Environmental Aspects in the Content of Historical Education

The article analyses the processes of content transformations in the context of educational reform: the implementation of the New Ukrainian School concept and higher education, which outline the key issues of optimising the structure and content of the historical educational field of knowledge. The basis for these processes is the modernised State Standard of Basic Secondary Education and transformations in the content of professional training in higher education. The authors note that certain content transformations of the history curricula are underway, filled with new cross-cutting lines that include the issue of environmental education, the development of knowledge competencies in environmental protection and issues in the «human-nature» problem field. A special place in this context belongs to the development of cross-cutting knowledge of the history and impact of human activity on nature, land, rivers and seas, flora and fauna, climate, etc. The authors describe the main components of the Concept of Environmental Education in Ukraine (2001) and highlight its principles: comprehensiveness, continuity, and dissemination among the population, taking into account individual professional interests, incentives, and peculiarities of social and territorial groups to preserve the national natural landscape. Modern environmental/ «green» education is an ongoing and meaningful process of forming an environmental outlook, environmental awareness and culture in all segments of the population, social groups and society as a whole. It is the process of mastering a range of knowledge (historical, mathematical, natural, etc.) about the laws of functioning, life of all living things, ecological systems and the role of humans in preserving the natural environment; the process of individual environmental education and training, mastering professional knowledge and skills necessary for environmental protection and preservation of the fundamentals of natural landscapes. The purpose of the article is to study the content features of historical education through the prism of the ecological worldview of man, its genesis in understanding his active influence on nature in the course of history. The authors come to the conclusion that it is important to introduce environmental education into the content of all disciplines of secondary and higher education.