Possibilities for Environmental Education at the Department of Geography Aleš Ruda, Eduard Hofmann Department of Geography, Faculty of Education, Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic e-mail: ruda@ped.muni.cz, hofmann@ped.muni.cz Abstract Environmental education has been considered as a necessary requirement for present university education, because it involves an effort to teach about natural environments function and how human activities can manage their behaviour and ecosystems in order to live sustainably. However, the world is rapidly becoming a more complex place. As a result, we must expect greater academic achievement from our students today to be adequately prepared for the challenges of tomorrow. The Faculty of Education offers many subjects dealing with the environment. On one hand they are understood as a tool how to protect the nature – the ecosystem approach – on the other hand it is considered as an environment with human and nature relations – the geosystem approach. Geography subjects are more focused on the landscape synthesis. Nowadays Standards for Environmental Education are being developed at the Department of Geography as a response to curriculum revision. Key words: environmental education, fieldwork, subject integrity, environmental surveys Introduction The Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports (MEYS) has been promoting education for environmental care since 1960’s; it was known as an ecological education in the 1980s, and now it is named environmental education. From the beginning it was aimed to reinforce an interest in organisms and nature and so lead to responsible behaviour to the world, people and nature (MEYS, 2008). Environmental education and enlightenment (EEE) appeared in the Czech legislature in 1992 and since 1998 administrative regions have the duty to create conception of EEE and establish regional integrated systems of EEE. In 2008 the Strategy of education for sustainable development in the Czech Republic was accepted on the basis of the Strategy of European economic commission of UN in the sphere of education for sustainable development (accepted in 2005 in Vilnius). It is among others aimed at an understanding of integrity and the relationships between the economic, social and environmental development of an aspect on local, regional and global level. Simultaneously it differentiates objectives, contents, methods and means of education according to different student ages and degree of individuality. Environmental education is set in many school documents in its form but considering the short period of availability in school education it has unfortunately been split into many subjects isolated from each other. There is also the possibility to create a new subject (Environmental education or Environment) but even this is not a novelty because many schools have already been teaching it for a couple of years. However it is named and whatever its varied content, it should teach our students to ask questions, search for solutions and alternatives, argue, discuss, communicate and especially be able to choose fundamental information from the number of reports which should be helpful in further action and behaviour (Hynek, 2000).