JOHN R. DUNKELY
Australian Speleological Federation

Educational practices in Australia have changed more in the last decade than in the previous fifty years, and much more emphasis is now placed on personal and social development, on close ties with the community outside the school, and on outdoor education in its broadest sense. The results include growth of caving as a sport, demand for adventure and wilderness experience, and a need for improved interpretation services and facilities.  These changes in education demand changes in management practices related to natural resources including caves and karst, and some suggestions to provoke discussion are included.

I have been asked to speak to you today about changes in education and the implications this might have for management of caves and related resources.  While some of you would know of my interest in speleology, I can also claim to have seen most of Australia's tourist caves, and several dozen overseas as well, so I do have some understanding of the problems of implementing some of the suggestions which I shall be making.

I would like to start with an overview of the kind of school we would no doubt all remember, compare it with what goes on these days, and explain why and how this might affect your planning and management.

Most of us here have probably been educated in a system, derived philosophically from English grammar and comprehensive schools with an overlay of American egalitarianism.  You queued for a measured and pre-determined allotment of English, Mathematics, science, Geography or whatever, studied the subjects for a prescribed period, passed the prescribed examinations, and perhaps proceeded to college or university to follow the same procedure for another 3, 4 or 5 years.  Competitive sport was important. at least for the talented few, but was quite divorced from the academic curriculum.

In this system, physical education was something you did on Wednesday afternoon. bushwalking or camping was something you did with the Scouts, and the environment was a trendy area which you and some like-minded friends dabbled with in your spare time, if you'd ever heard of it, of course.  Rock climbing, caving and trekking in Nepal were weekend or vacation pursuits for the unsociable or eccentric.

The one thing which all these pursuits had in common was that they were separate from "real" - in inverted commas - real education.  They were extracurricular. extra-mural.  so there was a limited range of academically oriented subjects, each studied with a single textbook, each separate from one another and from the world outside.

Well, things have changed, and at this stage, instead of continuing to ramble incoherently as educational practitioners are liable to. I want to pause to paint a few vignettes.  I'm sure you'll forgive me if many of these are from Canberra.  Not only are these the ones with which I am most familiar, but for several reasons Canberra's school system Is now possibly the most progressive, flexible and innovative in Australia. Just how progressive, flexible and innovative you might be able to gather from the fact that one school - a government school in fact - offers for credit such delights as Body Massage and Sexual Awareness 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 & 61

First, I want you to imagine yourself where I suppose I should be at this very moment, at Weston Creek High School in Canberra.  It is a government school, not the most modern, but not atypical either.  physically it looks much as you'd expect a school to look; 1 3-storey building, assembly hall, gymnasium, canteen, corridors, classrooms ....

But schools are people - what are they doing?  well, there's a group of 20 or so grilling sausages over the barbecue.  The Bushwalking Club is holding a meeting to plan arrangements for a day walk to the Brindabellas on Saturday, and a 4-day trip to Colong Caves during the May vacation next week.  One small class is building a canoe. another class has gone for a walk up nearby Mt. Taylor as part of their geography studies and two classes are at the camp at Sturt Island on the Murrumbidgee. There's an Ibo gentleman from Nigeria talking to our African Cultural Studies class.  There are about 70 students using the school's library resource centre, 30 are watching a videotape of last week's 'wildlife Australia' and maybe 15 are down at Woolworth's interviewing the manager on aspects of consumer products.  One of the students is away sitting on a committee of the Schools Authority, our equivalent of your Department of Education, investigating changes to the Year 10 Certificate. The principal is in Sydney interviewing new teachers.  At a table in the foyer, four students are collecting money for a school disco which they organized entirely on their own.  There are 2 or 3 parents talking to teachers about their children's progress.  Tonight the school will be open until 10.00 p.m.. because it operates evening recreational classes too.  A lot of classrooms seem to be empty.
 

Fig. 17  Recent changes in education in Australia,

It may not be your traditional image of a school, but education is going on nevertheless.  We would like to believe that students are working, and working hard too, not because they feel they are forced to, but because they enjoy it.  And that this freer state of mind makes learning much easier and more remembered.  The "old" and "New" approaches to education are summarised in Fig. 17.

1. Many schools in Canberra at least, offer courses or activities related to caving and outdoor pursuits which carry credit for school certificates or even tertiary matriculation.  St. Edmunds College offers Caving 1, implying there is more to come.  This course is registered with the ACT Schools Authority and appears on the student's school certificates.
Weston Creek High School offers Bushwalking, Caving, and also Rock Climbing. Philip and Dickson Colleges have karst geomorphology as a half-term unit in their geography courses, Hawker College offers majors in Recreation and in Wilderness Activities, including canoeing, cross-country skiing and outdoor survival skills.  All these courses are justified in terms of their potential for personal development, their effect on self- confidence, team cooperation and so on.  It is instructive to note that in a recent schools cartography competition, the prize-winning entry was a map of Dog Leg Cave at Wee Jasper. (See also Appendices I and II).

2. All state education systems operate field centres which combine studies of the environment, geography and science with recreational activities.  For example, the Queensland Department of Education's Outdoor Education Centre at Boonah operates a highly successful wilderness experience programme which combines environmental education, camping and adventure in a wilderness setting.

3. Case studies of environmental issues and management conflicts involving cave and karst resources are creeping into the educational literature, not only in environmental studies but in geography, social studies and politics.  The Colong and Bungonia issues have been used not only as studies of environmental conflict but as examples of the workings of pressure groups, grass roots democracy and political decision-making, even of personal and organizational ethics.  One of the best documented examples, of course, is that of Mt. Etna and I know of at least two publications applying this issue as a case study in the context of geography and environmental education.

