In Thimphu, Bhutan‘s capital, one school’s moto is “Let nature be your teacher.” The school has a communal vegetable garden, flower gardens, recycle and reuse activities, trees, and children learn basic agricultural skills and about environmental conservation, all as a part of Bhutan’s Green Schools for Green Bhutan program.
The program is part of Bhutan’s commitment to measuring the nation’s success on an internal level using gross national happiness (GNH), which measures a nation’s overall quality of life, and not gross domestic product (GDP), which measures only economic gains. GNH measures success based on seven different qualities: 1. economic wellness, 2. environmental wellness, 3. physical health wellness, 4. mental health wellness, 5. workplace wellness, 6. social wellness, and 7. political wellness.
The Green Schools for Green Bhutan program is underway, but Bhutan struggles to provide the necessary resources to its 650 understaffed elementary schools and 8,000 overworked teachers educating a student population of 170,000. UNICEF Bhutan is working to help implement this program and find a way to train more teachers.
According to Bhutan’s Minister of Education, Thakur Singh Powdyel, “Green schools is not just about the environment; it is a philosophy, so we’re trying to instill a sense of green minds, which are flexible and open to different types of learning. It’s a values-led approach to education that stems from the belief that education should be more than academic attainment; it should be about expanding children’s minds and teaching what it is to be human – and at the forefront of this is the conservation of the natural environment.”
For more information, please click here.
Creative Commons Love: Bioversity International on Flickr.com
