I'm giving a presentation for teachers tomorrow as part of a day's exploration of outdoor learning at The Downley School near High Wycombe. Having to make the case for why a school might develop its outdoor learning has been a useful exercise, in that it's forced me to order my thoughts on the subject and collate some of the research I've been reading over the last couple of years. I thought I'd use this blog to record the thinking.
When adults over 30 recall their favourite places to play as children, their memories are overwhelmingly of outdoor locations. But current children are increasingly less likely to have these memories. Children in the UK today get about a quarter of the outdoor time that their parents did as children. There's been a social change: stranger danger, busy roads, neighbours we don't know, a general aversion to risk, the rise of screen time. My contention is that this change is bad for the environment, bad for society and bad for children.
The environment suffers because of our lack of awareness and understanding. Children who do not know and love the natural world will not grow up to look after it. Almost every significant conservationist across the world had transcendent experiences of nature in childhood: it follows that the way to produce environmentally responsible citizens is to immerse children in green spaces, so that contact can lead to a relationship and on to a sense of stewardship.
Society suffers because the sharing of outdoor space promotes social interaction and cohesion. Our buildings shelters us from each other as well as the elements. It is children playing together outdoors that creates community and the identity of place. With so few of us working the land now, a better understanding of food production and the management of finite resources is a precursor to sustainable living in cities and countryside alike.
Most of all, our indoor culture is damaging to children themselves. In his 2005 book 'Last Child in the Woods', Richard Louv linked the rise of childhood obesity, depression and behavioural disorders to the loss of children's outdoor experiences and called it 'nature deficit disorder'. People began to view our disconnection from nature as a public health issue.
Why do we need time in green space? One explanation from Dr William Bird, a UK-based GP and health consultant to various public bodies, is that modern humans still have the physiology of hunter-gatherers. We have existed in our current physcial form for about 200,000 years. We invented agriculture only about 10,000 years ago, compulsory schooling 400 years ago and industry even more recently. Our culture has evolved ahead of our minds and bodies, that were designed for different times. We are animals that are designed to play, learn and work best outdoors, in an environment where carbohydrates are scarce but physical activity is plentiful.
So how is green space beneficical to modern children? The answers are simple and intuitive. Green space promotes physical movement, and such exercise is a wonderdrug, preventative of a dizzying array of health problems from diabetes to dementia. 71% of us think we get enough exercise, but half of us are mistaken in this: an estimated 31% of the UK get the exercise we need. Childhood obesity has doubled in 20 years. Proximity to green space is a significant determiner of longevity and reduces health inequalities, with low income earners in the greenest places living as long as middle income earners in the least green places.
There is also a green agenda in mental health policy. MIND published its' 'Ecotherapy' report in 2007, suggesting that doctors should prescribe green exercise as a treatment for mild depression, their research having shown it to be at least as effective as antipressants and therapy. Gardening, country walks and conservation work scored far higher than indoor forms of exercise, with participants reporting lower stress, higher self-esteem and a heightened sense of meaning and purpose. The UK currently spends about £300 million on antipressant prescriptions every year.
Green space can have a big impact on public wellbeing, as a less tangible but more spiritual need. The concept of 'biophilia' suggests that we are most at home when surrounded by other forms of life. Hosptial rooms with views of greenery have higher recovery rates than those without them. We feel more human when we are among other plants and animals: as hunter-gatherers, we are hard-wired to feel at home in the natural world, and abilities to understand, predict and exploit it have been naturally selected over millennia. Our culture labels the man-made as artificial, yet in truth we are a part of nature rather than separate from it: wildness is within us.
So outdoor learning is one way in which educators can respond to this situation, and help to create happier, healthier children with a more balanced relationship with the natural world. A growing body of research, mostly from the US, is also suggesting that green time can enhance children's performance and atainment in school. Children who spend time in green space experience fewer symptoms of ADHD. Children with three years of regular outdoor learning achieve higher scores in maths, reading, wrting, listening and thinking skills: significantly, their attendance and concentration are also much better. There is a campaign for a daily 'green hour' based on the claim that it aids 'learning readiness'.
Research in the UK on the acclaimed Forest School system, introduced from Scandinavia, found that pupils who do their lessons in a wood once a week, enjoy more confidence, better social skills, can concentrate for longer and have more developed motor skills and language abilities than their indoor peers. Forest School is an approach that any school can take up over time, and is probably the most systematic and robust educational vehicle we have for re-connecting our children with the real world around them. The teachers I know who have trained as Forest School leaders are passionately vocal about its merits.
Why outdoor learning? Because schools have an opportunity to redress the imbalance in children's lives, and to be part of the solution to nature-deficit-disorder, along with better urban design and public policy. Because outdoor learning creates happier and healthier children who do better at school and in life. Because it is a powerful tool that any teacher can take up and use in their practice. Because sometimes it's obvious that children in a building are like fish out of water, and it's hard to learn when you're drowning.
http://www.outdoorculture.com/
