Part Five: The Jungle Blackboard

Chapter 16 - The Natural School Reform

Most of the information shared in this chapter relates to the concept of environment-based education. This can mean a variety of things, but he mainly discusses how schools should promote learning within the nearby environments instead of keeping education enclosed in the classroom. There are a variety of ways that schools can do this, especially due to the many different landscapes across the country and also the seasonal variations. But there have been schools all across the county that exemplify how the environment can be used for educational purposes and teaching students the necessary material, but in a non-traditional manner. Here are some examples of how schools utilized their surrounding habitats for teaching:

*In Florida, Taylor County High School teachers and students use the nearby Econfina River to team-teach math, science, language arts, biology, chemistry, and the economics of the country.

*In Glenwood Springs, Colorado, high school students planned and supervised the creation of an urban pocket park, and city planners asked them to help develop a pedestrian mall and park along the Colorado River.

*An English class in Santa Cruz, California began taking trips all around the Monterey Bay area to learn about the surrounding which many students had never even cared to see before. The teacher eventually landed them at Cannery Row in Monterey, the setting for John Steinbeck's novel entitled Cannery Row. Not only did the students get to experience the setting firsthand, but they actually visited specific areas linked to the plot, like a tide-pool described as a metaphor for the community of life.

*In Homer, Alaska, a fellow teacher takes his students out to a local glacier where he has lessons on glaciology, marine biology, botany, and cultural history. He quotes that, "This isn't memorizing information for a test. When you sit in silence in front of a glacier and see the glacial pond, the dirt on the glacial moraine, the succession of plants from the lichens to the climax forest, and you write and sketch what you see, you make a bond with that moment. This experience becomes part of you."

Not only can the environment be a place for leaning, but it can also be a place where children can explore for themselves. For example, schools can improve their grounds and increase students' interest in nature as well as provide easy access to exercise and fun for kids right outside the doors to their classrooms. "Numerous studies document the benefits from school grounds that are ecologically diverse and include free-play areas, habitat for wildlife, walking trails, and gardens."

Chapter 17 - Camp Revival

Another way of getting students out into the natural world is by planning retreats in the wilderness as a school or by class. There is a social aspect where students become unified and a natural purpose, where the basic surroundings provide lessons of their own. Both of these portions are important, but Louv stresses the importance of the nature aspect in and of itself. Some of these nature retreats are so influential on the lives of participants that beneficial outcomes may last up to several years after the nature experience.

"The great worth of outdoor education programs is their focus on the elements that have always united humankind: driving rain, hard wind, warm sun, forests deep and dark -- and the awe and amazement that our Earth inspires, especially in our formative years."

Louv argues that the youth of our nation are growing up in a so-called "third frontier," where they are detached from the source of their food, family farms are disappearing, biological absolutes are vanishing, humans and animals are becoming even more distanced, and even space is becoming limited. He calls upon the teachers across America to find ways to get our children back into the outdoor world, not only to stimulate learning, but to save them from the deficit that is ever-encroaching upon their lives.

"Experience (outside the school) has its geographical aspect, its artistic and its literary, its scientific and its historical sides. All studies arise from the aspects of the earth and the one life lived upon it."

(Tyler)