Using Role Play to Teach Overpopulation to Basic Science Students: A Way Forward for Environmental Sustainability

Abstract

Population is a major source of environmental degradation and it impacts primarily on the environment through the use of natural resources and production of wastes with its attendant health problems. The study examined population growth and overpopulation in Nigeria and its impact on the environment. To achieve environmental sustainability, the paper stressed the need for intensification of environmental education in Nigerian schools using Basic Science at the Junior secondary school level in order to ‘catch them young’. The paper advocated the use of role play, a method seen as one of the best ways to enable pupils in the classroom share in something of the reality of issues in the real world beyond the school, as a good strategy to impact environmental culture into the young ones. By so doing, the children will acquire relevant environmental skills, attitude and interest that will spur them into action towards maintaining a sustainable environment. The paper also made some recommendations on ways to combat environmental degradation among which is that basic science teachers should effectively teach the environmental topics/elements infused into the basic science curriculum to enable students acquire environmental knowledge, skills and attitudes for environmental sustainability.

Key words: Environmental sustainability, overpopulation, Basic Science, role-play