Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder

by Richard Louv

Predatory people are not as likely to mess with them, because the predator senses that these are kids who will tell, who can’t be fooled or conned. The studies show that most kids who are victimized are also emotionally neglected, or they come from intensely unhappy families, or suffer other deprivations.”

Is this true? This seems SUPER DUPER victim blame-y and also discounts the fact that many, many kids are "messed with" by family friends and family members.

trustworthy adults

But who is determining who is "trustworthy"? This seems awfully insular.

Surely the width and depth of nature, the added mystery—the catalogue of sounds and smells and sights—is larger than the relatively short and known list of urban stimulations.

Unsupported assertion.

Is this quality, perhaps, linked simply to beauty, to those natural shapes and musical sounds that draw our souls to nature? Sobel thought about that question for a moment, and then said, yes, that made sense to him.

"Can you fit your research into my off-the-cuff-theory?" He thought for a minute, then said yes.

He weighted the wire at the edges with stakes and rocks. Into the pit went the crawlers and the spinners. Each summer, I spent hours under the cool shade of the hedge, on my belly, peering into Turtle World.

I don't think turtles should be killed by cars. But this doesn't really seem better? Turtle jail?

Today, some folks would frown at a boy collecting turtles. But unless a child is collecting endangered species, the aggregate of good outweighs the damage to nature.

Says who? Again, if everyone did this, then it would not be sustainable!

“Every kid grows up with a mountain bike; it used to be a fishing pole,” says Sports Afield editor John Atwood.

Really? EVERY kid grows up with a mountain bike? Sure.

By any measure, the impact of consumptive outdoor sports on nature pales in comparison to the destruction of habitat by urban sprawl and pollution. Remove hunting and fishing from human activity, and we lose many of the voters and organizations that now work against the destruction of woods, fields, and watersheds.

Sure, brah. It's okay if we hurt nature just a little! We're allowed! We know exactly what we're doing, and there definitely couldn't be any unintended consequences!

Yes, fishing and hunting are messy—even morally messy—but so is nature. No child can truly know or value the outdoors if the natural world remains under glass, seen only through lenses, screens, or computer monitors.

False dichotomy

“We’re part of nature, and ultimately we’re predatory animals and we have a role in nature,” he said, “and if we separate ourselves from that, we’re separating ourselves from our history, from the things that tie us together. We don’t want to live in a world where there are no recreational fishermen, where we’ve lost touch with the seasons, the tides, the things that connect us—to ten thousand generations of human beings that were here before there were laptops, and ultimately connect us to God.”

This feels very thin to me. I think that, at this point in history, humans have to worry more about fixing the many (many) things we've done to screw nature up before we worry about our "predator" role in nature.

“God communicates to us through each other and through organized religion, through wise people and the great books, through music and art,” but nowhere “with such texture and forcefulness in detail and grace and joy, as through creation,”

:/

it’s the moral equivalent of tearing the last pages out of the last Bible on Earth.

Cool cool cool. Good to know only Christians have the moral right to enjoy nature.

Support for nature in education was given an added boost by Howard Gardner, professor of education at Harvard University, who in 1983 developed the powerful theory of multiple intelligences. As described in an earlier chapter, Gardner proposed seven different intelligences in children and adults, including linguistic intelligence, logical-mathematical intelligence, spatial intelligence, bodily-kinesthetic intelligence, musical intelligence, interpersonal intelligence, and intrapersonal intelligence. More recently, he added naturalist intelligence (“nature smart”) to his list.

This is not a theory that is accepted by everyone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_multiple_intelligences#Critical_reception

By the second grade, most American children have already spent years in preschool and have been introduced to the rigors of testing.

Not all Americans have access to preschool. https://www2.ed.gov/documents/early-learning/matter-equity-preschool-america.pdf

Finnish students don’t enter any school until they are seven years old—practically senior citizens in America.

This seems to be a misrepresentation. Preschool/high quality day cares are available to EVERYONE -- it's just that formal preschool or kindergarten starts at age six, and compulsory school starts at age seven.

“They can still use computers at home or play video games at their friends’ houses; that world isn’t closed to them.”

Agree strongly.

As an added bonus, the students in these programs demonstrate better attendance and behavior than students in traditional classrooms.

I definitely think that more environmental learning is good! But...could it not be that parents who make a conscious choice to send their kids to a specialized school are ALSO more supportive outside the classroom...?

“repeatedly emphasized how outdoor science school provides a ‘fresh start’ for students,”

This seems like it is more about having a unique experience, rather than that it's an outdoor experience.

focusing on people with disabilities,

What kind of disabilities? Every disability is not the same; every person with disabilities is different.

disabilities. Other studies show that people with disabilities participate in the most challenging of outdoor recreation activities; they seek risk, challenge, and adventure in the outdoors just as do their contemporaries without disabilities.

Duh? I don't understand why this even has to be stated? Very ableist.

Though not every community has benefactors like Debbie and Paul Brainerd, a proliferation of smaller-scale child/nature preserves is possible and practical—given the high cost of brick-and-mortar classrooms.

Yes!

Lewis and Clark were scouting real estate.

This joke annoys me. There were First Nations people on those lands, bud.

What Banegas was saying lends weight, instead, to controversial new theories about the pre-Columbian Western Hemisphere: that it was much more populated and sophisticated than we have generally believed.