4. School expeditions are replacing traditional organized tours as major contributions to learning, and there is already an Australian schools Expeditionary Society.  Significant research and exploratory work has been carried out by British senior school students on the caves of Ireland, Iceland and north Norway.  There is no reason to doubt that remote areas of Australia, Niugini and South-East Asia could receive similar attention from today's relatively affluent senior students.
 

IMPLICATIONS FOR MANAGEMENT

Educational values per se seem to have been neglected or perhaps misunderstood in discussions of cave management and classification of caves, if not in resource management generally.  Certainly this has been the case in traditional tourist cave inspections.  I acknowledge the special attention paid to school parties in such centres as Jenolan but suggest that these meet only one or two of the needs outlined in Figure 18.  The National Heritage Assessment Study conducted by the Australian speleological Federation made no specific provision for educational values in the assessment significance of caves.  None of the cave classification schemes which I have seen, including my own early one of 1966, makes particular provision for education.

Certain characteristics of cave and karst resources are recognized as being of educational value, of course, e.9. morphological forms, cave decorations, and special features such as the bone deposits in Victoria Cave.  Many cave reserves have nature trails, and some, not enough, have small visitor  centres.  Unguided inspections of the type available at Yarrangobilly and Wombeyan have good potential for education in the hands of a sympathetic teacher and sound interpretation materials.  However, the educational value of easy "adventure" caves, perceived wilderness experiences and expeditions to remote areas has not been generally recognized by management authorities.

Figure l8 contains a summary of the kinds of management thinking, principles and action required to meet education-oriented objectives. Although many of these involve no more than a re-appraisal of management attitudes, I do feel that most of our tourist cave areas have grossly inadequate visitor information centres.  The 'show them' approach referred to cannot be adopted if there is not even so much as a simple map of the cave on display or freely available.  It is a sad reflection on bureaucratic management attitudes that the only displays in the Grand Arch at Jenolan are three carefully illuminated copies of the Acts and Regulations relating to the caves.  The only displayed cave map is in caves House and therefore is seen by only a tiny proportion of visitors, and was in any event generously provided by the guides and not by management.

The suggested re-orientation of management thinking and practice does not have to be justified solely on the grounds of catering for school parties.  I have mentioned earlier how educationists have come to see the community itself as being part of the educational process.  As well, there has been a significant blurring of boundaries between education, recreation and work.  Many of the principles which I have shown as representing education-oriented objectives are the emerging needs and characteristics of the whole population. the so-called 'learning society'.

Finally, some thoughts for the future.  we now have a respectable number of national parks and recreation reserves as well as urban parks and playing fields.  But why this oft-expressed aim of preservation for future generations if we are not clear about the reasons?  Just as we had trouble convincing legislators of the need for nature conservation, so we are having difficulty understanding and convincing others of the need for conservation of another environment, the human environment, which is no loss fragile and susceptible.  I think it was Xavier Herbert who advanced the thesis that Australia missed its opportunity in the 1920's to become a great nation.  There is a strong empirical case for asserting that four major wars. a devastating depression and thirty years spent in material recovery, blighted the spirit, self-image. and aesthetic experiences of three generations of Australians.

Teachers, rangers and cave guides all have a vested professional interest in promoting both nature and human conservation measures, and finding ways of merging the two in such a way that conservation of the natural environment truly contributes to a betterment of the human environment.
 

SUMMARY

1. The major thrust of recent curriculum change in education has been towards:

- An overlapping and integration of education with work and with recreation/leisure.

- Much more education outdoors, away from the school and in areas not traditionally regarded as school work.

Fig. 18  Market needs and characteristics.
 

9. AROUSAL OF CURIOSITY & SENSE OP WONDER

10. SIMILAR DIMENSIONS OF ANTICIPATION - TRAVEL - ON SITE EXPERIENCE - TRAVEL HOME - RECOLLECTION

11. "SH0W THEM" ETC.

- An emphasis on learning by finding and doing . . . ',It is always the person who sees, discovers, explores or experiences a situation for himself, rather than being told about it, who gets the most out of it.  such learning is faster, is more deeply impressed on the mind, and is retained longer."

2. As a result there will be continuing increase in usage of caves and karst resources, and much of this increase will come from a younger age group.  Remoteness or physical difficulty of access will not be a protection for caves. indeed it may act as an attraction.  There is a huge latent demand for adventure and wilderness activities both in schools and in the population at large.

3. Management authorities must plan for a range of users of their resources for educational purposes.  A suggested categorization of such users is:

a. Conventional tourist tours with an educational interpretation and possibly a small 'adventure' component for young students.

b. "Discovery" tours in wild caves, guided and unguided.

c. Wilderness tours of longer duration. unguided.

d. Expedition-type forays, e.g. to Nullarbor. Tasmania.

4. There are rights and responsibilities to be observed on all sides. Teachers have a responsibility to plan definite educational aims in bringing students to your facilities.  You have a corresponding responsibility to provide appropriate facilities for these aims to be met, ranging from simple access to sophisticated interpretation services.

5. "Take nothing but photographs, leave nothing at all".  I see no educational value in the practice of giving out or selling samples of fossils or cave decorations.

6. An old guides' adage goes something like this:

"Show them what you're going to show them show them, and show them what you've shown them".

I believe you will work better with educational groups if you amend this slightly:

"Help them find out what you're going to show them, help them find out as you're showing them, and help them find out more about what you've shown them"

7. Management practices will have to change to provide for education- oriented objectives.  These needs and characteristics will, however, come to describe the whole population in the future and not just traditional school education groups.