This article deals with the important issue of environmental awareness amongst youth in times of climate crisis. Environmental awareness has been measured basing on the currently dominant division into anthropocentrism and biocentrism, the main two positions on the place of man in nature, the value of nature, including its moral significance and the assessment of human impact on environmental safety. The results come from surveys conducted in 2018 and 2019 in Poland (in the city of Bydgoszcz) on high school students (approximately 18 years old). The research presents young people’s opinions on environmental protection, the role of man in relation to nature (identified as biocentric or anthropocentric), and the threats associated with the climate crisis. We also analyse how environmental awareness is influenced by the content of media messages. Our results show that the surveyed students declare biocentric/anti-anthropocentric beliefs more often than anthropocentrism, and this tendency was reinforced by the growing presence of discussions surrounding climate change and related threats in public discourse.

Opening education – intercultural and pro-environmental education for the future?

This article is aimed at presenting the main assumptions of the opening education in the context of the need to develop regional, intercultural and pro-environmental education. The reflections and diagnoses presented in the text draw on both the author’s research and teaching experience, as well as on a critical view of educational policy developed in Poland. The author asks if opening education can be used as a tool for the democratizing and ecologisation of knowledge, shaping an open society and social imagination. In the context of late capitalism, the dominant neoliberal rationality, the multiculturalism of the world, the climate and environmental crisis, an important aspect of the discussion is the diagnosis of the need to practice opening education to the future.