Água, desafio sócio-ambiental para a Educação no século XXI

Abstract

The utilization of water, that is considered a natural element essential for life, is directly related to human necessities as well as the development of economy and also the production of wealth. It does not happen only in Brazil, but also in all over the world. However, until the moment the use of water has been planned with the most objective of benefiting the economic sectors. Nowadays, the bad use of water allied to the increase of its demand has made the specialists of this area concern about the subject because of the decrease of drinking water in our planet. But this natural wealth can not be left for the economical policy because it belongs to us. And it does not matter if we are poor or rich, intelligent or not. So, we believe that it is necessary to make our society aware of our environmental problems. We have in mind that this education might contribute to become the man much more conscious about the environment. Thus, he is able to have good attitudes towards the enviromental necessities at the present and also in the future, trough a criticai questioning about the values established by the society. We believe that education in the twentieh fírst century, has to develop a very important role in thought evolution and has to search for altematives to economical development allied to our enviromental problems. In order to solve these problems it is necessary to touch and qualify the educator, because the school is the best place to discuss about these kind of problems. On the other hand, if the teacher is really prepared to talk about it, he may contribute richly to the development of a good education that takes into account our social-enviromental challenges in the modern world. This work was developed in Uberlândia city, State of Minas Gerais, with the purpose of analysing the problems about water in this city through the methodology of action research. We may claim that through our real problems about the environment, it is possible to make the society aware of these serious problems that come from the bad utilization and bad administration of this natural wealth. And finally, we would like to suggest a significant enviromental education working with elementary school teachers.