Learning Ourdoors

 

Earlier I posted a blog titled "Kids and Nature," inspired by a book by Richard Louv, which you can read at https://blogger.com/blog/post/edit/previous/623125745868183589/9029692448848 .  The title of the book is "Last Child in the Woods, Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder."  The book was published in 2005, and it stresses the importance of allowing children to interact with nature.  Louv  was talking about nature in the raw--not the carefully manicured, supervised, sanitized versions of nature more of today's children have access to, if they experience nature any way at all except through windows or on television.  I continue to recommend the book.

In this blog, however, I am going to share what has begun to happen in the era of Covid.  With inadequate ventilation in many schools, and challenges of social distancing a classroom of kids, some schools are using the idea of classes out of doors, called "Out Door Learning."  The necessity brought on by Covid fits perfectly with the existing movement, already happening in some schools, to get students out of doors into a natural environment.

For those of us who grew up a generation or two ago, the idea of needing a "movement" to get children out of doors may seem silly.  After all, many of us needed no movement to get outside to play and explore.  The little girl in the photograph at the start of this blog is me.  My father did not ordinarily raise hogs, so one year when he did, they were a novelty to me, and I loved them.  Mother could hardly keep me away, as is obvious, since I was dressed up to go somewhere when this photograph was taken.

Weather was no reason to stay indoors either, as the above photograph of my cousins makes clear.  All seasons were just adjustments in the temperature, as far as we were concerned, and seasonal clothing to accommodate the temperature was all we needed to head outside.

I may have been getting old enough to rake the leaves when this picture was taken, but I wasn't too old to jump into the middle of the pile I had just raked with our dogs.   And, as the leaves make clear, there were trees at our farm for building tree houses, although that was more an activity my brother enjoyed.

Animals were a part of farm life,  with dogs eager to wander in the fields, chickens to learn where eggs come from, calving to learn about birth, the squirt of milk against a bucket a familiar sound, and if you were lucky, a horse to ride.  Even kids like my husband, living in small towns, had some of those things.

Today, rural areas cover 97% of the nation's land but contain only 19.3% of the population, based on 2016 information.  Adults in rural areas had a median age of 51, making them older than the adults in urban areas with a median age of 45.  By age 51, their farm children are likely young adults and probably gone.  According to an article appearing in the New York Times in 1988, "the nation's farm population is its lowest level since before the Civil War.  From 1981 through 1987, the farm population has lost an average of 2.5% annually.  In the previous decade the annual decline was 2.9."

An interesting article in "The Guardian" in England in 2016 describes the same problem of English children being separated from nature.  "More than 1 in 9 children in England have not set foot in a park, forest, beach, or any other natural environment for at least 12 months," the article reported.  Advocates for getting children outside reported that it was the parents that needed convincing.  "In middle class suburbia, it's the parents--how do you tell parents that the time children play freely outside is as important as their French lesson, their ballet lesson and their Mandarin lesson?" 

Some schools in America were already using nature as a classroom prior to Covid, but the need for social distancing and ventilation issues indoors is encouraging more schools to consider outdoor learning, some for the first time, and others in a more expanded way.  Landscape architects across the nation have volunteered to partner with schools in the planning.

One outdoor learning coordinator explained, "My best pitch for getting outside is that it ignites a curiosity in students that we don't necessarily see when they're confined between four walls of their home or in a classroom."  Another teacher reported, "I would say that being outdoors, my experience is students are naturally alive and awake and curious...Covid has really opened that remembrance that we need to be thinking about the Earth in our academics, too."

 

   

Nature's Voice

In past blogs I have shared Isaac's Werner's connection with nature and ways our parents and grand parents and great grandparents predicted the weather by signs that became sayings.  In last week's blog I shared a book that urges the importance of children's exploration of nature.  To my surprise, it touched the emotions of many followers of this blog.  This week I will share some of the comments I received from readers, and some quotes that may surprise you.  The photographs I share in this blog are taken at our farm, beauty captured as I roamed the places I explored as a child.

Cottonwoods in the Pasture, Credit Lyn Fenwick 

Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature.  It will never fail you. --Frank Lloyd Wright, (1867-1959) American Architect, interior designer, writer & educator

A true conservationist is a man who knows that the world is not given by fathers, but borrowed from his children.  --John James Audubon, (1785-1851)American ornithologist & painter

Trees are the earth's endless effort to speak to the listening heaven.  --Rabindranath Tagore, (1861-1941) polymath, musician, poet & artist

Cottonwood seeds on the Lawn, Credit Lyn Fenwick

To me, a lush carpet of pine needles or spongy grass is more welcome than the most luxurious Persian rug.  --Helen Keller, (1880-1968) American author, political activist & lecturer

And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.  --Khalil Gibran, (1883-1931) Writer, poet, and visual artist  

I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars.  --Walt Whitman, (1819-1892) American poet, essayist & journalist

Stranger in the Driveway, Credit Lyn Fenwick

All my life through, the new sights of Nature made me rejoice like a child.  --Marie Curie, (18867-1934) Physicist & Chemist

Nature teaches more than she preaches.  There are no sermons in stones.  It is easier to get a spark out of a stone than a moral.  --John Burroughs, (1837-1921) American naturalist & nature essayist

Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.  --Albert Einstein, (1879-1955) Theroetical physicist

I'm about halfway through [Last Child in the Woods] but am ...taking my time to soak it all in...to pass those foundations down to [my daughter.]  C.L. blog reader, KS

Hedgeapple Shadows, Credit Lyn Fenwick

If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement, and mystery of the world we live in.  --Rachel Carson, (1907-1964) American biologist, author, and conservationist

There is an outdoor classroom and an edible schoolyard at our daughter's childcare center, and I'm so grateful.  Simply no substitute for outdoor play and exploration.  A. O., blog reader in NE

The richness I achieve comes from nature, the source of my inspiration.  --Claude Monet, (1840-1926) French impressionist painter

Nature's Travelers, Credit Lyn Fenwick

Nature is just enough; but men and women must comprehend and accept her suggestions.  --Antoinette Brown Blackwell, (1825-1921) First woman to be ordained as a mainstream Protestant minister

There is a way that nature speaks, that land speaks.  Most of the time we are simply not patient enough, quiet enough, to pay attention to the story.  Linda Hogan, (1959-    )  Television personality

Teaching children about the natural world should be seen as one of the most important events in their lives.  Thomas Berry, (1914-2009) Religious scholar & student of man's role in Earth history & evolution

We grew up in years & a place that this type of learning was a part of our normal childhood.  R.V.H, blog reader, NM

 The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quiet, alone with the heavens, nature and God.  Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be. ...And I firmly believe that nature brings solace in all troubles.  Anne Frank, (1929-1945) Diarist

Prairie Gold, Credit Larry Fenwick

Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts.  There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature--the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.    Rachel Carson

As the saying goes, with my own edits, 'Why does the Lord give us trees, mountains and dirt?  So we can learn to climb...and have a place to land when we fall.'  NONE of us, ESPECIALLY the young, are climbing and falling enough.  R.G., Blog Reader in Texas

I must close this post sometime, so I will end the blog with two more e-mails I received from readers.

My dad always thought of a pasture or a grove of trees as a perfectly appropriate playground for us, and boy was I surprised to learn that other parents weren't letting their children experiment on plants or arming them with field guides and turning them loose to identify birds.  T.T. in NE

And the last...

Your recollections made me smile and think of the time we lived in St. John (from 3rd grade thru the 7th).  ...I've surely told you stories of living on the north west edge of town, a farmstead across the street with all the farm animals farms had in those days.  A mile and 1/2 catty corner NW across wheat fields was a grove of trees for day trips with a buddy or alone.  On the edge of the tree grove was the Rattle Snake Creek.  It had water in it in those days and nice holes deep enough to skinny dip in.  Good memories.  A. H. in KS

Thank you to everyone who shared their memories and experiences.

