On April 3, Yichang’s Education Bureau organizes the Education Bureaus of Yiling District and Xiling District and Yichang’s Academy of Educational Sciences to hold a special meeting, deciding to build ecological civilization into Yichang’s local course of Growing Up in Yichang, to be taught in the city’s urban and rural kindergartens and primary and secondary schools in fall term of this year.

　　At present, the Municipal Education Bureau plans to unite the departments of environmental protection, urban management, housing construction, and science and technology, to set up a textbook compiling committee to focus exclusively on the compiling. The contents of ecological civilization will be divided into five parts as separate editions to fit into the five phases of kindergarten, primary school lower grade, primary school senior grade, junior high school, and senior high school. And the contents, based on the textbook The Little Ecological Citizen used in Yiling District, will be enriched by the addition of fresh cases of the city’s ecological civilization construction. The printing work is scheduled to be completed in August this year, and the textbooks will be handed out to students in all the urban and rural kindergartens and primary and secondary schools of the city at the beginning of the fall term this year. They will be used circularly to ensure the full coverage of ecological civilization courses and teaching materials.

　　To promote the development of ecological civilization education in all types of schools, the Municipal Education Bureau is working hard to formulate the Implementation Opinions on Further Strengthening the Education of Ecological Civilization in Primary and Secondary Schools (Kindergartens) in Yichang, to clarify the educational objectives, basic principles, educational content and work measures, and to specify requirements in areas such as curriculum implementation, activity operation, social practice and home-school collaboration so that the students can learn by heart the idea of ecological civilization and put it into action.

　　The bureau will hold a series of theme practice activities of ecological civilization education for the students according to their actual conditions. It will popularize ecological civilization through such activities as knowledge contests and creation competitions on ecological environment protection, and coordinate institutions with the function of ecological civilization education such as cultural and cultural institutions, natural scenic spots, mine factories and companies in the city to establish ecological environmental protection practice bases for the students. And it will also work with volunteer service organizations such as “Three Gorges Ants” to extensively carry out the voluntary service activity Protecting Our Mother River and extend it to families and the whole society through “A big hand in a small hand” activity, promoting an overall improvement of the citizens’ ecological civilization awareness. (Reporter: Huang Chunmei; Trainee Reporter: Li Yang; Correspondent: Pan Lianwei)