Contention on the Characterization of Environmental
Consciousness to Children and their Childhood Self-concept
According to John Locke’s ”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 ”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, 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 ”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 “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’ self-concept in the context
of the Eriksonian psychosocial development theory anecdotes contends the
cutting edge of these important tenets: First , self-concept
development takes place according to the ‘epigenetic principle’i.e. one part arises out of another and has its own time of
ascendency that does not entirely replace earlier components ;second , in every stage of life there is an interaction of
opposites- a conflict between a ‘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.