Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder by Louv, Richard (the two towers ebook .txt) 📕

on his horse on the way up to rescue them. The lightning was so bad on the way down that I felt buzzing in my braces and had to hold my mouth with my hand. We were wet and a bit scared but also felt powerful when we got to the bottom and the safety of the old blue bus. It was a vivid lesson on how nature plays hardball if you aren’t prepared when you go into the back or high country, and I never forgot it. I made mistakes sometimes but the basis of respect was well laid.

Why the Investment Makes Sense

According to Andrea Faber Taylor and Frances E. Kuo’s analysis of the literature, “Some of the most exciting findings of a link between contact with green space and developmental outcomes come from studies examining the effects of outdoor challenge programs on children’s self-esteem and sense of self. . . . It is interesting to note that four studies included longitudinal measures and found that participants continued to report beneficial outcomes long (up to several years) after their nature experience.”

Studies of outdoor-education programs geared toward troubled youth—especially those diagnosed with mental-health problems—show a clear therapeutic value. The positive effect holds true whether the program is used as an add-on to more traditional therapy or as therapy in and of itself; it can even be seen when outdoor programs are not specifically designed for therapy. Studies over the past decade have shown that participants in adventure-therapy programs made gains in self-esteem, leadership, academics, personality, and interpersonal relations. “These changes were shown to be more stable over time than the changes generated in more traditional education programs,” according to Dene S. Berman and Jennifer Davids-Berman, in a review of such programs for the Clearinghouse on Rural Education and Small Schools. Camping programs have been used to facilitate emotional well-being since the early 1900s. According to one study, an increase in self-esteem was most pronounced for preteens, but was positive across all ages.

This is also true of carefully managed wilderness adventure programs. In the late 1990s, Stephen Kellert of Yale University, assisted by Victoria Derr, conducted a comprehensive study of the long-term effects on teenage youth of participation in three well-established wilderness-based education programs: the Student Conservation Association, the National Outdoor Leadership School, and Outward Bound. Kellert reported that “an extraordinary 72 percent” of the participants found this outdoor experience to be “one of the best in their life.” As Kellert wrote, “Youth are often reminded today of how little control they possess over their socially and technically complicated lives.” Learning to cope in wilderness and outdoor settings can enhance emotional and affective development, according to Kellert. “Some of these impacts include increased self-confidence, self-esteem, optimism, independence, and autonomy. Moreover, when these accomplishments depend on working with others, they can foster various interpersonal abilities including enhanced cooperation, tolerance, compassion, intimacy, and friendship.” These positive results persisted through many years. Earlier studies reported similar findings.

Camp experiences are also highly beneficial for children with disabilities. Between 1994 and 1995, the National Survey of Recreation and the Environment conducted a national study of 17,216 Americans. A 2001 analysis of that data, focusing on people with disabilities, found that their participation in outdoor recreation and adventure activities was equal to or greater than that of people without 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.

Researchers have also found that people with disabilities gain enhanced body image and positive behavior changes from their camp experiences. One study of fifteen residential summer camp programs with specialized programs for children with disabilities—including learning disabilities, autism, sensory disabilities, moderate and severe cognitive disabilities, physical disabilities, and traumatic brain injury—revealed that participating children demonstrated improved initiative and self-direction that transferred to their lives at home and in school.

A strong public argument for the expansion of camps and outdoor education can be made based on the restorative power of nature; the connection to health is a more marketable idea than is nostalgia for s’mores and campfires. We need, in essence, a camp revival.

Here is a plan for an alternative future: the institutions that care for children—churches, synagogues, Scouting organizations, recreation programs, businesses, conservation and art groups—should form partnerships to build a new arm of public education. Every school district in America should be associated with one or more wildlife-and-childhood preserves in its region. Creating and nurturing such places would be far less expensive than building more brick-and-mortar science labs (though we need more of those, as well) and more needed than the purchase of the newest generation of soon-to-be-obsolete computers. These preserves could also become the focus of higher education’s recommitment to natural history. And they should produce added impetus for a nationwide review of liability laws.

Such nature-education preserves could be part of a new kind of school reform.

Childlife Preserves

One example of the potential for new outdoor-education preserves is on Washington’s Bainbridge Island, where Debbie Brainerd and her husband, Paul Brainerd, former owner of the major software company Aldus, bought 255 acres and turned it into the nonprofit Puget Sound Environmental Learning Center, which the Seattle Post-Intelligencer called “a $52 million, 255-acre layout that melds the adventure of Tom Sawyer’s island with space-station technology and wilderness serenity.” Debbie Brainerd calls it “a magical place for learning,” particularly for low-income, underserved urban youths; it is a place where youths and teachers can stay for several days, using “all five senses to learn science, math, art, writing, technology and culture—and how subjects can be linked,” according to the Post-Intelligencer. An energy-efficient student dorm, called the “Birdsnest,” is made of hand-hewn wood and includes a “mud room.” Museum-donated fossils are imbedded in rock fireplaces. But children spend most of their time outdoors, exploring. This nature-focused learning center has been called “the world’s most innovative center for environmental education.” Though not every community has benefactors like Debbie and