On the radio show “Living on Earth,” Bruce Gllerman interviewed Antioch education professor David Sobel recently about helping kids grow up to care about nature.
“Research shows that adults who are strong environmental stewards were allowed to explore nature unfettered as kids. … Sobel says educators are too focused on rules and making sure that students learn correct scientific terms instead letting kids be kids. …
“SOBEL: Kids should have alone time in the woods. If it gets crazy, then there should be some adult intervention. … There needs to be a large quotient of being outdoors, in the meadows and in the woods, as well as the more didactic, pictorial experience of IMAX and National Geographic.
“GELLERMAN: So basically, take the kid kayaking.
“SOBEL: Take the kid kayaking. Take the kid berry-picking.
“GELLERMAN: Well, [with] a lot of parents — you say ‘berry-picking’ and they’ll say, ‘Oh my gosh, they’ll pick something poisonous!’ I know I take my kid mushrooming, and I tell other parents, and they look at me like ‘Oh my God, should we call the police on this guy?’
“SOBEL: Exactly. It’s fascinating how shocked and disapproving other parents are about [that] kind of behavior. … One of the things in childhood that seems to shape environmental behaviors in adulthood is parents taking their kids mushroom picking and berry picking: selecting a natural resource for consumption …
“GELLERMAN: You know, Professor, if I were asked, I could trace my environmentalism to when I was just maybe four years old. And my mother gave me a spoon, put me in the garden, and I started digging to China. Do you have a memory like that?
“SOBEL: The analogous memory that I recount is a snow day when I was about eight years old. And my friends and I decided we would play this game where they were gonna go off and I was gonna to follow them fifteen minutes later. And in the midst of tromping through waist-deep snow all by myself, my glasses were fogging up, I had one of those little epiphany moments: that I was out here, all by myself, in the snowy wilderness, and wasn’t this great! It’s a recurrent phenomenon that kids have these great moments, somewhere in early to middle childhood, that often connect them to the natural world.”
More at the website, where you also can listen to the recording of the interview.
Photo: Flickr CC/your neighborhood librarian
Walking in the woods. 
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