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jmartin has a question
Buried down in the comments on the previous post, jmartin posed a question to CRNians that I thought deserved more prominent display:
The short version: how can one bond children with nature and their environment, so that they will clutch at the treasures imperiled by climate change?
The long version: I run a nfp that brings new books and pleasure-reading to low-income kids in Chicago-area after-school programs. At our pilot site, we’ve built and staff a reading room (1000 books and growing), which operates as a free book store, and locus for book clubs and read-alouds.
Kids at the site are entirely unplugged from nature, the environment, or the science of either. Their town is imploded industrial; its empty lots, long abandoned factories, and swathes of train trestles generate a certain (toxic) sense of expansiveness.
Mediated experiences, like zoos and arboretums, don’t seem to have sparked any sustained interest. Kids page through some of our glossier animal encyclopedias and Earth From Above, but still don’t examine the world before them. Suggestions that we use field guides to find the area’s plants and animals: meh. I point out cloud formations, and the luxuriant rooster scratching in a dirt lot amid a sparrow flock. They shrug.
So: any ideas—from your own or another’s childhood— as to how to forge some connections? What rang your chimes, from ages 6 to 16? If you can suggest experiences to be paired with print, that would be aces.
These kids are starving for beauty and wonder. (Not the wonder of “who else will climb in my window” that causes fourth grade girls to keep knives under their beds.) They need to track a dragonfly (oddly abundant this year), and examine a roadside sunflower, and even to love the possum—with his thousands of ineffectual teeth.
I answer, as briefly as possible, below the fold. Add your answer, at whatever length you like, in comments.
I grew up — to the extent that I grew up — surrounded by “nature”: on a ridge top out in Central New York dairy country with snakes and farm animals and long views and a couple of ponds, then in a small town with woods and gorges and deep glacial lakes, then in a suburb carved out of hardwood forest with creeks and Devonian fossils nearby. So my early childhood experience is very different from that of urban kids.
But rural and suburban kids who grow up among trees and dragonflies routinely grow up to treat the living world as a toilet and a slagheap. Mere exposure clearly does not hold the key to later love.
My parents hauled us kids across country in a station wagon in 1966 and I got my first glimpse of the West in those three weeks, including the obligatory visits to 1960s-era California’s two main tourist attractions: Yosemite and Disneyland. (In retrospect I’d gladly swap 1966 Disneyland for 1966 Golden Gate Park, but try explaining that to a six-year-old me.) Yosemite struck a chord in me, somehow — while Disneyland was merely fun — and I spent the next several years reading and re-reading Irving Robert Melbo’s Our Country’s National Parks (Volume Two)
Picture books, too. When I think about my pre-school captivation by the natural world, I don’t always think first of the snakes and minnows and apple trees on our property outside of Penn Yan, NY, but often instead about the book on forests I’d read in the house. Photos of red amanitas, Jacks-in-the-pulpit, lady’s slippers orchids, frogs and such. I found them endlessly fascinating.
Can a book awaken an interest in the natural world where none exists? I don’t know. Maybe you can take a stab at answering that question. I wonder if it’s not like the process of becoming a progressive: array all the facts and philosophies before someone, and they won’t be swayed until something strikes them in the gut, and that might be something as odd and unpredictable as a phone commercial or a bad plate of shellfish.
I do know that success isn’t always immediately obvious. Some of those kids in jmartin’s orbit may well have been reached successfully, and they won’t know it for another decade or two. I know when I was six I had no intention of becoming some guy who went camping for a living.
Is it a matter of getting through to kids, or just of providing the necessary and helpful nutrients for growth of biophilia in those kids who are already likely to turn out that way anyway?
Posted by: Chris Clarke
Note: A database glitch in 2008 ate a bunch of archived comments. Don't be offended if yours isn't here, or confused if the conversation seems disjointed. Thanks!
I think that being in nature is definitely part of it. I grew up in the ‘burbs outside NYC. There were still patches of woods, maybe a lot wide, several deep near my apartment house and we could go and play in them for hours.
And there was Girl Scout Camp.
Being connected to nature means experiencing it as something non-alien, which is hard if your exposures are second hand, even excellent second hand - like the books and television shows you mention.
