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Sunday,
March 8, 1998 Outdoor MysteriesFrom staff and news service reports
That's because wolves and whales are often featured on the Discovery Channel. The neighborhood frogs aren't. "Kids today could tell you anything you want to know about global warming," said Richard Louv, author of "Childhood's Future." "We're doing a very good job of educating them about global environmental issues, particularly through videotape. But they can't tell you the last time they went into the fields and watched the clouds move or watched the leaves fall." Psychologists and child development specialists say this is a worldwide trend: Children are unable to name their local plants and say they rarely see wild animals. They don't name natural places as the places they go to find peace. They say they do their best thinking in places like soccer practice. "Children's schedules are incredibly busy these days between soccer, basketball, gymnastics, and so on," said Margaret Blewett, a medical illustrator and mother of two in Lincoln Park. "It's hard to be outdoors when you have all these activities to do. "It takes time to be outdoors with your children and let them explore. The sad thing is that children love to learn about nature." "The kids are much more urbanized now than when we were kids," said Louv. "For many suburban kids the bulldozers have already taken the forests down." The phenomenon of increasing indoor play is compounded in a densely populated area such as North Jersey, where the real estate is too valuable to leave vacant. Perhaps that's why kids are more eager than ever to experience the outdoors, says Rick Martin, assistant executive for the Bergen County Boy Scouts Council. "We're seeing at a younger age than ever before kids are requesting to go out on camping trips," he said. And in the latest of periodic changes in Scouting programs, Martin says programs have reverted to emphasizing fundamental outdoor skills such as knot tying, water safety, and first aid. "They like to go out and look under rocks and learn to build a fire," Martin says of the young campers. Nature play always has been part of childhood. Without it, some childhood development specialists worry that kids will lose something very basic. "As a country our greatest asset has been space," Louv said. "Mental space. Physical space. Space to dream. To the extent that we take that away from subsequent generations, what have we done to that creativity we have as a society?" The change in children's outdoor play has been so recent that no one knows for sure what it means. But experts have some pretty good ideas. "Kids who played outdoors can understand the concept of biodiversity more quickly than others," said Rob Bixler, a Cleveland Metro Parks employee who researched children's outdoor play as a doctoral student. "They have been outdoors and seen crickets and gobs of bugs and what's out there." Children with outdoor experience gain a subtle ability to understand natural places at a glance. City kids taken to the woods typically trip and fall. And studies suggest there's a strong link between spatial abilities and early experience navigating the outdoors, Bixler said. Most scientists are viewing the trend with alarm, but not because it predicts a future of dropping science grades, fewer naturalists, and more people willing to destroy nature -- although it might. They worry because what's missing from today's children will be a hole in tomorrow's society. Groups such as the Sierra Club are trying to do something about this. "We are providing regular growing experience in the outdoors," said Lucia Schneck, founder and co-chair of the club's New Jersey Inner City Outings. "They develop the skills they wouldn't get in their home life." One of 40 such programs nationwide, New Jersey Inner City Outings exposes children from Hoboken, Elizabeth, and Newark to the outdoors. "These types of activities offer kids tremendous potential beyond the obvious," Schneck, an educational program specialist with the State Department of Education, said, citing carry-over into school and test-taking skills. One way Blewett found to get her kids more involved in nature is through New Jersey Audubon Society's Weis Ecology Center in Ringwood, which offers outdoor environmental education programs for children and adults. "Without firsthand experience with their own back yard, children could very possibly miss that critical step toward further developing an appreciation for the natural world," said Karla Risdon, the center's director. "Outdoor experiences are key to meeting that step." As recently as the 1970s, children older than 8 or 10 were very mobile and had a wide territory they considered their own, said Robin Moore, an expert on children's play at North Carolina State University. Now quite-grown children often don't even know their own neighborhoods beyond the route to school and other activities, Moore said. And that usually doesn't include any wild or undeveloped places, said Louv. His research included interviews with children in Florida, Missouri, California, and other spots around the nation. "We have a lot of anecdotal evidence of families being afraid to let their children roam the way they used to," said Louise Chawla, an expert on child development and environmental psychology at Kentucky State University. "We're hearing that from all over the country." Louv said he found parents who spoke almost with grief about their children's lack of interest in being outdoors. Nonetheless, he said, many are sending their children the message that wild places aren't safe -- that the bogeyman lives in the woods. In some areas, even outdoor recesses have been eliminated from schools, childhood development experts say. Patrick Nichols, an outdoors guide in Orlando, Fla., said he finds parents have burdened children with so many fears of the outdoors that they're afraid of bug bites or that touching a frog will release a deadly poison. And though experts agree that the dangers to children outside the home, including crime, aren't as common as believed, many parents are unwilling to take any risks. It may be that nature just can't compete any more in a time when children going outdoors have to overcome parental anxieties and the lure of television and video games. "Children watch more and more TV -- there is data on that," said Chawla. "And, of course, time watching television is not time spent outdoors." She said it's not unusual for children to plan their lives around television viewing. Louv says he spoke to one child who prefers being indoors because "that's where most of the outlets were." "Kids are playing Bass Pro Master on the video games instead of actually fishing," he said. Moreover, whatever they say, many adults truly don't believe nature is an important experience for their children, he said. And they're passing that along to children. "The kids are, indeed, following instructions: The future is electronics," Louv said. "The lesson is that that is far more important than learning about trees or chasing snakes." This story was written by Katherine Bouma of The Orlando Sentinel. Record Staff Writer Patrick Horne contributed. Copyright © 1998 Bergen Record Corp. |
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Kids are more
likely to know about the habits of wolves in
Idaho or whales off Canada than of the frogs in the pond
down the road.
Deer Hunting
Forsythe Wildlife Refuge
Natural
& Cultural Sites: