Washington, New Mexico Boost Outdoor Education Efforts

Seattle Post-Intelligencer – March 19, 2006

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“I like to play indoors better, because that’s where all the electrical outlets are.”– a fourth-grader quoted in “Last Child in the Woods.”The time is ripe for a Leave No Child Inside movement, and Seattle may be ready to take the lead. Western society is sending an unintended message to children: Nature is the past, electronics are the future and the bogeyman lives in the woods. This script is delivered in schools, families, even organizations devoted to the outdoors and codified into the legal and regulatory structures of many of our communities.

As a result, most parents in urban, suburban and rural areas in America say that children aren't playing outside much anymore -- not even in the back garden or the neighborhood park. Kids today may have plenty of knowledge about the Amazon rain forest, but they're unlikely to be able to tell you about the last time they explored the outdoors, or stretched out in solitude in a field to listen to the wind and watch the clouds move.

This change in our relationship with nature has profound implications for the mental, physical and spiritual health of future generations.

Why is this occurring, even in a state as rich in natural landscapes as Washington? While researching "Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder," I talked with hundreds of parents across the country who said their children spend less time in nature than they did when they were young. Parents point to diminishing access to natural areas, competition with electronic entertainment, increased homework, longer school hours and other time pressures. Most of all, parents cite fear -- of traffic, nature itself and, most of all, strangers.

I understand that fear and have felt it as a parent. But consider the facts: Violent victimization of children has dropped by more than 38 percent since 1975, according to Duke University's 2005 Child Well Being Index. What has increased is round-the-clock news coverage of a few tragedies involving children. This relative handful of abduction stories is repeated so often that American families are being conditioned to live in a state of fear.

Yes, there are risks outside the home, but there are also risks when we raise a generation of children under virtual protective house arrest. Many educators and health-care professionals are concerned about the dramatic increases they are seeing in childhood obesity rates, attention difficulties and depression. While pediatricians see fewer children with broken bones these days, they report more children with longer-lasting repetitive-stress injuries, related to overuse of keyboards and video game controllers.

Not everyone accepts nature deficit as inevitable.

For example, Audubon Washington is working with the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation to establish the Seward Park Audubon Center in Southeast Seattle for schoolchildren and their families. This is an ideal location. Some 40,000 school-age kids live within a five-mile radius of Seward Park. Southeast Seattle also has the city's largest K-12 school population and the most ethnically diverse neighborhoods. Yet, this part of town has no major environmental education facility.

At the Seward Park center, kids will study matters related to the outdoors, but they'll also make their own discoveries. They will walk under tall firs and watch the resident eagles, and learn about themselves through the full use of their senses. Eventually, the center will serve nearly 60,000 people a year with more than 800 programs.

What a rare opportunity to plant the seeds of an alternative future and to strengthen child development.

Ironically, at the very moment when more children are being unplugged from nature, when school districts are eliminating recess and cutting environmental education budgets, science is demonstrating the enormously positive impact of direct nature experiences on children's health and cognitive development.

Researchers at the Human-Environment Research Laboratory at the University of Illinois discovered children as young as five showed a significant reduction in the symptoms of attention-deficit disorder when they engaged with nature.

Environmental psychologists report that nature in or around a residence -- even something as simple as a room with a view of a natural landscape -- helps reduce stress and protect the psychological well-being of children.

Outdoor-education programs geared toward troubled youths -- especially those diagnosed with mental-health problems -- also offer clear therapeutic value.

Several studies show that children who play in natural settings are more cooperative and more creative -- more likely to create their own games -- than those who play on flat turf or asphalt playgrounds.

In fact, schools that use outdoor classrooms and other forms of experiential education produce student gains in social studies, science, language arts and math, according to a report issued in 2002 by the State Education and Environmental Roundtable. Skills in problem-solving, critical thinking and decision-making are also enhanced. So are grade-point averages and standardized test scores

More recently, a 2005 study conducted by an independent research group and released by the California Department of Education and sponsored by the Sierra Club found that students in outdoor classrooms improved their science grades and gained self-confidence. These children increased their science scores by 27 percent, compared with a control group of students in traditional classrooms.

On Wednesday, Washington took the lead in gathering more evidence.

Gov. Christine Gregoire signed HB 2910, which will fund a study of the effects of outdoor education, with a priority on underserved children from all regions of the state.

The study, supported by Audubon, the Environmental Education Association of Washington, Woodland Park Zoo and funded in large part by the Sierra Club, will measure how outdoor education affects academic achievement, career development and personal responsibility.

The Northwest really could lead a national Leave No Child Inside movement. In addition to the Seward Park Audubon Center, consider the examples set by the good youth programs at Discovery Park and Mercer Slough Environmental Education Center. Or the pioneering, non-profit environmental learning center called IslandWood, created on Bainbridge Island by Debbie Brainerd and her husband, Paul Brainerd, the former owner of the software company Aldus.

Seattle's Woodland Park Zoo's Zoomazium program, set to open this spring, goes beyond the more traditional, five-day summer camps that other zoos offer. The 8,500-square-foot, green-roofed, all-weather, indoor-outdoor nature-play space for children eight and under could ignite the imaginations of countless children.

"We're also planning to offer courses for parents -- including a kind of Nature 101," says Frank Hein, Woodland Park's program manager. "We know that many parents didn't have much experience in nature when they were young, so we're going to help them do that with their own kids."

These are just few examples of the region's contributions to a potential Leave No Child Inside movement.

Healing the broken bond between our young and nature is in our self-interest, not only because aesthetics or justice demands it, but also because our mental, physical and spiritual health depend upon it. So does the health of the Earth. Conservation-oriented groups are beginning to realize that a generation that has had little or no personal connection to nature is unlikely to produce passionate stewards of the Earth.

We cannot expect a full return to the free-range childhood of the 1950s. Those days are over. We can, however, create safe zones for solitary nature exploration. We can weave nature experiences into our classrooms and nature therapy into our health-care system.

We can choose a more balanced future.

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