There has to be that physical awareness of oneself as part of nature, that it’s not something other. That is why zoos and museums don’t work unless they’re sort of a supplement to the base experience of being part of the non-made world.
I don’t think that the contact has to be a big expedition into the wild. One of my first nature memories is of looking up through a bush in the Brooklyn Botanical Garden. I remember the smell, the sense of being enclosed, and how beautiful it was there
By: By rrp on 2007 11 28
feh, I should have read the initial post more carefully, as jmartin talked about visits to the zoo, et al.
I guess that it has to be a cumulative thing, piling on the books, the films, the trips, even to lots in the neighborhoods. If they’re anything like the ones in NYC, amazing things will be growing up in the spring and fall, amidst the human-generated debris.
Keep up the exposures and something will click in some of the students. It probably won’t be quick. But even the bored ones may remember this later on. They’ll have these things to draw on, even if they don’t respond now.
By: By rrp on 2007 11 28
When I was a kid I used to read a lot of historical/adventure books that had characters living within an unurbanized natural world. Aren’t there any such books among the children’s and YA books published today? I’m not saying that everyone would be fascinated by them, but I was. Also what rrp says about Girl Scout Camp.
By: By nm on 2007 11 28
jmartin, that’s a tough one. the best way for kids to connect with nature is to get out in it, run around, discover things, ask questions, find out more. are field trips to more open areas a possibility? or campouts for the older kids?
what about trips to natural history museums, science museums, kids’ museums? being close to interesting stuff is great, especially if some of it is hands-on. i have no idea what is near to you, but here in the bay area, my kids adored visiting laurence hall of science in berkeley [dinos, live animals in the bio lab, geology, etc], the oakland museum [exhibits on CA geography and wildlife], montery bay aquarium [with pools for touching marine life], etc.
some regional and state parks have exhibits about nature, and rangers or liasons who are great at explaining stuff to kids. or—is it possible to arrange guest speakers for the kids? some parks and museums may have programs like that set up, and bring along artifacts and pictures. professionals or dedicated nature-lovers may find it delightful to share some of what they love, too. they will all have books in mind to share, and may be willing to donate some.
my kids were interested in projects that gave them a sense of ownership—like tending gardens, starting baby trees indoors, caring for classroom pets [lizards, turtle, hermit crabs, tarantula, walking sticks, beetles, toads, butterflies raised from cocoons], picking a topic and finding out more about it to share with classmates [e.g., favorite animals, places they’d like to go, etc.].
it goes without saying that natural things that are weird, exotic, or disgusting are VERY attractive to kids. animal skulls and skeletons. weird insects. insides of things [just, not too gory]. strange rocks, fossils. fungus. oddities like underground caverns, enormous trees, flora and fauna that can only live certain places.
so, back to the books. i think that once kids can see books as portals to amazing worlds beyond their personal experiences, they get hooked. but part of the hook has to be some initial connection to or interest in the subject matter.
we really loved the “eyewitness” books on various topics, many of which were science or nature related. they have gorgeous photos and a lot of information arranged in short passages.
writers are also better readers. any chance the programs can start kids out easy on writing what is interesting to them?
you are probably operating on a shoestring, and trips to the wilds and museums have costs. can’t hurt to ask about waiving or donating fees. since it is essentially a literacy program, i wonder if some local authors would be willing to underwrite travel expenses for field trips?
By: By kathy a on 2007 11 28
I think that zoos don’t work, not like we want them to. (For an elegant and wonderful description of why, see this article in the Sun.) I think they can be a start, but in the end they don’t work. Natural history museums can be great, and Attenborough’s Planet Earth series, and books of course, and driving through the countryside, but I think all the mediated experiences can only be a good start to a real relationship to the wild. Once it’s mediated, it’s no longer wild, and that wildness is crucial and irreplaceable.
I find sense of ownership to be important, like Kathy said, and also sense of connection: a sense of why this matters in their lives. Gardens are a really good place to start. Hands-on, interactive, full of bugs (bugs are another good place to start), with something tangible every step of the way and something edible at the end. Not sure how to get books in there, though… a garden journal, maybe?
By: By Kat on 2007 11 28
I read Jmartin’s comment earlier and have been thinking for a while about how to respond. Because this is so crucial, not only for the future of nature & humans, but for those individual kids who are starved without knowing it. Have you read Last Child in the Woods: Saving our Children from Nature Deficit Disorder, by Richard Louv? It’s so very helpful and I recommend it highly.
Earlier commenters (Cathy A) have mentioned what I believe to be the most important factor for kids: they have to be IN nature for it to become part of who they are, a critical aspect of their identity. As Chris mentioned, contact with the wild is certainly no guarantee for each kid. But I think there is something so unknowable, so basic, secret, and yes, sacred, about the natural world that it can never be accessed without some degree of immersion in the actual thing. Nature changes you because of what it is. Museums are cool, museums can teach. But I think only the wild itself can inform a person’s sense of self and light up that love, reverence, sense of belonging to it. I think only the wild itself can really first inspire. Like Chris, as a child I had my favorite books about Yosemite, but they only meant something to me because I’d been there, I’d been changed by the mountains forever and all I wanted to do was get back there, so I read about it as a substitute.
All that said, I also believe that the wild and its power to transform can be effective in really small bundles too. As others suggested, is there a space that these kids could use to plant their own garden (vegetables, flowers, even native plants that might have been used by aboriginal peoples of the area)? Is there a vacant lot that could be cleaned up and used as a space to play among the weeds? A pond built? Oh, I know this is probably beyond the scope of your existing program, but is there a sister organization that might get involved, or take the kids to wild areas where they could dream and have some unstructured time?
I volunteer in a program that brings “underprivileged” kids to a natural reserve, some for a one-shot, some for an overnight, some for repeated field trips. It does change them, even if only a tiny bit. We are very lucky here to have this huge wild space, and it’s nothing like your challenge. I send many good wishes to you and your program and am so glad there are folks like you working with the most difficult of places and children.
By: By DH on 2007 11 28
Being ‘in’ nature won’t guarantee a connection. Like that Far Side cartoon where one logger sitting on a giant stump eating his lunch, says to the other; “You know, I couldn’t work in some stuffy office. The outdoors calls to me.” Lot of truth in that.
I connected with nature because my dad was connected with nature. He was environmentalist and conservationist all his life. He picked up litter everywhere we went. And we went to quiet, beautiful places. And historical places. And places of geological interest. Several summers in a row we rented a cabin in Maine where I got to spend my time just hanging out on the rocky shore looking at life in tide pools. We spent part of a summer in Canada digging dinosaur bones.
At home we watched National Geographic specials, not football. Our magazines were mostly science and nature themed. He supplied me with telescope, two microscopes (one 650x optical transmission scope and one stereoscopic dissection scope). I carried a magnifying glass, a 10x jeweler’s lupe, and a pocketknife everywhere.
Near my home were ravines and an old rock quarry - hardly good places for grade school kid to play alone but that’s how it went. Then we moved to Washington state which was an amateur geology nut’s paradise.
It was my dad - none of this was an effort on his part, he was just being himself. To this day I couldn’t tell you exactly how baseball is played but I can approximate the rules a predatory bird follows as it circles over a meadow.
By: By decrepitoldfool on 2007 11 28
Maybe teaching them to draw or photograph critters? Sometimes you don’t quite see until you have to communicate what you see.
I know there are programs that lend cameras to groups of kids; if none works for you, there’s always the (environmentally nasty, yeah) alternative of a handful of disposable cameras, or really cheapo film cameras, and hitting up a local lab for developing.
And a show hung somewhere they’d like to see their work, of course.
By: By Ron Sullivan on 2007 11 28
yes, what ron said. especially the drawing, because it takes more personal focus. that’s also the down side, kids think it is too hard unless they have someone to tell them [1] a few tips, and [2] that there are no mess-ups in art. photos are easier, though, and look great from the start.
it is wonderful for kids to have art to show off, and that can easily be paired with a little writing and/or connect to books they are reading.
By: By kathy a on 2007 11 28
Biophilia is deeply psychological, and its roots begin, I’m quite certain, long before the age of 6. Yet only two entries (by Chris and decrepitoldfool) have so far mentioned parents. jmartin asks about ages 6-16, and Chris asks about “those kids who are already likely to turn out that way anyway.” So we have two different questions, it seems.
To me the best, perhaps only, strong basis for love of nature is learned by (1) adequate bonding to one or more parents in infancy, and (2) some mental association between that bondedness and nature in the ages from 2-6. That is, one way, and perhaps the best, that children learn love of nature is to associate it with their own parents’ “pre-oedipal mother.” There need not be actual camping, but it does need some attentiveness to nature (even if subliminal) on a parent’s part. Thus, I think parents make a child “already likely” and all it takes past that is a healthy variety of the contacts already discussed here. Without this, later education can undoubtedly help, but the prognosis is not nearly so good.
By: By riparia on 2007 11 28
Ask and ye shall, indeed! Wow.
Thank you all so much for these generous, and inspiring, comments and ideas. (As well as the other deeply appreciated offers.)
I incline towards the consensus: books alone don’t spark the fire. I spent years with sagging pockets, for example, but only after that first visit to Lake Michigan and its beguiling beach stones. (Given that it was late November, I probably wasn’t originally inquisitive but merely bent by the gale.)
But hurrah for confirmation that books can fan an existing flame. I definitely will investigate these suggestions, and any others which might occur. I recall being annoyed by the layout/font of Eyewitness books, but I could well be conflating and will re-examine. (Feh on publishers who deter still-tentative readers by treating text as infinitely mutable design.)
Parental influence, of course, would be ideal, but just isn’t in the cards for these kids. (Or any kids; I turn green reading of Decrepit’s Dad.) As I learned this year during home visits, just incenting parents to schlep their kids to the library is often difficult. And surely (as someone noted), kids love to possess their own secret discoveries. And surely they can find ways to follow interests even if the parents don’t share them. I still keep a first-firefly log, even though my mother sent me out to collect with a Folger’s coffee can. (A city girl, natch.)
THE IN CROWD
1. Kat and Kathy: gardens and bugdom are on my radar. One of our most popular books, in fact, is a 3-D bug guide. The site’s agency plans to construct a new facility next year, and I’ve been lobbying (obnoxiously) hard for a substantial garden (having scored a much larger reading room). I would also love to then involve the U of Illinois master gardeners; we’ll see how deterred they are by the far south suburban location.
2. RRP and NM: Had I but known the payoff for goofy Brownie ceremonies in the school gym was an actual camp! The agency does take kids to a Wisconsin camp for one week twice a year. I glean, however, that the adult supervisors (many raised in same town) are themselves uncomfortable with nature, and so little discovery occurs. They breathe less leaded air for a few days, and the story ends. But I will investigate ways to improve that experience. I’m also v. intrigued by DH’s volunteer experience.
3. The site is planning next summer’s day camp schedule, so I’ll start pitching other direct experiences. The original Wolf Prairie is an entirely doable field trip, and their guides have been recommended.
THE GOOD, THE BAD, THE MEDIATED
A constant gripe is that Chicago museums have by their prices closed the doors to low-income kids. I often think this a more serious blow to discovery and growth than reprehensibly poor schools. Museums moreover have been unwilling to cut prices materially for nfp group tours.
We have taken kids to the Field Museum (Sue and mummies), and some older kids to Body Worlds (we all wear a pelt). The Shedd Aquarium is next on my wish-list for donors. Sniffing a beluga’s head, or standing in shadows cast by floating hammerheads is damned in-ish.
AND FINALLY THE BABBLE ENDS
I’ll go ferment now.
Many many many thanks for the jars of starter.
By: By jmartin on 2007 11 28
riparia, i’m not ready to write a child off if his or her parents have no connection to nature, and fail to expose the child before age 6. i’m assuming that some [or most] of the kids jmartin is concerned about don’t have those advantages.
i’d be willing to bet that all of us have interests that our parents did not nurture in the least. or that we turned out to have passions about something they may have mentioned in passing.
why not try to open some doors for kids who can most use opportunities?
By: By kathy a on 2007 11 28
Chris, did you get my email recently?
