Connecting Children and Nature

Reprint from Life Unplugged Column, Tucson Green Magazine. June

by Susan L. Feathers

A movement forms to reconnect children and nature

Few writers spark a national conversation let alone a movement. But that’s just what happened after Richard Louv published Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder (Algonquin Books, 2005.)

States, organizations, and programs have adopted the No Child Left Inside bill which just passed the Senate Committee on, Health, Education and Labor after it received widespread support in the House. Raul Grijalva helped introduce the bill.

Louv is a writer and journalist whose work is focused on children, family, and community (richardlouv.com). Together with leaders in the field of environmental education and child development, he established the Child and Nature Network (www.childrenandnature.org) to encourage organizations working to reconnect children with nature. The Network established a news service and clearinghouse of research and breaking news, as well instructional material for adults wanting to implement ideas at home, work, or the community.

Among researchers whose studies are available at the Children and Nature Network is Stephen Kellert from Yale University. Kellert is one of the most articulate educators examining how the environment is related to human health and well being. "Play in nature, particularly during the critical period of middle childhood, appears to be an especially important time for developing the capacities for creativity, problem-solving, and emotional and intellectual development."

Over the past few decades we have witnessed profound changes in childhood: less exercise, exposure to more personal technology; a sharp rise in obesity, increases in the number of children diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder, and a kind of pervasive stress caused in part by lack of unstructured time.

There are other concerns. Just when our country and communities need citizens who are literate about the environment, we are disabling future generations by not educating them how to live and work in a manner that protects the ecological systems that contribute to their health and well-being:

“The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) is contributing to an increasing environmental literacy gap by reducing the amount of environmental education taking place in K-12 classrooms. Its emphasis on testing for core subjects is causing many administrators to eliminate environmental education in favor of investing more resources in math and language arts, severely limiting instructional time for science and social studies, the traditional subjects in which EE is taught… if NCLB continues to be implemented in its current form, we will graduate a generation of students who are fundamentally unprepared to deal with the challenges they face on an individual, national, and global basis.” [From the No Child Left Inside Coalition]

The No Child Left Inside legislation will bring an infusion of funding to schools to provide more environmental education. Keep track of NCLI as it moves through Congress and let your voice be heard for an environmentally literate public.