last child in the woods
The argument is made that our children have lost touch with “nature” a.k.a. the environment and are suffering from “nature deficit disorder” according to author Richard Louv. If we don’t try to find a cure, things that are going badly - habitat loss, water pollution, global warming, etc. is going to get worse.
The book is even more intriguing because Louv documents numerous examples where “environmental-based education” programs have seriously improved overall academic performance.
March 20th, 2008 at 9:12 pm
Wow, I can see the guy’s point when I think about it. Sounds like an interesting book. Coming up, my friends and I couldn’t stay out of the woods. It was a means of escape and a small taste of independence for that age. This was important because it was back in the Adam Walsh days, and the media had everyone paranoid that there was a legion of kidnappers waiting on the streets. So, it was a required pastime. As I got older, I kinda saw it as some kind of natural mechanism to find appeal in nature. Do you think that this appreciation is something that can be ultimately taught in class?
March 21st, 2008 at 3:09 pm
Create video games in which the bad guys dump barrels of radioactive
waste into rivers and oceans and the “good guys” , i.e.,
the ‘lost kids as players’ have to stop them or lose the game.
Make another game - the player is on top of a glacier and the bad guy
is trying to shoot him off and the player has to get off the glacier
either before the bad guy shoots and kills him or the glacier melts - and
it’s melting very fast.
And yet another one in a car city of 30 million people in which the
player has to get out before he chokes to death on pollution.
Maybe these lost kids might get the message and take it to the
“outside” world.
I’m leaving now for a walk in the woods. Happy Easter.
April 9th, 2008 at 6:27 am
What a concept! I think that there may be some “milk-toast” attempts out there, probably from EPA. But they almost certainly wouldn’t have the required blood and gore required to capture the kids’ attention. I have noticed that the message is in some of the cartoons that my grandson wallows in but it’s a stretch.