By: By Amanda Marcotte on 2007 11 28
Orange: Let me send you a more detailed email, but had to say thanks for the Thorn Creek link. Our site is in Harvey; I’m still navigating the manifold mysteries south of Chicago.
The website, with its not very mysterious donation button, is : http://www.breadforthehead.org.
I should have it updated with 2007 grant and other activity over the weekend. Remember that your thoughtful suggestions ARE donations themselves.
Ron: I actually did provide kids at another site out with (shudder) disposable cameras in connection with a National Poetry Month writing project. The only direction was to take a picture that reflects your world. Results: interiors with people; shots of a blurred “outside” from behind window screens or from car windows; cars on the street. No pets; no birds; nothing green; nothing growing; no sky (save incidentally); nothing to suggest landscape.
Now what photos would result if—after priming (Planet Earth series?) and at least a forest preserve visit—we sent them out to photograph something living behind non-human eyes. Who is watching you? We’d even be able to display photographs at the site’s free-standing art gallery.
By: By jmartin on 2007 11 28
I grew up in the city but had cousins who lived in a small town. I also went to Girl scout camp in Dansville,NY, where I could walk through a mature pine forest, and see for myself the cycle of life in that particular forest. I remember so well the dry needles under my feet on that hot August day. When I was in the city with my city cousins, we spent plenty of summer days and early evenings catching lightning bugs in the vacant lots nearby their house. Some call them fireflies, and some call them foxfire. But we would catch them in jars and watch them light up. My cousins in Lima would catch snakes and cut them up and put them in jars….kind of cruel. I learned how to shoot a beebee gun with them. But now I am a pacifist, you never know, they became hunters and fishermen. In that area of NY it is considered an honor ( not to me ) to have a couple of dead deer in the back of your pickup.
We spent time at different lakes around our area, swimming even before it was really warm enough. Our parents all gave us a lot of freedom back then.
Many parents in the inner city out of neccessity become overprotective. This fear becomes an obstacle to experience if you feel that you have to be looking over your back for fear you will get jumped.
Our area does provide for the inner city kids, there are always programs geared for them. Several of our museums are located only a couple of miles from one of the poorest neighborhoods in the city. ( the railroad tracks are the dividing line, as I am sure they are in many another city ) However this means that in many cases the kids are able to walk to them or to take a city bus. The kids get to plant the garden near one of our major parks, and this is an annual spring outing for the schools. I don’t know how many of them are going to get the casual experience that I did just as a matter of daily living. I haven’t even talked about the glories of winter around here. That’s a whole other essay….
By: By Linda on 2007 11 29
Hmmm. Well, I am not sure of what your end goals are, exactly - why do you want to connect them to nature? Not that that’s a bad thing or anything, I am just curious.
I was raised in an urban environment and sometimes I’d attend an in-city camp that at one point tried to connect us to nature. They took us on an overnight camp out in Griffith Park, complete with sleeping bags on the ground and a little fire going and the camp counselors pointing out this or that lovely critter or sound, before we all settled in to sleep.
Oh my god. Talk about early childhood trauma. Granted, I was the only one they had to scoop up in the middle of the night and allow to sleep in the nice metal and plastic, not quite “nature” van, so that everyone else could get some sleep, but still. I’m sure the others just had their ‘brave face’ on.
Having said that, though, I love nature. I do. I am appreciative of the dangers to the environment, support all sorts of causes, ohhh and awww over pictures of gorgeous vistas and all that.
I hike through the deserts and tromp through the woods… okay, well Chris actually does the desert hiking and Theriomorph the woods tromping, but I follow along and enjoy every minute of it - nature at its best. Put me in an *actual* desert, though, or forest, and all I want to be connected to is 911, or a cab home.
I was thinking about this part:
Kids at the site are entirely unplugged from nature, the environment, or the science of either. Their town is imploded industrial; its empty lots, long abandoned factories, and swathes of train trestles generate a certain (toxic) sense of expansiveness.
....
Kids page through some of our glossier animal encyclopedias and Earth From Above, but still don’t examine the world before them.
Is it possible, instead, to connect nature to them? I mean, it’s difficult to tell from a short comment, of course, but it sounds more like they do see the world before them, but possibly don’t see the connection to the world you are trying to show them. So, is it possible to just start there? In the world that is before them now, and work outward?