Remember, you can click on images to enlarge them.

Kids and Nature, (first titled Confessions of a Slow Reader)

I just finished a wonderful book titled Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv.  In fact, I loved it so much that I bought several copies of the book to gift to friends who have young children.  I recommend it very highly.

The Last Child in the Woods is about the importance of providing childhood experiences with nature.  Louv is not opposed to watching nature programs on television nor walks in parks with carefully mowed lawns, tidy flower beds, and playground equipment designed for safety.  However, he advocates for children's need to experience the untamed woods and prairies that fuel  and develop an unsanitized, curiosity-motivating, imagination-inspiring, unsupervised, relationship-developing opportunity for children to experience the natural world that is rapidly disappearing.  He advocates our responsibility to provide that opportunity. 

Louv argues in his 2006 book that in our desire to keep children safe, we have cocooned them from opportunities to experience the wonders of nature which are needed to create healthy children.  He points to such issues as childhood obesity, depression, and attention disorders as side effects from restricting exposure to interactions with nature.

Photo credit:  Shealah Craighead

Paul Harvey (1918-2009), a well-known radio pundit in the late 1900s, appeared in the city where we lived when we were fresh out of college, and I have never forgotten an analogy he used in his speech.  He said, 'you can't sweep the floor with a broom and expect not to have to sweep it again.'  Problems may be resolved, but they will not stay that way without ongoing efforts.  (Harvey received the Medal of Freedom in 2005, and the photograph at right shows that ceremony.)

Using Harvey's analogy, we can compare our efforts to build safe playgrounds and to protect children from the dangers of strangers and unsupervised explorations beyond the boundaries of home to aggressively sweeping away not only the bad but also the good things of childhood.  Richard Louv would suggest that we should learn to sweep more thoughtfully--realizing that our aggressive sweeping has also swept away the very things that fuel imagination, inventiveness, problem solving skills, working with others, unstructured active play, and other things important to children's healthy growth.

It is the nature of life that there will always be issues to resolve, misdeeds to confront, and lessons to learn, and we should never expect a perfect world.  But, if we discover that we may have swept the floor too clean, perhaps we should try a different broom.

Our own histories can often guide us in raising the next generation.  I, for one, certainly remember hours spent in the sand hill plum thickets, creating imaginary rooms in areas cleared of thickets by cattle or other animals.  I'm sure the sharp thorns in the thicket drew my blood many times, and my mother may have worried about the dangers of a thorn damaging an eye, or perhaps she worried about snakes, badgers, and ants sharing my playground. But, she didn't stop my fun, and I survived.  I wandered for miles bare foot on our sandy roads, and I disappeared into the fields and tree rows for hours without telling anyone where I was headed when I left the house--primarily because I had no idea where I was going.  I wandered and experienced the joy unanticipated discoveries.  Of course, the world has changed, and the dangers parents fear for their children today are real, but children still need the freedom to explore and imagine.  Louv reminds his readers of that.

Without the courage and curiosity of our ancestors, they would not have crossed oceans.  Without the imaginations and initiative of homesteaders like Isaac Werner to confront the unknown dangers of the prairie, the lives of their descendants would certainly have been different--assuming that those descendants would even have been born.

Richard Louv worries that if a generation of children mature without the unplanned discoveries of nature's beauties and wonders, not only will it be a great loss to those children but also a huge loss to nature itself when a generation without the childhood experiences of nature become decision-making adults.  Those of us in farming communities may not understand how nature-starved urban children can be, with buildings instead of trees casting shade, paved playgrounds and sidewalks offering no opportunity for making mud pies or feeling sand between their toes, with the beauty of stars bleached by constant lights and the explosion of colors as the sun sets blocked by a profile of roof tops.

After talking with a group of children, Louv asked them to describe their favorite place to play.  One little boy said, "in the house."  When Louv asked him why, the boy said, "because that's where all of the electric receptacles are."

It is certainly something to think about.