Will new efforts help kids get outside again?
"The stream and the pond were my childhood companions, they were a playground, they were books and television, they were the mirrors of a gangly and contemplative Narcissus. In the splashings of any pool there is whatever one will need to see: the dream of everything, the nightmare of nothing, clouds and stars, a self."
-Stanley Crawford,
A Garlic Testament: Seasons on Small New Mexico Farm
As a veterinarian, Ray Powell is used to seeing animals in
distress. But over the last few years, he has begun to notice a more disturbing trend. "I started seeing more and more of my patients had cigarette burns,
chronic broken bones and bruising," he says. Powell began to visit with pet owners to try to understand what was happening.
When he found that many of the people coming in with battered pets showed the same clinical signs of abuse, it was obvious to Powell that "someone within that same sphere was a predator." (Studies have shown links between domestic violence, animal cruelty and child abuse.) Powell believes the increased abuse he's seen is linked to the growing isolation people have from the natural world. "When people are so disconnected from the natural world, the ability to empathize with anything outside their own epidermis becomes very, very small," he says. "For me, this raised a very red flag. It said that we are doing ourselves a great deal of harm."
Children might know the rain forests are being cut down, but have they ever climbed a tree in their own neighborhood? Reconnecting children to nature has everything to do, he says, with healthy communities and a better future.
"Only by interacting with other living things, only by experiencing them, can you care about them-otherwise it's very abstract," he says. "This is something that has huge implications for what decisions we make and how we're going to treat this planet," Powell,
New Mexico's former State Land Office commissioner, says. "It will even determine whether we are successful or not successful in addressing problems such as global warming."
Today, Powell is the regional director of the Four Corners office for Roots and Shoots, a program of the Jane Goodall Institute. Powell opened the Santa Fe office in September, and is in the process of working with local youth to line up a number of projects, including one with the Santa Fe Animal Shelter. "There is an enormous hunger among young people to feel they can make a positive difference," he says. "They feel like they don't have to sit on the sidelines and watch the planet implode."
The eroding relationship between humans and nature isn't an issue most people talk about, or even think about on a regular basis. People without kids don't want to be bothered,
and individual parents can take their children hiking or foster empathy and compassion for other living things. But a closer look at what some are calling "nature-deficit disorder" may even have curmudgeons thinking that all kids should spend less time in front of the television and more time outside getting dirty, catching fish and playing in the sand, mud and water.
Two years ago, Richard Louv's book
Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder
hit the stands-and freaked out a lot of people. Louv, a columnist and children's advocate, admits in the book that the term "nature-deficit disorder" isn't a real medical term. Instead, he defines it as "the human costs of alienation from nature, among them: diminished use of the senses, attention difficulties, and higher rates of physical and emotional illnesses."
This alienation from the natural world is happening for a variety of reasons: Cities are deepening and suburbs are sprawling, making it harder to even get to nature. People are more likely to stay inside, where there's air conditioning, television, video games, computers and all sorts of nifty gadgets. Louv also cites issues such as increased "stranger danger" and the often irrational fear parents and the media instill in children of the natural world-there are bugs and bears and bacteria out there, after
all.
But if children spent more unstructured time outside-daydreaming, throwing rocks in the stream, climbing trees and tearing around the neighborhood-Louv and others believe they would have fewer problems with obesity, depression and learning disabilities such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. But it's even more than that, Louv writes: "Quite simply, when we deny our children nature, we deny them beauty."
Across New Mexico, environmentalists and educators are now pushing outdoor education in an attempt to make sure this generation doesn't grow up inside.
"When you're outside the classroom, and don't have your faces
in the textbook, you get more experience than just being in the classroom," says a pretty, dark-haired eighth-grader from the Santa Fe Girls School. "You build a deeper respect for the land…You can help it more and understand what's going on." She, along with six of her peers, are in Albuquerque at the Quivira Coalition Conference, speaking to an
eager audience of ranchers and farmers about Project Preserve.
Three years ago, teacher Will Barnes initiated Project Preserve, in which sixth-, seventh- and eighth-grade girls restore a section of the Santa Fe River. Since then, they've been analyzing and evaluating restoration strategies, removing the non-native Russian olive trees along the banks of the river and presenting information about the project to the public.
Sitting before some 150 people at the conference, the project's board of directors fields
questions from the crowd. Remarkably composed, self-assured and articulate
young women, these eighth-grade girls answer questions ranging from how the tree removal has affected local bird populations to how it's affected their own lives and interests.
Programs like this one are happening all across the state, in private and public schools alike. "Last child in the woods?" Dan Shaw, a teacher at Albuquerque's
Bosque School, asks. "Over our dead bodies!"
