Last night I was invited to attend the Harding Land Trust’s annual meeting. If you’re not familiar with the Harding Land Trust, their name is fairly self-explanatory, but their mission is to acquire, conserve and manage scenic, natural and historic lands in Harding Township in order to maintain the existing rural character of the Town for present and future generations. They’ve preserved 306 acres in Harding Township since 1990, with 36.5 acres preserved in the last three years. Did you know that 50% of the land in Harding is preserved open space? That’s pretty amazing.
I walked in toward the end of the business meeting (late because of work), and saw the current president, Tom McCowatt, officially give the key to the board of trustee’s new president John R. Murray. Following official business, they had a guest speaker.
Marc Rogoff, an environmental education specialist from NJ DEP, gave a fascinating, interactive talk on how disconnected kids are from nature now, and what we can do to make it better. Being both a teacher for many years and a parent, Marc had some interesting insight.
Kids playing outside (credit: flickr jon_beard)
One of the first things Marc talked about was that civilization has created boredom. A thousand years ago, people had to work hard to survive, so they had no time for boredom. As technology improves and things get more efficient, we now actually have time to be bored. Marc put up a slide of all sorts of toys, including tennis and footballs, a Barbie, Tinkertoys and then Nintendo Gameboys. He said most kids today will immediately gravitate toward the Gameboys more than any other option. Poor Barbie.
Marc also pointed out that many kids are disconnected from where their food comes from. Most, when asked, will say it comes from “the store.” This is because so few people now live on farms, or even have gardens. Also, science education – which used to at one time be only about the environment – now revolves around biology, chemistry, physics and some earth science. Very few schools teach about the environment (although I hope this is changing).
Marc thinks that there are things we are doing to keep kids indoors. People are afraid their children will get kidnapped, or that they’ll come in covered in ticks (heaven forbid!) or some other illness. Schools are afraid that if they let kids play in certain spaces, they’ll be a liability. Video games, computers and television are much more appealing to kids these days than going outside. Marc also said that our educational system’s focus on testing (because of legislation like No Child Left Behind), are actually harming our kids because they’re only being prepared to pass tests now – tests that don’t include questions about nature.
So, what can we do about it? Decrease our focus on testing, let go of kids a little bit – 90% of kidnappings are committed by a family member. Stranger Danger is fun to say, but do we really need to be that paranoid all of the time? Marc suggests taking more field trips into the outdoors, have them participate in community clean-ups, create school gardens or have them conduct nature studies.
Marc cited the book Last Child in the Woods as a good read for those that want to delve into this topic more. There are also organizations that are working hard to reconnect children with the natural world, such as the Children & Nature Network. Michelle Obama has created a program called Let’s Move to get kids to go outside, move around more and eat healthier food – combatting childhood obesity. We, as individuals, can also encourage our local legislators to support the No Child Left Inside Act, which will add environmental education into the core content that kids must know as part of the No Child Left Behind Act testing. And to top it all off, did you know that this month is Children & Nature Awareness Month? No? Well, now we’re both aware.
