Genesis of Environmental Education in John Dewey and Paulo Freire and the Current Perspectives: What's New?

Thinking about the socio-environmental problem has become an indispensable task of education. In this sense, there are many perspectives that surround current environmental education, based on a plurality of thoughts and tendencies. Nevertheless, there is a clear shift towards an educational systemic approach. In spite of being considered as new, many ideas spread today have their premises based on the Philosophy of Education, albeit veiled. Thus, this article aims to reflect the elements present in the thoughts of John Dewey and Paulo Freire that can be considered as precursors of the genesis of critical environmental education from a comparative study. Structured in analytical topics about the relationship between environment and education in the scope of Modernity and Postmodernity, as well as in the framework of the works of the mentioned authors and the current perspectives, the study points out that the emerging theories of the XXI century are not unpublished, but adjections reflections that have been discussed throughout the ages.