New Mexico is the perfect model state for making sure kids stay connected to nature, Shaw says. There are natural resources galore, public lands, national parks and plenty of willing partners. Citing the Bosque School's Bosque Ecosystem Monitoring Program-in which students monitor the health of the Middle Rio Grande and send their results to the University of New Mexico and the US Fish and Wildlife Service-Shaw talks about the importance of combining classroom and outdoor learning. "This work empowers kids," he says. "They can pass their standardized tests"-tests required each year under the federal No Child Left Behind law-"but their data really matters."
"We're not about feelings," Cheri Vogel says about Project WET, a nonprofit that trains teachers about water education. "We're about science, facts, learning." In other words, outdoor education isn't about avoiding real school work or taking random field trips-or even some nefarious plot to brainwash kids into becoming environmentalists-it's about connecting kids with the outdoors, teaching them about science and giving them a chance to explore new ideas and places.
And hopefully beginning to reverse some of the alarming statistics attached to today's US youth.
The health picture for today's youth is significantly worse than it
was 30 and 40 years ago. According to the Centers for Disease Control, 19 percent of kids between the ages of 6 and 11 are overweight; 17 percent between 12 and 19 are. Compare that with the same study done between 1963 and 1970, when 4 and 5 percent in those respective age groups were overweight. The numbers for New Mexico are even worse: Twenty-four percent of high school students are overweight or at risk
for being overweight. (Lest adults get snarky about these results: Fifty-seven percent of New Mexican adults are overweight or obese.) Being overweight can lead to all sorts of chronic health problems, including type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure and asthma.
There are three main reasons, according to the American Obesity Association, why Americans today are heavier than they were in the past: People are less physically active, they engage in more sedentary behavior such as television watching and they are eating too many high-calorie foods. Americans also do something humans rarely did in the past: Eat when not hungry.
Children in particular are exposed to gads of advertisements encouraging them to eat more high-sugar and highly processed foods and to spend even more time in front of the television, Xbox or DVD player. A 2005 study from the Kaiser Family Foundation found that today's children watch six and a half hours of television each day-that number has increased by more than an hour just since 2000. (That same study shows that two-thirds of children have televisions in their rooms and almost half have a video game player in their rooms.)
"If you talk to parents and pose the question, 'When was the last time you saw a child playing outside?' people really do respond," Eileen Everett, education manager for Audubon New Mexico, says. "They don't really think about it, but when you ask, and they stop and think about it, most will say, 'I don't know.'"
"It's not just this generation that isn't outside," Everett adds. "It's a generation removed-so parents aren't passing stories on to their kids." Consider a 2006 study funded by the
Nature Conservancy that shows that since 1987, overnight trips to national parks and monuments have declined by more than 25 percent. These results are particularly striking given that for the 50 years prior to 1987, visitation had risen steadily each year.
Audubon, along with a broad coalition of nonprofits, state and federal agencies, educators and individuals, is working on an outdoor education initiative called "No Child Left Inside." Its goal is simple, Everett says: "Kids aren't really going outside on their own, so how can we provide opportunities for kids and families?"
Beginning last September, a coalition of more than 50 organizations and individuals began meeting to discuss what to do about nature-deficit disorder. At this point, the group is focused largely on educational opportunities, such as using outdoor classrooms, but Everett is hopeful they'll find ways of getting children and families outside together.
The Sierra Club's Building Bridges to the Outdoors is working on the same issue. Organizer Michael Casaus is building a statewide coalition of ranchers, hunters, anglers, political officials, labor unions, environmentalists, the religious community, Latino and
Native American communities and state officials. This broad coalition is important, Casaus says, because "getting kids outdoors means many things, and we want to let communities decide what an outdoor experience means to their kids." This sort of coalition building is significant: These programs aren't about environmentalists coming into a community and trying to turn kids into tree-huggers, nor is it about recruiting the next generation of ranchers. Rather, it's a means by which to reach as many people as possible and to simply get kids onto the playground-or hiking trail or tractor or riverbank.
"As a conservationist, I'm certainly concerned about the next generation of conservationists," Courtney White, executive director of the Quivira Coalition, says. Quivira promotes a variety of progressive approaches to Western land management. In mid-January, Quivira posed to landowners the question of how to turn farms and ranches into outdoor schoolyards. Quivira also asked the group how to strengthen the dissolving bond between children and the natural world. If today's parents, environmentalists, farmers, ranchers and teachers aren't willing to work
toward that goal, there will be serious consequences, he says. "If we turn around and our next generation is not there, whether they are biologists, farmers, public lands managers, then all our work today will be in jeopardy."
White, the father of young children himself, says he worries on a more personal level as well. "We are entering the age of consequences, where a series of things that have been piling up for a while are going to start to break like a storm," he says. "It's not just the simple issue of reconnecting them to nature, but also handing them a world in which they can be profitable and happy and take care of the land."
