Environmental School Clubs in Tanzania: Learning to blame the "poor" and "uneducated"

Abstract

In East Africa, environmental school clubs play an important role as an extension of conservation efforts, and have done so since the beginning of the post-colonial period. There is a lack of critical research on what students are taught at these clubs. Based on fieldwork at two clubs in northern Tanzania, this article reveals how students highlight narratives of poverty and low levels of education as the main reasons for environmental degradation. Drawing on political ecology and the emerging sub-field of the political ecology of education, I discuss what these narratives reveal about the environmental subjects formed through environmental school clubs. I examine the coloniality of these clubs, and I reveal how students learn to blame the 'poor' and 'uneducated' through the education system. It reproduces an apolitical development narrative that limits students' critical engagement with broader environmental issues.

Keywords

• Education
• conservation
• development
• political ecology of education
• narratives
• Tanzania