And then sort of build on the things that are relevant and accessible to them now, and allow them to begin to weave the relations between their current world and the wider one that is, apparently at this point in time, only really accessible to them through books or museums and such.
By: By Nanette on 2007 11 29
Nanette asks a fantastic question.
To my mind it parallels a discussion we (white) enviros used to have time and time again back in the 1980s, early 1990s. Some white enviros are probably still having it, I imagine. The question ran along the lines of:
“How do we get [people of color] to be more interested in environmentalism?”
And of course some of us ofays eventually figured out, often with much help from our colleagues of color, that it was the wrong question to ask. The question we should have been asking was “Why do we seem to define ‘environmentalism’ to exclude the general range of concerns of people of color?” Because in California, for instance, there’s a huge group of Latin@s who are vitally concerned with pesticide use issues, for instance. Native people in North America constitute a core group of people concerned about resource extraction industries. Black folks are very well-represented in the ranks of the movement to fight industrial pollution. Workplace toxic exposure issues in general affect people of color out of proportion to their representation in the general population. You get the idea.
But sure, most of the activists willing to backpack their tie-dyed clothing and lentils ten miles into the wilderness to sit in a threatened redwood for an entire semester? White kids. A few Asians. Sometimes they ask a Native person in to bless everything at the beginning while they nod solemnly. And sure, it would definitely be cool if those demographics shifted, if only to watch the FoxNews yoiks’ reaction to the establishment of militant African-American Earth First! groups.
I think the question isn’t so much “how do we [or ‘why should we’] get urban kids interested in forests and glaciers” so much as “Why do we assume that the built environment is something outside of and distinct from Capital-N ‘Nature’?” And it sounds like jmartin’s project is grappling with that very question, which I love.
I mean, I doubt that the earth can too long afford the luxury of cities. Their only benefit is that they are easier on the planet than having the same number of people spaced evenly over the land. They’re toxic and unstable and unsafe.
But they also, as I go into in this overly long post, mean freedom to a lot of people, where the less-populated parts of North America pose danger and even tyranny. And anyway, “Nature” doesn’t stop at the city limits.
By: By Chris Clarke on 2007 11 29
Here is a thought-provoking article on the history of these ideas:
“THE EGO-IDEAL OF THE GOOD CAMPER AND THE NATURE OF SUMMER CAMP” by MICHAEL B. SMITH
http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/eh/11.1/smith.html
If the link won’t work, Google the title. It’s an open access journal.
By: By riparia on 2007 11 29
A great article that doesn’t quite address this issue but isn’t quite off-topic: Unplugged Schools (Orion). And another Orion article that addresses pretty directly some of what Chris was saying above: Global Warming is Colorblind.
The idea of the separation between Nature and City I think is one of the more damaging parts of our present cultural mindset. It justifies the total destruction of some land (where people live or grow their food) while keeping us emotionally and spiritually separated from land considered “pristine” or “preserved” so that we can have no real connection to either place. Dangerous stuff, that.
Learning the trees, yes. And the birds. Learning that nature is city, too.
And also, Master Gardener programs generally require some certain number of hours of community volunteering for the certification, so you might be able to get some recent/incipient graduates on board.
By: By Kat on 2007 11 29
Oh, My God, Kat: some of the comments to that second Orion article could be cut and pasted into the clueless white folks gallery.
“I worked on toxic pollution with minority communities, and they stubbornly and disappointingly persisted in seeing it primarily as a threat to their own health”?
What The Fuck?
By: By Chris Clarke on 2007 11 29
Right, the city is nature too! Sort of ;)
While it’s important, I doubt the kids would have too much interest in the toxic environment stuff either, at least not at first. Still, giving them a way to explain or contextualize their world couldn’t hurt.
I don’t want to be a complete downer tho.. I do have suggestions. I have no idea how feasible they are, jmartin, or how much actual time the kids have in your program (which sounds great, by the way), also, it might be too involved, but anyway, here goes. Maybe some form of them may be doable
I just came back from a walk, where I was thinking of ways to try to get the ‘beauty of nature’ part in, and I thought maybe one way (when dealing with city kids) is to present the trees and plants and bugs and such as people, too. In a way. What made me think of it are a couple of photos Chris put up a while back of Joshua trees (I think). They were dancing.
