“Where do the future stewards of the Earth come from?”
Richard Louv, author of Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder recently asked the title question in Seattle, Washington. This question, and others, “go beyond parenting to the health of the Earth itself,” he added.
Louv is credited with inspiring the back-to-nature movement for kids. It is a fact that since the 1970s, kids have spent less time playing in nature and more time indoors with the latest thrill, technology. Computers, video games, TVs and other media, entice kids from the ages of 8 to 18 to spend at least 6 hours a day “plugged in”, according to a 2005 Kaiser Family Foundation study.
Richard Louv and others like him are now promoting the idea of a national campaign called “No Child Left Inside” — playing off the No Child Left Behind academic-achievement idea of the Bush administration. The idea to get kids outside doesn’t have to come through special environmental schools, programs, or intensive immersions of kids in the wilderness (ie. suggested ways to cure nature-deficit ailments). Just checking out a wetland or pine cone can be beneficial.
What’s most important to understand is that kids, like adults, need nature and a life beyond organized sports, homework (officework), and other demands of keeping up with techonology and expressing yourself with it. Connecting to Nature is a way to end the nature-deficit disorder that is coming into young people’s physical and mental development.
Scientists are finding that contact with nature benefits kids in numerous ways, reducing hyperactivity and related attention-deficit disorders, as well as encouraging more self-discipline.
State lawmakers in Washington passed a bill to research how important nature can be for learning and development. It’s also expected that there will be millions of dollars sought in that state for more outdoor education. That’s taking sustainability to a different level.
How lucky we are in Michigan to have natural resources to educate our children, if only we choose to preserve them. Keeping Celery Pond as a wetland nature reserve on the beginning of the Black River Watershed, would be an ideal way to educate our local children, our summer visitors and our year-round visitors on the wonder of a wetland in the downtown area.
Wouldn’t it be great if this spring kids from our middle school and high school did field trips to see the wetland? Learning animal tracks and birdcalls, creating maps and figuring out what life might be swimming around in the waters would be enough to inspire any biology student, even an art student.
The kids could help adults see what an assest Celery Pond is to us. Their parents might even want to leave their worry about money and technology for a while, to think about becoming stewards of this precious area of Earth. The adults and kids could work together as stewards of Celery Pond. It puts a whole new twist to thoughtful development and the possibilites of a different kind of tourist attraction.
