Social education on extreme natural events in view of extreme floods and landslides in Poland

This research article addresses the debate on the need for broad geography education about natural hazards in the schooling period. It points out the necessity to develop the ability to understand and recognize the hazard and the attitude which allows to take responsible decisions prior to, in the face of and following an extreme natural event. The article makes a reference to studies on environment perception. It contains the results of works whose objective was to understand social awareness of dangerous natural events and the role of geography education at school in its development.

The most important results of analysis of school curriculum (describing general guidelines of geography education at school), study programmes, textbooks and geography atlases were presented as the major sources of obtaining information by young people. It also includes the results of surveys conducted among high school students in Warsaw in 2006/07 which refer to the perception of dangerous events, knowledge of them and attitude towards them before and after. The obtained results were related to the reform of education system of 1999, whose objective was to raise the level of social education.