Sebastián Muñoz López

International journalism
Environmental education

Colombian teacher creates a new environmental education method

Luis Camargo won the 2008 Young Global Leader Award thanks to his contribution on education.
Photo: Sebastián Muñoz

In the middle of The Himalayas, while he observed mountains that surpassed 23,000 feet of
height, Luis Camargo felt that he was an insignificant fragment among all the living creatures
inside planet Earth. “And when I was in the middle of nowhere, my spirit opened up. I started
to recognize myself as a small particle inside a living planet”, Camargo says. As he grew up,
he realized that the most valuable experiences that he ever had were the ones in which he
enriched his relationship with nature. That’s the moment when Camargo realized that nature
is the best teacher.

Luis Camargo still remembers the time when he was studying at San Carlos school, in the
city of Bogotá. He never fit in the traditional school method. In the middle of hermetic and
locked classrooms, 15 year old Luis Camargo felt that the information of the classes never
completely stayed on his head. On tenth grade, he decided that he couldn’t stand the
traditional learning method anymore. After multiple fights, the Principal of San Carlos
decided to give him free rein, allowing Camargo to study on green areas. Camargo started to
have the best grades in his class.
On 1998, he decided to join a group of environmental teachers that were trying to change
the world with a new educational method. This group was composed by Camilo Camargo
(Luis Camargo’s brother and the Principal of Los Nogales school), Catalina Sarabria and
Nicole Zangel (both biology teachers). The collective started to think about new strategies to
create a closer relationship between people and nature. Making a change in their context
would let people have deeper thoughts and a wider vision of the world, and, thanks to that, it
would allow a stronger connection between them and their natural surroundings. That’s the
moment when Organización para la Educación y Protección Ambiental (OpEPA) was born.

Schools like MaryMount and Los Nogales have been inspired by OpEPA’s teaching method. Photo:
Sebastián Muñoz

Camargo believes that at the present time, people feel disconnected from various aspects of
their lives. Firstly, individuals are facing an identity problem. Secondly, people are having
extreme isolation problems. And last but not least, there is an abrupt separation among
people and their environment. Camargo decided that his organization should focus on the
biggest of all the separations that individuals are facing nowadays: the disconnection
between them and their environment.

Education based on nature

Colombia is known for being one of the world’s environmental leaders. According to
Sánchez Pérez (2002), Colombia has 10% of the world’s fauna and flora, 20% of the bird
species all around the globe, and about a thousand rivers flowing throughout the country.
Even though Colombia is considered an environmental global power, the country has been
affected by the environmental crisis that is increasing all around the world. Cities like Bogotá,
Cali, Medellín and Barranquilla have highly contaminated areas, that exceed the legal
standard stipulated by the law. In this bleak context, multiple strategies have emerged in
order to maintain an order to decrease pollution and indifference surrounding the
environmental crisis.

In these circumstances, the idea of an ‘education based on nature’ emerged. According to

OpEPA, there is a fundamental difference between environmental education and ‘education
based on nature’. Environmental education is a way of teaching that focuses on
environmental topics and the systems in which nature works. On the other side, education
based on nature allows humans to see themselves as a part of their environment and to
connect with it. “Environmental education is still anthropocentric. Education based on nature
assumes that humans are only one part of nature, and, therefore, its learning should be
focus within nature”, Camargo says.

The field trips

On their field trips, Luis Camargo and his students wake up at 6:00 a.m., as the dawn
dictates. They go to sleep following the sunset, too. On the other hand, people in big cities
stay awake late at night, using artificial lights and fake bright colors. On their natural trips,
adults and kids talk between each other. This tradition of speaking and sharing anecdotes
among people has been lost inside the busy daily life of the average citizen.

It is easier for hyperactive kids to learn on green areas, rather than on a typical classroom. Photo:
Sebastián Muñoz
The main aim of the field trips organized by OpEPA is to let kids learn by using their ability to
be surprised. “Inside a grid office, people lose their ability to amaze themselves. The ability
to be surprised is fundamental in the learning process. We need magical moments that
surprise us in order to keep our learning skill untouched”, Luis Camargo says.

Inside mountains and green areas, life changing moments happen in the most unexpected
situations. In one unpredictable instant, thousands of birds fly out of their hiding places, and
cover the entire sky with their synchronized movement. “We search those magical moments,
that transform your mind and soften your spirit”, Camargo says.

“We always talk about empathy on education. However, we are only talking about empathy
with other humans. But, what happens with all the different life forms that exist on earth?
Don’t they need empathy too?”, states Luis Camargo.

Living inside the city

Camilo Camargo, unlike his brother, grew up learning inside a classroom and seeing himself
as someone separated from nature. He rarely frequented green areas, as he grew up inside
Bogota, a big city with very few parks and natural spaces. Eventually, he realized that the
main problem with modern education is that many kids, like him, grew up separated from
nature. “The only logical consequence to that is that they feel disconnected to nature and,
therefore, nature is not included on the plans and solutions that they create for the future”.
OpEPA’s main aim is to eliminate the feeling of disconnection that kids have with nature.
“You will not achieve anything by showing plants to kids in a smartboard. You need them to
touch, and feel, and live inside nature”, states Camilo Camargo.

As the Principal of Los Nogales, Camilo Camargo started to transform the school by
implementing multiple green areas inside it. As a result, he affirms that students are happier
and more focus inside the classes, as green areas facilitate the learning of not only hard
sciences, like Biology and Physics, but also the teaching of humanities, like Social Sciences.
“In this new learning method, the teacher only works as a instructor for the kid to have its
own discovering process. Therefore, the teacher is not ‘educating’ the child; he just gives the
kid free rein to learn from himself”.
One of OpEPA’s future plans is to open up trips for adults only. Photo: Sebastián Muñoz

A place where you belong

Linda Katherine Vásquez is an international relations student, at Universidad del Rosario, in
Bogotá. She has always been a person interested in environmental topics. She is from
Facatativá, a small town that is located near Bogotá. However, when she first arrived at the
University, she was disappointed with the teaching method that was being taught inside her
classes. Katherine felt that she wasn’t “feeling the knowledge”, as she describes it: “I only
think that I’m learning when I really feel what my teacher is saying, or when the classes are
changing something inside me. However, I never felt that type of learning inside a small
classroom”.

After months of searching for a place where she felt that her learning skills could be truly
developed, she found OpEPA on the internet. “The classes on OpEPA are truly different
from anything I have ever seen, anywhere. Travelling inside big mountains and watching the
green horizon made me realize that I’m just a small living creature inside a big and wonderful
planet”. Linda Katherine affirms that she learned more travelling one day with OpEPA than
having classes inside the university.

Bibliography

Pérez, G. S. (2002). Desarrollo y medio ambiente: una mirada a Colombia. Economía y desarrollo,
1(1), 80-98.