MCLC: reconnecting with nature

Wed Jan 11 08:53:11 EST 2012

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: reconnecting with nature
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Source: The Guardian (1/11/12):
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/jan/11/children-china-urban-jung
le-nature

How children in China's urban jungle are reconnecting with nature
China's economic boom means its city-bound children have little experience
of nature. But efforts are afoot to change that
By Liu Xinyan for ChinaDialogue <http://www.chinadialogue.net/>, part of
the Guardian Environment Network

We all met by the roadside before setting off for the nature camp. It was
a clear, early-spring morning and several of the children played on a
dusty patch of ground next to a run-down factory. We grabbed one of the
girls as she ran past. "Do you like it here?" we asked.

"Yes," she shot back.

"Really?"

"Yes!"

And off she ran. We watched curiously as the girls piled earth, stones,
sticks and leaves together.

"What are you doing?"

"Making a cake!"

The child who answered didn't even look up, being too busy adding leaves
to the "cake". We laughed, but also felt a little sad. It was good to see
the children at ease and happy and feeling close to nature. But it was
also obvious that it had been a long time since they'd seen any real
nature and that they rarely got to play outside; otherwise, they wouldn't
have been so excited about this scrap of land.

And  sure enough  when we got to our destination and saw the orchards,
grass, ponds and hills, they whizzed off like escaped rabbits.

I still feel the same mix of happiness and sadness every time children get
out of the car and run off shouting, ignoring any calls to return.

China's rapid economic development has changed much of the country's
appearance. Childhoods of climbing trees, picking dates and grapes,
catching fish, shrimp and tadpoles (or cicadas and crickets), making
whistles from willow twigs, and spending all day outside until you were
deeply tanned are gone. What have today's children, growing up with TVs
and computers, lost?

City kids in China became cave-dwellers in an urban jungle long ago.
Children lose the ability to experience nature. They can talk at length
about whales or cheetahs, but not describe a flower at their feet. Parents
know that if their youngsters eat too much processed food, they will not
have a balanced diet; yet they are less likely to know that too much
processed information will also hamper children's development.

In Richard Louv <http://richardlouv.com/about/>'s Last Child in the Woods,
the phrase "nature deficit disorder" is used to describe the broken
connection between children and nature. And in a rapidly modernising and
urbanising China, this phenomenon is spreading quickly.

Friends of Nature <http://www.fon.org.cn/channal.php?cid=774>, formed in
1993, is one of China's oldest NGOs and has provided links between the
urban public and nature through bird-watching and gardening groups. Nature
education aimed at children started in 2000, with Green Hope Action and
the Antelope Bus.

Green Hope Action sees volunteers from the city visit poor villages to
provide environmental education. The Antelope Bus is a mobile
nature-education project that Friends of Nature adopted from Germany; in
its early years, it also visited rural schools. Similar projects include
the Beijing Brooks Education Centre's programme to educate children who
live near nature reserves about wetlands. These projects all started in
cities and are aimed at rural areas. China's early NGOs aimed to help
vulnerable groups, rather than urban populations that tended to have
access to more resources.

Over time, however, some of those involved started to question this
long-distance approach and to look towards city residents. They found that
children in cities had fewer chances to get close to nature than did their
rural counterparts  that urban children suffered more of a nature deficit
 and so they began to experiment with environmental education in cities.
City children (and even some parents), it emerged, didn't need more
knowledge  they just needed to rebuild their links with the natural world.

Even an ant can cause both children and adults to panic, says Wu Yue,
children's nature tutor at the Lovingnature Education and Consulting
Centre. The ants, worms and lizards we often caught and played with as
kids have become terrifying beasts. Similarly, an experiment once found
that Japanese university students preferred to play in a concrete gully,
believing that two tree-lined mountain rivers nearby were dangerous.
Long-term separation from the natural environment causes estrangement,
fear and the loss of the ability to appreciate nature's beauty.

As the NGOs worked, they came to understand that while it's good for a
child to be able to name a plant, more is gained if he or she can
appreciate its beauty; understand its structure and evolution, its links
with other animals and plants; and experience the connection between
people and nature.

Within two or three years, these ideas gave birth to a range of
educational activities based around the observation and experience of
nature. These activities include Friends of Nature's Nature Camps, run by
members and volunteers; Beijing Brooks's nature and art experiences at
Waterdrops Camp at its Nature Study Centre in the hills outside of
Beijing; Hanhaisha's community gardens project; and Nature Heart's classes
combining observation, explanation and photography of nature.

And we were delighted to see how the children behaved during the
activities, breaking down the barriers between themselves and nature; it
was like a miraculous journey.

Song Xi works on Friends of Nature's nature experience project. She asked
a group of lively children to close their eyes and lie beneath the
branches of a large tree. When they opened their eyes and saw the sun
shining through the green canopy, they fell silent as if the whole world
had stopped.

At first, city kids are unruly and uninterested, but they become curious,
excited and focused over time. Initially they don't want to get dirty and
they scream at the sight of a bug  but soon they get closer to nature
than their parents do. If they have the opportunity to observe and
experience nature, they discover new things, things we may never have
noticed, and they become imaginative about things that look ordinary.

Nature is ever-changing and full of beauty, and everyone is drawn to
appreciate and understand it. It sharpens our senses, stimulates the
spirit and cleanses the soul. No matter what their background, all
children can find restoration in nature. As Hu Huizhe of Friends of Nature
says, even "adults caught up in themselves can feel the power of nature
when they notice a dramatic mountain scene or the colours of a wild
flower".

Playing outside makes children more fit and coordinated, and helps them to
build friendships. The "secret gardens" of our childhood can absorb our
sadness, soothe our soul and nurture our lives  and build our future
personalities. Activities in the natural environment are not optional;
they are an essential ingredient of a healthy childhood, just like
sunshine and air are essential for trees and plants.

Nature is a treasure-house of knowledge, a palace of art, a spring of
imagination and creativity. Children who know how to appreciate beauty
will be happier, and creative children will be more successful. In his
"Song of the Open Road <http://www.bartleby.com/142/82.html>", the
19th-century American poet Walt Whitman
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walt_Whitman>said: "Now I see the secret of
making the best persons; it is to grow in the open air and to eat and
sleep with the earth." Letting children build an emotional connection to
nature, to ignite their curiosity and passion  that is the root of all
learning.

As Li Weiwen, chair of Taiwan's Society of Wilderness
<http://eem.pcc.gov.tw/en/node/1235> wrote in his bookEducation Can Be
Romantic: "Take your child for a walk, and if you have a calm and
unflustered heart, nature will lead you to appreciate it and learn
everything that we should know."

Liu Xinyan is deputy director of the Beijing Brooks Institute.