I mentioned a pet peeve to Vanderhoff. By the understandable rules of nature preserves everywhere, no kid will be allowed to build a tree house or fort on Crestridge Ecological Reserve—despite the fact that many of us, including environmentalists, first learned to engage nature by building forts in the woods. What happens when kids can no longer do that, when what remains is under glass?

For example, rather than serving citations, or chasing kids away without explanation, park rangers could focus on nature education, teaching families and the young how to enjoy the outdoors without being destructive.

Another option is that every family, with or without children, consider increasing its liability insurance coverage.

Huh? I'm all about society carrying the burden for children (public schools, taxes, required maternity and paternity leave), but this is really weird suggestion. Again, it also shows privilege. Plenty of people can barely afford to pay their utility bills/for food, so does asking them to increase their liability insurance really seem like a realistic solution?

usually about $200 a year;

This is, in fact, not modest for everyone. It is a lot for a lot of people.

Howard wants to help restore reliability to law

I believe that people should feel okay about letting people play on their property -- BUT lawsuits against corporations are often one of the only ways that individuals can seek any sort of retribution or change from detrimental practices.

Dad’s insurance would pay the bills,”

Gosh, I guess in the past medical care didn't frequently bankrupt people and insurance was within reach of everyone. HUH!

The largest unmanaged ecosystem in America is suburbia,”

Huck Finn has left the territories and gone to the Netherlands.

This joke is real old by now.

Interesting—not once in twenty years have I seen the kids who live here throw a tomato or fruit at anyone else.”

I mean, I've lived 33 years on this planet and ALSO not ever seen someone through a tomato or fruit at anyone else? Is this exceptional?

Numerous studies have shown the economic benefits of green space; for example, some show how adjacent housing benefits from small neighborhood parks.

Such efforts help, but are seldom, if ever, coordinated with efforts to increase the urban child’s access to nature.

We need a holistic look at city planning -- municipal and nonprofit/community groups need to work together.

The good news about the Bay’s Thirty Years’ War is that a major urban park is at least being contested by those who envision it as a future site of playing fields and those who envision it wild, as a place of direct experience.

The word "park" really seems to mean different things to different people. Even when I was looking up how many parks there were in San Antonio, it was including a lot of information about things like how many basketball hoops there were...which is cool, but also not really what Louv is talking about.

The city of Austin, Texas, purchased a farm, renamed it Pioneer Farms, and turned it into a living history museum.

It was donated to the city? And is now operated by a nonprofit. Open only Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, and charges an admission fee.

Sobel’s vision is to claim these stray patches as playscapes and incorporate such natural features as ponds with frogs and turtles, berry vines to pick, hills to sled, bushes and hillsides for hiding and digging.

Seems like some of the planned communities around here have this and are using it as a selling point? This seems like a really easy and good way for them to add in a cool perk.

At Irvine’s adventure playground, new kids must complete a safety course before they can take up hammer and nails and build a fort; an adult must accompany kids under age six.

Good way to balance danger and adventure.

“between the fact that [typical sprawl] makes no room for sidewalks or bike paths and the fact that we are an overweight, heart disease-ridden society.”

I mean, also because lots of people don't have access to fresh foods. But probably sidewalks, too!

students are four times more likely to walk to schools built before 1983 than to those built later.

1. Conform to topography 2. Use places for what they are naturally most fit 3. Conserve, develop, and utilize all natural resources, aesthetic as well as commercial 4. Aim to secure beauty by organic

arrangements rather than by mere embellishment or adornment.

Imagine the San Diego museum and zoo selling packets of indigenous seeds of pollinating plants. Every garden in San Diego “could contain a palette of plants that would not only be beautiful to look at but would provide nectar, and roosting and nesting sites for animals—as well as protective cover.”

CNC can do this!

Yet no matter how designers shape it, any city has limits to human carrying capacity—especially if it includes nature.

The current models for that growth are unsatisfactory; they include suburban sprawl at the edges of cities and buckshot development in rural areas. Both separate children from nature.

there. In truth, the nature that shaped so many of us was seldom self-organizing—at least not in the pristine way that Snyder suggests.

When cities get denser through infill, parks are often an afterthought, and open space is diminished. Such development is spreading quickly; it now dominates even the outer rings of most growing American cities and seeps into the most rural areas, creating an urban milieu that “screams human presence,” as Elaine Brooks once put it.

But then what is the solution? If suburban sprawl is bad, and people living in dense urban areas is bad, where are all the people supposed to live? And, also, living in dense, mixed-use areas is better for fuel economy and community, no?

In Kansas, such counties cover more territory than they did in 1890.

First Nation's peoples? Are they accounted for here?

that future generations in this part of the world may well create a sensible way to distribute population.

This feels very creepy to me -- the "distribute population" part -- because I assume that it will be poor and/or POC groups that will be redistributed. Rich white people always get to live where they want...

If the domestic prairie is really to sustain us, we’ll eventually have to redistribute the population out across the country and live a kind of life that few of us can imagine today, a more radical life than back-to-the-land hippies had in mind. In Jackson’s view, our great-grandchildren will live in farms or villages spread out across the land.

This seems very, very USA-ian centric. What about other climates? What about countries that don't have the area to spread people out?