Schools begin to adopt oceanic culture discipline – 06/07/2023 – Environment

The Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation, in partnership with Unifesp (Federal University of São Paulo), launched two public notices to promote oceanic culture within schools across the country. The objective is to increase community participation in the preservation of the oceans, which is celebrated worldwide this Thursday (8), through sustainable development.

The partnership between the ministry and the university is part of the actions promoted by the UN (United Nations) through the Decade of the Oceans, mobilization with the participation of 193 member countries, which aims to expand international scientific cooperation and promote integration between science and public policies on the topic.

“In this whole movement of the Decade of the Oceans, one of the goals of Unesco [braço da ONU para educação, ciência e cultura] is that we can have public policies for the school curriculum. The Escola Azul program mobilizes, but it is a voluntary will of the schools. The objective is for all countries to include oceanic culture in their curricula”, says Ronaldo Christofoletti, professor at the Department of Marine Sciences at the Instituto do Mar, at Unifesp, and coordinator of the Maré de Ciência program.

Currently, Brazil has two states —Paraíba and Ceará— and 11 municipalities with laws to include oceanic culture in the school curriculum. They are Santos (SP), Rio de Janeiro (RJ) Itarema (CE), Aracaú (CE), Camocim (CE), Caucaia (CE), Fortim (CE), Vila Velha (ES), João Pessoa (PB), Areia Branca (RN), and Maceió (AL).

The program cited by Professor Christofoletti originated in Portugal. It works the ocean theme within the school curriculum, encouraging actions and changes in behavior in favor of the oceans.

The first announcement is the Science Fair — Blue School, aimed at students from high school to technicians. Any school, public or private, can sign up to host local science fairs in October.

All schools can register, but only the public ones will be competing for R$ 280,000 in prizes. Fifteen schools, three from each region of the country, will be awarded six scholarships – one for teachers and five for scientific development for students.

“We have another 25 junior scientific education scholarships for students who are self-declared black, brown, indigenous or quilombola, so that we can include these leaders, taking oceanic culture to their communities”, says the coordinator.

The other public notice is the Ocean Olympics, which encompasses three modalities: one of knowledge, one of artistic, cultural and technological projects and one of socio-environmental projects. In this Olympics, which is in its third edition, any citizen can sign up and participate.

“In 2021, we had 3,000 registrations from 17 Brazilian states. Last year, it increased to 12,000 registrations in the 27 Brazilian federation units”, says Christofoletti.

The Olympics will have a national stage, and then it will move on to another international stage, according to the coordinator. In the first phase, 100 students will be awarded with junior scientific initiation scholarships, equally divided among the five regions of the country.

Santos, on the coast of São Paulo, implemented the crop last year. The city has 86 municipal schools with around 27,000 students and 3,000 teachers in the network.

“The fact that Santos is a coastal city, naturally the schools already dealt with the oceanic culture. This experience made the City Council transform it into law and make it a public policy”, explains Renata Bravo, deputy mayor of Santos .

According to Bravo, there was a training process for teaching staff and pedagogical coordinators, so that the theme could be dealt with within the school units in a transversal manner.

“There isn’t a discipline that talks exclusively about oceanic culture. It is treated, for example, in art classes, in geography classes, every discipline that can be inserted in the culture of the environment, how to treat it, what is the best behavior to be adopted by students, for families, so that we actually change people’s behavior.”

On Monday (5), World Environment Day, a group of students from José da Costa e Silva Sobrinho Municipal School participated in an action on Boqueirão beach, as part of the action.

“For two weeks we prepared for this day, with conversations, readings, visualization of images of beaches in Brazil and around the world, different characteristics and comparison with the beach of Santos”, explains professor Daniela Dantas.

“By coming to the place, learning becomes even more meaningful for the students and they will take it with them for life.”

For Alexander Turra, a professor at USP’s Oceanographic Institute, the importance of initiatives to implement ocean culture in schools is “gigantic”, as humanity has brought, through its activities, a series of impacts to the ocean.

“To combat this, we need individual and collective actions. And these actions are more potent and have more results as people understand the importance that the ocean has in their lives”, says the professor.

“It is fundamental for us to build a blue generation, which understands and cares for the ocean. Brazil is an oceanic nation and this needs to become increasingly clear to all Brazilians. And this certainly has a special place in schools.”

Still according to the professor, Brazil has played a good role in terms of ocean science on the planet, but still has bottlenecks to put into practice public policies that already exist, such as the law of the oceans, which has been pending in Congress for ten years.

“Brazil has a bold stance in activities, in mobilization, but it still suffers from a difficulty in making the transformation happen. This goes through public policies, which suffer a lot from the fragility of the public power, especially with the lack of continuity of these policies, as governments change.”