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

departments of universities, museums, and conservation organizations. The National Wildlife Federation, with its Schoolyard Habitats certification program, is a leader in encouraging the creation of hands-on, outdoor learning opportunities that cannot be duplicated in the traditional classroom setting.

Mary Rivkin, a professor of early childhood education at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and one of the most thoughtful and prolific academics working in this arena, cites the biophilia hypothesis, as well as the work of attention-restoration researchers Stephen and Rachel Kaplan, particularly their work on “nearby nature” and its wide range of benefits for children and adults. Many preschools “have excellent outdoor play spaces because early childhood teachers have a long and sturdy tradition of having plants and animals accessible to children and incorporating outdoor play into their daily activities,” according to Rivkin. She describes the typical greening efforts and the ideal: “Schools usually start with small projects, although some schools do major work, especially in new construction.” They might begin with butterfly gardens, bird feeders and baths, tree planting, or native plant gardens. Moving on to larger projects, they can create ponds, nature trails, or restore streams. Ecologically valuable projects are valued over beautification. Pump-operated or natural streams can offer water play. “Dirt and sand must be for digging as well as planting; clay can often be found for making things. Some plants must be for picking,” she advises. “Seeing such things is only part of learning about them. Touching, tasting, smelling, and pulling apart are also vital. Shrubs and trees for climbing are the real thing . . .” Assuming a secure perimeter around the schoolyard, children also need private spaces: bushes, tall grass, a cluster of rocks. “A circle of 6-foot pines is a forest to young children.”

As Rivkin points out, the task of helping the 108,000 schools in the United States “green their grounds” is daunting, even with the widening web of institutional support, including conferences sponsored by the American Horticulture Society, the North American Association for Environmental Education, the Society for Ecological Research, the Brooklyn and Cleveland Botanical Gardens, and others. Increasingly, preschools and child-care facilities are housed in office buildings, a trend that undermines the burgeoning schoolyard habitat movement. And in public-school settings, “the bleakness of asphalt and close-mown grass in outdoor areas presents a major challenge to outdoor nature experiences.” Nonetheless, the schoolyard habitats movement “is literally gaining ground.”

Numerous studies document the benefits to students from school grounds that are ecologically diverse and include free-play areas, habitat for wildlife, walking trails, and gardens. Two major studies, “Gaining Ground” and “Grounds for Action,” were conducted in Canada, one in the Toronto school district, the other in British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, and Nova Scotia. Researchers there found that children who experience school grounds with diverse natural settings are more physically active, more aware of nutrition, more civil to one another, and more creative. The greening of school grounds resulted in increased involvement by adults and members of the nearby community. The Canadian researchers also found that green school grounds enhanced learning, compared with conventional turf and asphalt school grounds; that the more varied green play spaces suited a wider array of students and promoted social inclusion, regardless of gender, race, class, or intellectual ability; and they were safer.

Another benefit of the green school grounds is their impact on teachers. The Canadian researchers found that teachers expressed renewed enthusiasm for teaching. “When I am teaching outside, I feel excited again. . . . I realize that I still have a lot of passion for teaching,” said one teacher. In an era of increased teacher burnout, the impact of green schools and outdoor education on teachers should not be underestimated. Teachers, too, deserve exposure to the restorative qualities of nature.

There is another movement that tends to ebb and flow during bad and good economic times: the ecoschool, which is a school initially designed for and dedicated to using nature studies as a touchstone in its curriculum. The concept has been popular for decades in Europe. There are 2,800 ecoschools in the United Kingdom and Scotland. The concept attracts Dave Massey, regional coordinator of the California Regional Environmental Education Community, a new state office. Massey says school districts should protect every square inch of natural landscape adjacent to schools, not only for environmental reasons, but also for educational gain. He recommends, “We [need to] put some thought into the planning of every new school so that the surrounding nature is available and used.” As an elementary-school principal, Massey prized a stream near his school as an outdoor lab: “I had kids out there twice a week, studying the cottonwoods, planting native plants.”

At the cutting edge of ecoschool thinking are foundation-to-roof “green” schools, constructed with, say, compacted straw bales and plaster, an increasingly popular low-cost alternative for building highly insulated walls. The school itself becomes a lesson in ecology.

Schools, zoos, botanical gardens, natural history museums, and other educational facilities may lack the space or staffing to become ecoschools, but they could farm out the job. What if farms and ranches were to become the new schoolyards, offering lessons and hands-on experience in ecology, culture, and agriculture? The Montessori education movement has revived the idea of “farm schools” by tapping into the founder’s original vision of adolescent students spending part of their year operating a working farm. A government-sponsored program in Norway suggests the potential of a larger-scale approach. Since 1996, Norwegian farmers and public school teachers have worked together to create new curricula taught in classrooms and on farms. “Our purpose has been mainly to get children out of the classrooms and into the experience of caring for nature. Norway is a land of incredible, unspoiled natural beauty, but the children aren’t out there,” says Linda Jolly, an educational researcher at the Norwegian Lifescience University, associated with the national Living School and regional projects called the Farm as a Pedagogical Resource. “Our other main purpose is to maintain living farms.” Working with children gives Norwegian farmers “new