EDUCATION 533 



identify, understand and learn how to manage what Barbara Ward 

 calls the untrained forces which don't produce what we want. 



Even with the best of nature appreciation, if our public policies 

 have built into them ( albeit unintentionally ) , incentives which do not 

 encourage taking aesthetics into consideration by the multitude of 

 decisionmakers involved, we will but scratch the surface. Re- 

 search is needed to isolate negative incentives and innovate new 

 policies that will provide positive incentives. When these issues 

 are understood, these become the objectives to which our educa- 

 tional efforts must be directed. 



Should not this conference recommend the establishment of a 

 task force to study the problem from this point of view and perhaps 

 identify some of the major points at which the incentives built into 

 our social, economic, and political systems need adjustments. Such 

 identification would serve to mark out specific areas for more intensive 

 research and education and get us beyond the limitation of slogan 

 thinking. 



CHARLES A. DAMBAGH. There appears to be near unanimous 

 agreement that education, particularly outdoor education, is an 

 essential component of a lasting national effort to improve the quality 

 of the landscape and to, thereby, enhance natural beauty. There 

 is also general agreement that this can best be done in the schools 

 by teachers with the necessary ecological understanding and 

 motivation. 



The importance of special institutes for upgrading teaching com- 

 petence in the sciences has long been recognized and well supported 

 through National Science Foundation grants. More recently, Fed- 

 eral support has been provided for teacher-training institutes in stip- 

 ulated social sciences and the humanities at elementary and second- 

 ary levels. Conservation is not among the stipulated areas. 



Although these programs have had a salutary effect on the im- 

 provement of teaching generally, they have, I believe, endangered 

 the very existence of the few inservice conservation education pro- 

 grams existing in America. Teachers faced with the alternative of 

 paying fees and living costs to attend a conservation workshop or 

 receiving a stipend for attending a fee-free institute in their subject 

 matter field are strongly inclined to elect the latter course. A drastic 

 drop in enrollment at summer conservation workshops for teachers 

 has developed since Federal support for institutes was initiated. 



There is little doubt that present Federal programs, which omit 



