BACK	ENVIRONMENT: Forest School Provides New Form of Education

While other pupils in urban areas may dream of adventures in the great outdoors, for 14-years-old Carlos and 1,700 other students at ''Forest School'' education is an everyday adventure here in the jungle.

''The purpose of the school is to raise people's awareness that when they destroy the environment, they are destroying themselves'', says young Carlos. ''Destruction of the environment is an irresponsible act of people who aren't prepared to live with their own environment.''

Carlos and his classmates will be part of the first graduating class of environmental technicians from the Forest School, located on one of the 39 islands that make up the district of Outeiro - 35 kilometers from Belem, the capital of the northern state of Para. It was built in the middle of a 120,000 square metres jungle reserve..

'''Amazonia is the target of the entire world's concern about the issue of preservation of natural resources and the potential of its wealth'', explains Jacquiline Serra, president of the Forest School Foundation. ''But those problems also have to be understood by the inhabitants of Amazonia themselves. We cannot remain passive in the face of the our own degradation process.''

The school curriculum, the first of its kind in Latin America, covers education from kindergarten through high-school.

In addition to the traditional curriculum of official Brazilian schools, the Forest School includes contents and exercises that its teachers have characterized as ''socio- environmental.'' Programmes for formal and informal education are also applied to the needs of the island communities.

''The purpose is to create a culture of appreciating the environment, understood not only as a 'green' issue, but also as an issue that includes social relations and the quality of life of a community'', said Serra.

In order to reach those goals, the Forest School is devoted to training specialists in the increasing needs of the Amazonian jungle, like management of flora, wildlife and eco-tourism.

Iona, another student, says she has learned her generation has a fight on its hands to reverse what has been destroyed by her ancestors.

''Nobody cares about preserving the environment. This was very striking to me, and I will do everything I can in order to change that'', she says.

A third student, David, decided to enroll in the Forest School for more practical reasons. ''I want study eco-tourism, which has a lot of potential in this region.''

Although situated in the middle of the jungle, the school has all the equipment one would find in schools in the large urban centers. Most of the pupils are the children of low-income residents of the islands and, for them, it is an adventure to enter the school's library and computer center, the biology or physics lab or the games and reading rooms.

Among other activities, the students can take classes in horticulture, recycling, forestation, nutrition and natural pharmaceuticals. ''I chose this school because I saw that it looked like a First World school'', said Iona.

The municipal Ministry of Education of Belem intends to extend the model of the Forest School to the university, in the areas of Anthropology and Natural Sciences. According to the teachers, higher education will allow them to educate professionals trained to ''save the Amazon''. But they will also be locals who also have ''their own identity''.

Currently, studies on the environmental impact on the region are usually conducted by experts from Rio de Janeiro or Sao Paulo, thousands of kilometers away, who live a totally different reality.

''Our intention is not only to work from a local perspective on the Amazonian region. Our people of tomorrow also need to understand the environmental problem in a more global sense'', concluded Serra. (END/IPS/tra-so/ff/ea/mk/97)