCO. Seminars, workshops, and conferences were held in many countries on all five continents to advocate education and training as the most appropriate means of protecting and conserving the natural environment and to speak directly and unambiguously about environmental education. Spain joined in with these measures by signing interministerial agreements, holding congresses, and, above all, by promoting the work carried out by ICONA. The issue was even addressed in school classrooms via the organization of seminars and talks with the aim of raising awareness about a problem that affects us all and that will worsen as time goes by.

However, with regard to textbooks, environmental education does not appear explicitly in any of them. Tangential content is offered in textbooks devoted to social sciences, and other, more defined topics are presented in nature sciences textbooks. However, as a specific subject (that is, one explicitly discussing environmental protection), the environment is practically invisible in all of them. After many declarations of principle, debates shifted either toward making it informally part of the dimension (with the intervention of ICONA as the main advocate of solutions to environmental problems) or toward talks in schools and the addition of out-of-school days to the curriculum. It was only with the publication of the Law for the General Organization of the Education System (LOGSE) in 1990, and the RDs that developed it and established curricula for different educational stages, that specific aspects of environmental education began to be reflected. However, the inclusion of environmental education was not contemplated as specific content in this area, but as transversal content.⁶¹ It was a risky gamble from a pedagogical point of view, but a wise one from a political point of view, which favored its visibility, defined its purposes and highlighted its scope at all educational stages and thereby correlated what was being done in Spain with what was being done beyond its borders.⁶²