During a social and historic moment at which ecology, sustainability and environmental education have lost the status of emergent themes and slogans to become essential factors to human life, an important aspect to investigate is "what our schools are teaching to their students in terms of person-environment relationships". Taking this question as its generating point, this paper dedicates special attention to contact with the nature. Avoiding examination of subjects taught in class, we opted to discuss this theme by evaluating the schools' environment, analyzing their space occupation, and users' perception. The investigation used multi-methods involving: technical inspection (architectural survey and documentation), behavioral observation (traces and mapping), questionnaires, interviews and thematic-drawing. Since the contact with the environment is fundamental to child development, schools for children up to 7 years old in Natal-RN were studied, and a dichotomy between speech and practice was verified in the definition and use of the school environment.
children education; school environment; nature; child-environment relationship; environmental psychology