Children in Nature, A Solution for What Ails Us?

By Josh Thomas, Principal, Topics Education

Seems like 2009 has been the year of bad news. The state of the economy, of course, is front and center for many of us, but our bad news hasn’t been confined to the economy.

We’ve seen bad education news and bad health news, too. In fact, some of it has been really bad. Near the beginning of this year, our local school system released results from last year’s state middle school science exams. Forty-one largely poor, largely minority schools had pass rates below 25 percent. Eight schools fell below 10 percent. System-wide, only 44 percent of the system’s middle school students passed the science exam. If it’s true what we’re being told, that many of the jobs in the 21st century will be in fields related to science and engineering — so called STEM jobs — we’re failing our kids by not preparing them to be productive in that type of workforce.

As for the health news, in July, we learned that the number of hospitalizations due to childhood obesity had nearly doubled between 1999 and 2005. And not only that, but in all the talk around our nation’s health care system, we learned in a recent New York Times op-ed by Michael Pollan, “Big Food vs. Big Insurance” that “we’re spending $147 billion to treat obesity, $116 billion to treat diabetes, and hundreds of billions more to treat cardiovascular disease.” Pollan goes on to talk about our Western Diet in relation to that, but who says we can’t use those numbers to encourage more physical activity, too? For it is activity that can help prevent such illness, and that’s where Richard Louv comes in.

Louv, bestselling author of Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder, will tell you that it’s not only their physical health that benefits from youth spending time outside, he’ll also talk about the benefits of nature on mental issues and learning disabilities and self-esteem and character development. Oh, and the outdoors are fun, too.

So, while Obama and the rest of our government try to fix health care and our education system, perhaps we should all take a moment and listen to Richard Louv instead. He makes it very apparent that getting our kids outside can be a big (and cheap!) step towards better health and better education. And that’s what all of us at Topics Education plan to do on October 14th, when Louv comes to Charlotte for a speaking event; we will take time out to listen and contemplate some innovative solutions to our nation’s social challenges. Here’s some of what we’ve been thinking about in preparation for the event:

· Studies have shown that access to natural settings can improve school success. Daily exposure to natural settings, for instance, has been linked both to children’s ability to focus and with children’s enhanced cognitive abilities.

· In more recent studies, research has shown that schools that used outdoor classrooms and other forms of nature-based experiential education were associated with significant gains in social studies, language arts, math, and science. In fact, a study by the American Institutes for Research published in 2005 found that students in outdoor science programs improved their science testing scores by 27 percent.

· As for urban school systems, research suggest that cities themselves may actually impair our thinking. A city, the research suggests, is so overloaded with stimuli – flashing signs, heavy traffic, ipods, and cell phones – that our brains are drained by the amount of energy required to filter through all this “noise” in order focus on our required tasks.

· And as part of the study conducted by the University of Michigan, scientists gave students GPS receivers. Some of the undergrads took a stroll in an arboretum, while others walked the busy streets of downtown Ann Arbor. What they found was that people who had walked through the city were in a worse mood and scored significantly lower on tests of attention and working memory. In fact, just glancing at a photograph of an urban scene led to measurable impairments.

· In contrast to the urban environments, natural settings don’t require the same amount of cognitive effort. Natural settings are full of objects that grab our attention – birds chirping, flowers blooming, creeks trickling over smoothed stones – without causing a negative emotional response. The area of the brain dealing with attention can effectively exhale fully, relax deeply, and replenish itself.

We understand that Louv’s expertise areas cover large sweeping ideas, so as a sponsor and promoter for the event, we have planned a gathering directly after the meeting to give interested parents, educators, faith leaders, health professionals, environmentalists, and others a chance to work together on making Louv’s vision a reality in our region.

It’s such an important topic and the day will provide such a wonderful opportunity to kickstart both conversation and action aimed at addressing it. I can’t wait.