The trick, however, is not to scare people, children in particular, with doom and gloom: "Positive energy is kind of the key to many things," White says. "If you just dwell on the negative side of the equation, you either get depressed or you stop doing things."
It may be an uphill battle to pull kids-and adults, for that
matter-away from their televisions, couches and computers, but throughout New Mexico, there are hundreds of projects, schools, organizations, agencies and teachers fighting to do just that. But can
one day, one experience, one teacher yapping about bugs and watersheds, really make a difference in someone's life?
"Some kids are hard as hell," Helen Haskell, a science and environmental education teacher, says. "But that's our fault. It's because of things adults have done to them." She estimates that approximately 5 percent of the kids she has brought outside have been blasé, while another 5 percent have been actively frightened, thanks in part to movies like
The Blair Witch Project
. But the majority love being outside: "It's just a great place to learn," Haskell says. "You can teach anything outside."
For seven years, Haskell ran the Sandia Mountain Natural History Center, a joint venture between Albuquerque Public Schools and the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science, which brings all the school system's fifth-graders to the 128-acre center in the Sandias for a day. She talks about how one experience can, in fact, spark something deep within a child: One of her favorite experiences involved a fifth-grader who had just moved to Albuquerque from Mexico. His English, she says, was still very basic-but "he really had an ear for birds." As she led the children on a hiking trail through the woods, they would listen for birdcalls and check the guide. "Two-thirds of the way through the hike, he was hearing
them and saying their names," she says. "It was a really great day for him-he was really able to be a part of the class that day."
In his book
Last Child in the Woods
, Louv cites a variety of studies showing that kids who spend time outside-not being drilled by a coach in organized sports, but basically just playing or goofing off-are more observant and creative, better able to concentrate and have stronger motor skills than those who don't spend time outside. Cornell University's Dr. Nancy Wells, in 2000, showed that "being close" to nature boosts a child's attention span. According to a 2003 study of rural children, having nature in and around the home-gardens, pets, plants and the like-"appears to be a significant factor in protecting the psychological
well-being of children." And in a 2006 study, Wells and Kristi Lekies evaluated a Forest Service survey of adults, finding that participation in "wild nature" activities-hiking, camping, fishing and hunting-before the age of 11 will lead children to actively care about the environment.
Even the theory that nature can help kids with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) was given a boost in 2005, when researchers with the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, revealed that urban and rural kids with ADHD who spent time after school and on weekends engaging in "green" activities experienced a "significant reduction of symptoms."
But do people really need studies and statistics to tell them that playing outside is a good thing? It's sad-and, admittedly, kind of weird-that kids today don't play outside as much as in past decades. And with a million other things to worry about-from global warming to affordable health care to domestic violence-it seems like overkill to add something called nature-deficit disorder to the list. But it won't take rocket science to solve this problem.
"I derive so much joy from being outside, it's hard to imagine having to prescribe going out there," Denise Fort, the mother of a 9-year-old daughter and professor of environmental law at the
University of New Mexico, says. Children don't need to be instructed to go outside; what they do need is some space to play.
Fort believes communities should design and build with children in mind. "In Western cities in particular, we thought we had so much wilderness all around us that we didn't see it as necessary to create these spaces," she says. "Not all kids have yards and safe neighborhoods to play around in, nor do many children have the opportunity to spend time in the wild spaces adjoining even the state's cities." (Informal polling of fifth-graders visiting the Sandia Mountain Natural History Center consistently reveals that approximately 40 percent of them had never before been to the Sandias.) It's incumbent upon communities to let their elected leaders know how to make healthier communities. And a leader with vision, she says, "will know that bike paths and open spaces are as important as putting in a new bridge or paving highways." When cities invest in these types of spaces-she cites Albuquerque's bike path along the bosque as one example-people come to them in droves.
Outdoor education advocates agree that structural change is necessary. Just telling people that being outside is good for them-and for society-isn't going to solve the problem, Carol Schrader with River Source, which is a part of the state's burgeoning Outdoor Education Initiative, says: "People aren't necessarily going to change their patterns unless we give them different ways to interact with their environment." She laughs and points out that public health campaigns
birthed in the 1970s-such as those involving eating healthier and exercising more-have had little impact (remember those obesity statistics?).
As Schrader sees it, there are two other obstacles keeping adults and children from spending more time outside: technology-"People get so plugged in, they forget to unplug and go out"-and fear.
"Because of fear, people don't want to let their kids outside," Schrader says. "The way to get around that is to have stronger communities, stronger neighborhoods." Besides, she says, nature isn't just off in the mountains, a place you drive to. "Finding nature is walking your dog through the neighborhood and finding what's left of the river in your neighborhood," she says. "It's just doing it right here."
