Over the past two decades, public interest in environmental issues has risen dramatically and stories about the environment are regularly featured on the front page of newspapers and are the focus of successful documentary films. Today, environmental education has become an element of many provincial curricula, with the understanding that young people need to learn about and understand how their personal actions affect the natural world around them. Environmental education appears to carry a number of benefits that go beyond learning about environmental issues. These benefits are discussed in this paper. (Contains 2 tables and 3 figures.)