National Outdoor Leadership School - Index

National Outdoor Leadership School - brochure - Index

6
THE
Leader
Putting the Environment
Back in Education
Public and Private Schools Use NOLS to Refocus Outdoor Education Curricula
BY MEREDITH HAAS, NOLS PUBLIC POLICY INTERN
In years past, most kids would toss off their backpacks
after school, hop on a bike, and venture off to
nearby parks or backwoods until all daylight was
spent. Many things have changed, and over the last
couple of decades kids are spending less time outside
and more time inside. The classic “Get inside, it’s getting
dark!” has been replaced by “Turn that off!” or
“It’s too dangerous!” or “I don’t want you to get mud
on those clothes!” But even as kids become increasingly
homebound because of television, video games,
the Internet, super hygiene, or just plain paranoia,
what little time they do spend outside may be in a
paved wonderland.
The result of too much time spent inside, according
to Mary Rivkin, associate professor of education at
the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, is “the
extinction of experience. Kids aren’t learning stuff firsthand,”
she said in an interview with the Christian Science
Monitor last June. “It’s silly for us to think we don’t
need to be in the outdoors more.”
In what has been coined “naturedeficit
disorder” by Richard Louv, author
of Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our
Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder,
we’re beginning to see a
trend of disconnection with the
natural world among our children
and the resulting negative repercussions
to their physical and
mental health.
“Although we don’t yet
have a wealth of rigorous,
controlled studies that allow
us to make a definitive statement
about cause and effect,
we do have a variety of
studies that collectively point
to an association between outdoor
play and an array of good outcomes
for kids,” said Martha Erikson, Ph.D., a children’s
mental health expert and senior fellow and professor
at the University of Minnesota, in USA Weekend this
past November.
So what’s the solution? One way to reconnect our
children to the environment is through education.
Kids spend over seven and a half more hours on academics
each week than they did 20 years ago, according
to a University of Michigan study. 1 This is creating
a need for more alternative institutions and programs
that provide a level of environmental and outdoor education
that is missing in standard curricula.
Schools nationwide, many with
close relationships to NOLS,
are either expanding their
existing environmental and
outdoor education programs
or just planting the seeds.
[They] are part of a movement
that is reminding children and
educators of what it is like to
breathe the fresh air.
NOLS founder Paul Petzoldt saw the value of experiential
education when he first started the school
with the idea that education should be fun, exciting,
and challenging as students learn by accepting and
meeting real challenges. At NOLS, students are put in
the field for extended periods of time and must practice
what they learn. However, institutions such as NOLS
are not bound to certain curriculum quotas as are many
standard private and public schools nationwide.