Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder, Louv, Richard [best free novels txt] 📗

plans to in the future.”

—Martha Farrell Erickson, Ph.D., co-chair of the

Presidential Initiative on Children and founding director

of the Children, Youth, and Family Consortium,

University of Minnesota

LAST CHILD IN THE WOODS

ALSO BY RICHARD LOUV

Fly-Fishing for Sharks: An American Journey

The Web of Life

FatherLove

101 Things You Can Do for Our Children’s Future

Childhood’s Future

America II

LAST CHILD IN THE WOODS

Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder

Updated and Expanded

RICHARD LOUV

Published by

Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill

Post Office Box 2225

Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27515-2225

a division of

Workman Publishing

225 Varick Street

New York, New York 10014

© 2005, 2008 by Richard Louv. All rights reserved.

Revised and updated edition, Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, March 2008.

First edition published by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill in 2005.

Printed in the United States of America.

Published simultaneously in Canada by Thomas Allen & Son Limited.

Design by Anne Winslow.

The author is grateful to reprint with permission of their authors or publishers excerpts from the following: “New Mexico,” from Phoenix: The Posthumous Papers of D. H. Lawrence, edited by Edward McDonald, copyright 1936 by Frieda Lawrence, copyright renewed 1964 by the estate of the late Frieda Lawrence Ravagli, used by permission of Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. “Kiss Nature Goodbye,” by John Beardsley. “The Need for Nature: A Childhood Right,” by Robin Moore. “Ecstatic Places,” by Louise Chawla. “Views of Nature and Self-Discipline: Evidence from Inner City Children” and “Coping with ADD: The Surprising Connection to Green Play Settings,” by Andrea Faber Taylor, Frances E. Kuo, and William C. Sullivan. The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, by Edmund C. Morris, copyright Putnam, 1979. The author has made every attempt to obtain permission for additional quoted material.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Louv, Richard.

Last child in the woods : saving our children from nature-deficit disorder /

    Richard Louv.—Updated and Expanded

     p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN-13: 978-1-56512-605-3

1. Nature—Psychological aspects. 2. Children and the environment. I. Title.

     BF353.5.N37L68 2008

     155.4′18—dc22                                              2007049665

Last Child in the Woods is available at special discounts when purchased in bulk

for premiums and sales promotions as well as for fund-raising or educational use.

Special editions or book excerpts also can be created to specification.

For details, contact the Special Sales Director at the address below.

Workman Publishing Company, Inc.

225 Varick Street

New York, New York 10014

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For Jason and Matthew

There was a child went forth every day

And the first object he look’d upon, that object he became,

And that object became part of him for the day or a certain part of the day,

Or for many years or stretching cycles of years.

The early lilacs became part of this child,

And grass and white and red morning glories, and white and red clover,

and the song of the phoebe-bird,

And the Third-month lambs and the sow’s pink-faint litter,

and the mare’s foal and the cow’s calf . . .

—WALT WHITMAN

I like to play indoors better ’cause that’s where all the

electrical outlets are.

—A FOURTH-GRADER IN SAN DIEGO

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

INTRODUCTION

PART I : THE NEW RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CHILDREN AND NATURE

1. Gifts of Nature

2. The Third Frontier

3. The Criminalization of Natural Play

PART II: WHY THE YOUNG (AND THE REST OF US) NEED NATURE

4. Climbing the Tree of Health

5. A Life of the Senses: Nature vs. the Know-It-All State of Mind

6. The “Eighth Intelligence”

7. The Genius of Childhood: How Nature Nurtures Creativity

8. Nature-Deficit Disorder and the Restorative Environment

PART III: THE BEST OF INTENTIONS: WHY JOHNNIE AND JEANNIE DON’T PLAY OUTSIDE ANYMORE

9. Time and Fear

10. The Bogeyman Syndrome Redux

11. Don’t Know Much About Natural History: Education as a Barrier to Nature

12. Where Will Future Stewards of Nature Come From?

PART IV: THE NATURE-CHILD REUNION

13. Bringing Nature Home

14. Scared Smart: Facing the Bogeyman

15. Telling Turtle Tales: Using Nature as a Moral Teacher

PART V: THE JUNGLE BLACKBOARD

16. Natural School Reform

17. Camp Revival

PART VI: WONDER LAND: OPENING THE FOURTH FRONTIER

18. The Education of Judge Thatcher: Decriminalizing Natural Play

19. Cities Gone Wild

20. Where the Wild Things Will Be: A New Back-to-the-Land Movement

PART VII: TO BE AMAZED

21. The Spiritual Necessity of Nature for the Young

22. Fire and Fermentation: Building a Movement

23. While It Lasts

NOTES

SUGGESTED READING

INDEX

A FIELD GUIDE TO LAST CHILD IN THE WOODS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

THIS BOOK, LIKE MOST, was a collective effort. My wife, Kathy Frederick Louv, and sons, Jason and Matthew, provided logistical, emotional, and intellectual support; they lived the research, too.

Publisher Elisabeth Scharlatt and literary agent James Levine made the book possible. Elisabeth’s gentle, clear-eyed perspective offered depth for roots and careful pruning of overgrowth. She is a joy to work with. Algonquin’s Amy Gash also offered wise and timely support, as did Craig Popelars, Ina Stern, Brunson Hoole, Michael Taeckens, Aimee Bollenbach, Katherine Ward, and the rest of the Algonquin team. Heavy editorial lifting was shared by my talented friend and virtual brother, Dean Stahl. Invaluable editorial support came from John Shore, Lisa Polikov, and Cheryl Nicchitta, and my editors at the San Diego Union-Tribune, including Bill Osborne, Bernie Jones, Lora Cicalo, Jane Clifford, Karin Winner, and Peter Kaye. For providing timely reality checks: John Johns, David Boe, Larry Hinman, Karen Kerchelich, Rosemary Erickson, R. Larry Schmitt, Melissa Baldwin, Jackie Green, Jon Funabiki, Bill Stothers, Michael Stepner, Susan Bales, Michael Goldstein, Susan White, Bob Laurence, Jeannette De Wyze, Gary Shiebler, Anne Pearse Hocker, Peter Sebring, Janet Fout, Neal Peirce, LaVonne Misner, Melissa Moriarty, and, especially by example, Michael Louv.

While an author traditionally does not thank people quoted in his or her book, accuracy and respect require special thanks to two groups: the teachers, especially John Rick, Brady Kelso, Tina Kafka, David Ward, and Candy Vanderhoff, who encouraged their students to share their thoughts; the students themselves (some of their names have been changed herein); and the hardy band of researchers who have plowed this field in recent years. I