Being based on the commitment to the life quality of children as related to nature and bearing in mind the challenges of an environmental education to be guaranteed as another human right, the research aimed at the way children of Comunidade das Pedras (Teresópolis, in the State of Rio de Janeiro) relate among them as well as with nature, both in their family nucleuses and at school. On the one hand, the chief aim was to investigate from the perspective of a rural community how children from the country envisage this relation, considering that some contact with nature is already guaranteed to them. On the other hand, the aim was to investigate how the school acknowledges this local reality and works based on this local reality. The theoretical basis was the articulation of three reference sources: Felix Guattari’s concept of the three ecologies and its influence on the current discussion of environmental education; Boaventura Sousa Santos’ sociology of absences and emergencies; and the fight for the right to life and for a healthy environment from the perspective of education in human rights. Beginning with an ethnographic inspiration, an immersion was conducted in different contexts, interviews with teachers, group activities with the students and documental analysis. We are convinced that, in spite of the plentiful nature of the context in which the research was conducted, the two-part relationship between culture and nature which we have built based on the western civilization, is contributing to the strengthening of an anthropocentric culture that separates human beings from their surroundings, thus isolating them from other species and cultivating destructive attitudes towards anything that lives. In spite of environmental topics being more present at school and the fact that teachers have declared its importance, the incorporation of such topics to pedagogic practices is still very uncertain. That, in turn, points to the monocultural nature of school and the necessity of revising the importance of nature to the all-inclusive development of children.