One photo was just a lone dancer, a Native American ceremonial dance I think, but the other was not only a group of dancers but also the band and the audience (although those last were rather small, as they consisted of brush and stuff).
Most all children love music and dance, and urban ones sometimes more than others because they (especially if they live in dangerous areas) have fewer outside activity options open to them. So, long story short - possible activities (I am a bad explainer, but will try to be clear. And brief at the same time!):
1) Have some of the kids come up with a simple dance routine and a venue and then have the kids (either at the park or in the books or, preferably, using trees, plants and flowers in their area) attempt to find the dance steps in the shapes of the greenery. Once they’ve decided on which plant will do what, maybe they can find out more about the plant (where it comes from, what it eats, how hardy it is, so on) in order to give it personality.
They could make dancing tree pictures, or maybe even a short story/picture book peopled with the various plants and trees and flowers, set in the city, doing city things (if that’s where they want to set it). Make copies and they can have a plant book that they can take home and show around to friends and such. And keep in the library to be read by the next group.
Sports or any other familiar activity also would work for the above, I think.
2) Are there trees, plants or flowers there which are not native to Illinois? Maybe at least some would be interested in a fictional account of how it got there. Find out where it is native to and then trace the route it might have had to travel to get to their city and to the area that it’s in now. This could be done through the field guides and picture books, probably. What other sort of environments did it meet on the way to finally settling down right in their city? So on.
Same sort of thing could be done with animals and bugs, probably. Although with those, I’d look for weirdness before beauty.
That’s all I can think of at the moment.
By: By Nanette on 2007 11 29
nanette—i’m just dyin’ about your griffith park camping trauma! i grew up in the valley—the cheap part—and my camping experience as a kid was a stinky army surplus tent in the back yard. the first and only times i peed outdoors were on a trip in my late 40’s, and i’m proud i didn’t get my pants wet.
but still, as a kid i thought i could be stranded on a deserted island and survive a la swiss family robinson. i thought i could cross oceans; talk to the animals; save the birds and fish.
By: By kathy a on 2007 11 29
I found one of the photos I was talking about, just for an example. I can’t find the lone dancer, but here is the group. (You can just tell the woman off on the right hand side thinks she’s “all that” ;)
Oh, Chris thinks they are marching, but I am sure they are dancing.
By: By Nanette on 2007 11 29
Goals, you ask?
I want our kids to be able to see their Harvey environment, and recognize that they are of it.
I want them to be of other environments, so that they then can compare and decide which aspects generate steady-state joy and fewer asthma attacks.
I want them to understand that an ultimate return to the dirt from whence we have sprung is no curse.
I want them to sniff, scrabble, cock their heads to hear, nibble, bap and be stung by their actual lives (not glowing screen simulacra). I want them to see the patterns, feel the thrum. I want them capable of being mesmerized.
I want them to fully inhabit their space as it exists and with its constraints. Only then can these kids become able to seek and help nurture the healthiest (physical, mental—like that’s different, emotional—ditto) and happiest alternatives.
I want them inculcated with a visceral knowledge that their environs are both boon and responsibility. And I want them able to fight to preserve the best quality of life possible in the next 70 years of climate collapse. When short-term profit schemes are trotted out as climate change solutions, I want this group yelling—
Hell No.
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Too bad that I can’t place my soapbox in the shade of the trees of Harvey. Aerial views don’t fully convey the desolation of this grim grisaille. It is the Fall of the House of Usher, with tarn and the nation’s largest abandoned mall.
It sits on industrial poisons, and retains one of the top 20 emitters in Illinois. No one has had money to water or plant in literally 50 years; trees—like everything else—have died standing.
The Harvey Park District’s top three administrators were just indicted by the U.S. Attorney for defalcation of funds. http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/iln/pr/chicago/2007/pr0830_01.pdf
From the time that I’ve spent on porches this year, it seems that no one has planted even yard vegetation since 1960. What survives are ghost foundations, a box hedge fragment, an incomplete line of hostas.
