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\begin{document}

\title{Walks on the Trails: A Reflective Thought Towards Environmental
Consciousness in the Context of Children and Childhood}



\author[1]{Daryl Niko Cempron}%
\affil[1]{Central Mindanao University}%


\vspace{-1em}



  
  \date{May 29, 2024}


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\selectlanguage{english}
\begin{abstract}
This reflective paper elucidates the thought-making process of the
author in understanding and putting into context the environmental
consciousness of childhood and the self-concept. The axiom that can be
yielded in the paper is the quiet role of childhood in facing the
environmental challenges the world faces for the longest time.%
\end{abstract}%



\sloppy


\textbf{Walks on the Trails: A Reflective Thought Towards Environmental
Consciousness in the Context of Children and Childhood}

By:

Daryl Niko L. Cempron

Early Childhood Instructor

Department of Professional Education

Central Mindanao University

University Town, Musuan, Maramag, 8714 Bukidnon, Philippines

f.darylniko.cempron@cmu.edu.ph

ORCID: 0000-0003-0956-9861

Web of Science ID: ABI-4415-2022

Truth, at times, elucidates multiple forms --- the version of the one
who sees from the outside, and the version of the one who dares to
search on its inner. Nonetheless, the ears hear what the eyes only see.
It's not always what it seems. Sometimes the more you look, the less you
see. I thought the roadmap toward clean energy is singularly magnified
by the energy sectors or professionals behind the studies and practices
of electricity, but I was wrong. I thought what has been done about
climate action is already what it is and that the implementation of the
programs is just the problem.

As I let myself submerge into the surface of understanding these
subjects, it appears that I miscomprehended it all along. I have read
the books they have read, they have written, and tasted the words they
have said, but I had difficulty finding the answer. I have listened to
their stories and put myself into their characters, but still, the
answer was nowhere to be found. I have done the things they wanted me to
try, and no answer was schemed out. It was like walking the trails with
so many picturesque views that I couldn't choose one. Then, as I
contemplated the whispers of the wild wind in the climate of the time, I
began to ask: \emph{What answer do I want to find out? What question am
I trying to find an answer to? What kind of answer am I trying to search
for?} Endless critical questions, at least for me, as whatever outcomes
I would hold in my hands by the end of this long-extended fleet would
determine the endeavors I would devote my life to, all in the name of
social reformations.

Indeed, for someone who has been writing some academic papers already, I
forgot the word \emph{'multi-dimensional'} . The universe must have had
a sense of humor that hit me to a superlative degree. I often use such
terms in my lectures, yet I overlooked that it is both
the\emph{question} and the \emph{solution} to social reformations I
always elucidate to my students, starting with transitioning to clean
energy and thereby climate action. And so, I kept on envisioning,
spending long hours of introspecting, feeling, and remembering, and
there, in the deepest core of my mind where thoughts and reality meet in
between and imaginations and pieces of truth were floating, waiting for
someone's fascination, I saw what I never thought my eyes would see ---
an unlikely answer that marveled every spectacle of my beliefs, views
and the entirety of my persona: the \emph{children and childhood} .

At the crossroads of my life as a hopeful academician, I am constantly
looking for an answer; and in the pursuit of finding this answer, I
begin to imagine what the answer would be, what it would look like or
sound like resulting in creating an expectation, prediction or
predetermination, tantamount to preparing myself for a battle in the
realm of the intellectual aristocracy. Social responsibility to the
environment vis-\selectlanguage{ngerman}à-vis the use of clean and sustainable energy sources
does not emerge the moment the child reaches adolescence, rather it must
start the moment they start going to school and are formally educated.
What if the is well structured that by the end of the day the
characterization of simply taking good care of our planet is unseen and
unspoken by the child. After over 9 years of insightful observations of
how the giants in the academe work, some of them try to look for answers
through readings, some thorough testing, and some through calculating
the responses of people, with predetermined answers already framed in
their great minds. But after careful assimilation to the learning
materials that Reboot generously shared, I realized that sometimes the
answer is an answer that a researcher never thinks would be the answer.
The particular work that I want to do at this point in the arena of
child development, is a work that edifies environmental education by
integrating renewable energy transition to the children which seeks
neither to prove or disprove as we have plenty of those already but to
apply and create solutions. And though reality has never been universal
but relative and is multiple, this work freely walks and accepts every
piece of reality found along the way. The scientific community where I'm
standing on the same ground may find this odd and perhaps unacceptable
but in all that there was, in anything that there is, and in everything
that will be, my basic axiom has always been naturalistic whether any
scholars accepts or rejects.

