Schoolchildren's use of poetry and paintings in conveying environmental messages

Abstract

Pupils aged 12-14 from the University of Ghana Primary and Junior High School conducted studies off the coast adjacent to Accra, including a field visit to explore the effects of climate change on the country's biology, ecology and physical environment. They composed poems and made paintings about the coast and sea as means of conveying their views about climate change. Content analysis of these compositions using a count of word descriptors revealed that particular themes or messages tended to recur in both poems and paintings. Both of them depicted Ghana as a beautiful place that was suffering from the negative impacts of climate change. There were, nevertheless, differences in the ways in which these two art forms were used to convey messages. For example, poems used words to stress the national importance of the seas, their value as assets of God's creation and the need for everyone to work together in order to manage them at sustainable levels. Paintings, on the other hand, used images to identify specific causes of pollution and climate change and to illustrate the uses of the seas. It is argued that the creative arts should play a more significant part in the science curriculum. Not only could they bring science to life in the classroom, but they could provide powerful mechanisms whereby young people communicate their own views on environmental issues to other members of society, especially non-specialists. © 2012 Society of Biology.