When you go see the Will-Smith-as-last-man-left-alive-in-New-York dystopia movie, watch for hostas.
By: By jmartin on 2007 11 29
John: I just copied your comment for our site director, because we are going to steal Magic Spots. Perfect!
And I hear you on the “non-Christian meditation.” My suggestion for a yoga space in the new building went over much like a rutabaga.
By: By jmartin on 2007 11 29
john—that project is so close to one of the writing assignments i hated most and learned the most from in high school. we had to spend an hour in a quiet spot, and write down everything we observed. mine was almost all sounds—i spent the hour in my dad’s garage darkroom/workroom, the only quiet spot available. it blew me away, how much i was able to hear, consider, and write about.
jmartin—that’s just so sad. i sometimes do work in south central los angeles, and some of the neighborhoods are like that. closer to home, too, except between the mild climate and some degree of rainfall, they are more likely to have something growing, even when there is hardly any land—and there is this movement for community gardens.
By: By kathy a on 2007 11 30
I was glad to see the last few responses. Who’s to say that an inner city kid is not exposed to nature in every way, every day?
My sense is that the best way is to examine the natural (some of which we may feel is unnatural) environment around us in our home setting, and then work out to the wider world. To do this literally.
“In these four blocks we experience this kind of environment with these species and this sort of dynamic. Now, it this wider area (what ever it may be locally), we see these other aspects.”
The idea is to see how far you have to go (and at what cost) to see something DIFFERENT. This is where the class function comes in. The higher economic classes in the city might have to go just as far to see a different environment (a different ecological niche) but they do it at a lower personal cost.
Tossing an inner city kid into Yosemite and expecting dramatic results is all too typical.
By: By Trinifar on 2007 11 30
John: I already had my confirmation for a copy of Sunship Earth in hand, and absolutely: Wiki yes, if you truly are willing to launch. You are absolutely right: we’ve no time to reinvent the existing wheels. I’ve good contacts inside the Chicago Public School Department of Libraries, and cannot imagine that they won’t plug in and spread the world to the school librarians and thus to teachers. As CPS contains more than 400 elementary schools alone, we’d spread a lot of word.
Of course, Illinois is hopeless. The State does not require libraries in schools, much less the mandates mentioned by spyder. Environmental ed AND the symphony?? Damn damn stupid state, and our inane governor Elvis. Were it not for my propinquity to the Great Lakes…
Ruth: Thanks for the WALC information; I’ll definitely take a gander over the weekend. No one’s lurkers are as good as CRN’s.
By: By jmartin on 2007 11 30
kathy a, heh… I’ve not had the pleasure of that particular outdoors experience yet. And I too thought I could live like Swiss Family Robinson. I wasn’t particularly interested in fish and seas, though… I wanted a tiger.
jmartin, those sound like wonderful goals, which you are trying to accomplish in a very sad environment. I wish you and the children the best of luck and success with them - some of the really great suggestions given here should help. Working with, teaching and trying to influence the lives of children is sometimes a thankless job at even the best of times.
By: By Nanette on 2007 11 30
rrp, I think nature is cool. Not only that, I think children should be exposed to many positive (if traumatizing) experiences, including going on camping trips, to farms to look at chickens and goats or whatever, museums and all that. But until they get old enough to stay away, they’ll always be coming back home to the blight, no?
I feel it’s also, or maybe more, important be able to find the wonder there and connect that to the wider world.
By: By Nanette on 2007 11 30
Reinvented wheels are often a lot better than copied ones.
One thing that you can do in real off-the-beaten-track nature, that you can’t do in the city, is leave kids alone as they explore. The dangers (poisons and predators and precipices) are actually much more avoidable with simple rules than cars and criminals. (OK - I live in Guatemala City where criminals are real, there are honest-to-god baby thefts that happen easy walking distance from my house, so I have lost perspective on whether that’s true or just hysteria back in the first world). I think the freedom to physically explore and manipulate is a basic source of connection, that many urban kids just have absolutely less of. As an educator in the age of liability, I guess you have to find ways to fake that…
By: By homunq on 2007 12 08