Contention on the Characterization of Environmental Consciousness to
Children and their Childhood Self-concept

According to John Locke's \emph{''tabula rasa''} theory, which holds
that people are born without mental content and that all knowledge comes
from experience or perception, as the kid approaches the world after
conception, the senses gradually engage as they process objects
(Duschinsky, 2012). In the early stages of life, it is a well-known
natural phenomenon that children are unable to make decisions about
things, such as the precise words to use in communicating and to use in
describing, and labeling things around them. However, what is certain in
this phase is the capability of feelings because it is the emotion that
fuels their existence.

The life instinct and the death instinct, or good and bad, love and
hate, creativity and destruction, are fundamental conflicts that Klein
(2016) believed human infants are continually involved in. Infants
naturally choose pleasurable sensations over unpleasant ones as the ego
progresses away from disintegration and toward integration. Infants
group their experiences into positions or methods of interacting with
both internal and exterior things to deal with this dichotomy of good
and terrible feelings. Additionally, because the need to survive is
innate and no less important to a child, the youngster will express a
particular type of \emph{''demand''} that they believe is vital for
their existence. This demand can be in a form of security and protection
as the realities of the broken world with a broken environment are
unconsciously traversing the thought-making processes. The idea that can
be drawn here is purely the gratification of this demand which leads to
the question, \emph{how can parents gratify this when they are already
living and experiencing environmental degradation in various forms and
shapes, and contributing to a collective solution is already just an
option rather than a responsibility?}

Characteristics toward oneself and the surroundings are mostly shaped by
social and cultural circumstances, particularly childhood experiences.
People who don't have their fundamental needs for love and compassion
met as children grow up with a basic hatred toward others and the wider
world and experience basic anxiety. Using one of the three main related
styles---going toward people, moving against people, or moving away from
people---which put social and environmental duties on the line---people
can fight basic anxiety, according to Horney's (2013) theory. Normal
people are free to employ any of these ways to interact with others, but
neurotics are forced to firmly rely on only one. A \emph{''fundamental
intrapsychic conflict''} is created by compulsive behavior and may take
the shape of an idealized self-image or self-hatred. The idealized
self-image is expressed as a \emph{``neurotic search for glory, neurotic
claims or neurotic pride''} . Self-hatred is expressed as either
self-contempt or alienation from self.

The comprehension of the informants' \emph{self-concept} in the context
of the Eriksonian psychosocial development theory anecdotes contends the
cutting edge of these important tenets: \emph{First} , self-concept
development takes place according to the \emph{`epigenetic
principle'i.e. one part arises out of another and has its own time of
ascendency that does not entirely replace earlier components}
;\emph{second} , in every stage of life there is an interaction of
opposites- a conflict between a \emph{`syntonic' (harmonious) element
and a `dystonic' (disruptive)} element (Erikson, 1993).

Many factors interact with one another and affect how the developing
child develops into a unique individual during childhood and in the
context of the environment. The point is that environmental education
for children, which I keep bringing up in this paper, goes beyond simply
imparting information to them about clean energy and climate action;
rather, it sensitively works via the development of their character.
According to this argument, education won't be wasted after the persona
and early self-concept are defined.

\textbf{References:}

Duschinsky, R. (2012). ``Tabula Rasa'' and Human Nature. Philosophy,
509-529.

Erikson, E. (1993). Childhood and Society reissued. W.W. Norton \&
Company, Inc.

Horney, K. (2013). New ways in psychoanalysis (Vol. 16). Routledge.

Klein, M. (2016). Lectures on Technique by Melanie Klein: Edited with
critical review by John Steiner.

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