No Child Left Inside: The Greening of the American Curriculum
by Clare Lowell • Huntington, NY

There is a classic Peanuts cartoon that features little yellow-haired Sally, ensconced in a bean-bag chair, watching TV, telling big brother Charlie Brown that he should check out the enthralling program she’s watching on the tube: “You should watch this,” she urges, “They’re showing pictures of huge snowflakes falling gently on this beautiful snow covered meadow…”

Charlie Brown looks at the TV and tells her, “You can see the same thing right now if you go outside,” pointing out the window. The final frame shows Sally—clearly appalled and momentarily distracted from her TV viewing—exclaiming in horror, “OUTSIDE?!”

It might be funnier if it weren’t so scarily true: Our children are growing up without nature—clearly preferring their electronic diversions to the real thing. What Sally didn’t know at the time is that, not only is there a name for her affliction, it’s a syndrome that is virtually dominating the younger generation. “Videophilia,” defined as the new human tendency to focus on sedentary activities involving electronic media (Zaradic and Pergams, 2007) has virtually obviated the need for “biophilia,” or the urge to affiliate with other forms of life. This particular theory is bolstered by research that supports the positive reaction of people to natural landscapes. The quality of this exposure affects human health and child development at an almost cellular level (Wilson, 1984).

As recently as a generation ago, playtime usually meant outdoor play and activity that put children in touch with nature and encouraged direct involvement with their physical environment. Now it’s chat rooms, video games, and indoor playdates. Playrooms as opposed to playgrounds; virtual nature as opposed to the real thing.

It’s not too much of a stretch to say that, if children don’t care about nature today, they won’t care about conserving it tomorrow when they’re adults. And, if one doesn’t care about something, there will be no investment in protecting it. In addition, with the majority of the populace living in urban areas, people will be even more disconnected from the natural world. Considering the looming environmental issues that await this generation (climate change, population/human consumption, carbon footprints, etc.) this creates a downright depressing, if not apocalyptic, view of the future.

Richard Louv’s recent bestseller, Last Child in the Woods—Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder, discusses the “criminalization of natural play” where communities, more concerned with property values and lawsuits, have outlawed unstructured outdoor nature play. From public government to community associations, there are rules that govern and restrict children in everything from building tree-houses to erecting basketball hoops. When climbing a tree on public land can be actionable as an illegal activity designed to “injure” the landscape, children move indoors to recreate, electronically, that which they are missing in real life. As recently as this past summer, teen-agers who turned town-owned land in Greenwich, Connecticut into a Wiffle ball field were threatened with litigation and unending complaints by locals who wanted them out. In the words of one Wiffle-ball athlete, “People think we should be home playing ‘Grand Theft Auto,’” (Applebome, 2008).

Whether this can be attributed to shrinkage of open space (thereby encouraging overuse of the accessible natural areas) or the over-structuring of childhood, a generation of American children is being raised indoors. From 1977 to 2003, there has been a decline of 50 percent in the proportion of children from nine to twelve years old who spend time in outside activities such as hiking, walking, fishing, beach play and gardening. In addition, children’s free play time in a typical week has declined by a total of nine hours over a 25 year period (Hofferth, 2001).

While this physical restriction of childhood may be an unintended outgrowth of an urban society, there may be correspondingly unintended consequences as a result. As nature deficit grows, so does the increase of childhood disorders such as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and obesity (Zimmerman, Christakis, Meltzoff, 2007). In a series of studies designed to explore potential new treatments for ADHD, the inclusion of after-school and weekend activities centered around natural outdoor environments may be widely effective in reducing symptoms of the disorder. The advantages of these relatively simplistic approaches are many: they are widely accessible, inexpensive, non-stigmatizing, and free of side effects (Kuo and Taylor, 2004).

And, lest one think that children in rural areas are immune from the urban blight of constricted space and diminished play, studies demonstrate otherwise. While adults may delight in idyllic country-life images of open fields, green pastures, and limitless opportunity for play, nothing could be further from the reality of today’s youth. Images of Lassie aside, most rural children are in the same sedentary boat as their urban counterparts: inside, in front of a screen. Their statistics reflect this, with 16.5 percent of rural kids qualifying as obese, compared with 14.4 percent of urban kids (according to a 2003 National Survey of Children’s Health).

In many ways, they are more disadvantaged than their suburban counterparts, since their homes may not be near areas suitable for play and often lack a support system for activity. According to David Hartley, director of the Maine Rural Health Center, children living in isolated communities tend to have fewer places to walk and play. In addition, they also suffer from decreased opportunity to buy healthy foods (a situation often referred to as “nutritional isolation”), an ironic twist on the fresh-air-and-good-food misconception most Americans have of county life (Walsh, 2008).

In addition to a high-fat, high-calorie-laden daily menu, there are other factors that are complicit in contributing to this situation. American homes have become bastions of high-def, Web-enabled, TiVo-driven entertainment Meccas that offer 24-hour-a-day diversion from anything that would get a kid out of his or her La-Z-Boy. After a full school-day at a desk, the American child comes home to spend, on average, three or more sedentary hours in front of some kind of screen. What’s worse, school budgets have slashed physical education programs in cost-cutting moves that have resulted in plummeting participation in daily phys-ed—down to 25 percent from 42 percent 17 years ago (Kluger, 2008).

So what’s a school board/principal/teacher to do? Throw away our old classroom science kits and take the kids out to play? Close. Recent proposals, such as the Vision for Environmental Education in Ontario, Canada, promote innovative programs and partnerships with community-based environmental organizations as well as outdoor education centers. In doing so, the Canadian Ministry of Education is offering a vision for environmental education that provides a context for applying knowledge and skills to real-world situations through an integrated approach. Their science curriculum embraces education for sustainability as well as outdoor education. Consequently, students are afforded opportunities for experiential learning that fosters connections to local places, develops a greater understanding of ecosystems, and supplies a unique context for learning (Bondar, 2007).

Closer to home, the Open Spaces program of the Urban Resources Initiative (under the aegis of Yale University) is on the same track: It balances classroom learning on key ecological concepts with outdoor
experiences that bring these ideas to life. Whether it’s identifying trees and habitats in a schoolyard or connecting human history to the environment, this program opens kids’ eyes to nature in the city and teaches them how to protect urban resources (Pegnataro, 2005).

Regardless of the worldwide location—be it New Haven or New South Wales— the objectives of enlightened environmental education policies are predictably consistent: to create eco-schools in coordination with a holistic, participatory approach through a combination of learning and action. Raising awareness though inspiring and motivating students is integral to comprehensive program design.

But how do we cast as wide a net as possible in capturing the imagination of children in inspiring them to become an active part of their ecological environment? Is it something that can be legislated, or is it an intangible passion that can only be appreciated through first-hand experience? Actually, research suggests both.

In a concerted effort to address all the problems voiced here, the No Child Left Inside Coalition—a broad-based organization comprised of in excess of 200 member groups throughout the United States—has focused its efforts on the passage of the federal No Child Left Inside Act (NCLI). This legislation would authorize major new funding for states to provide high-quality, environmental instruction. Subsidies would support outdoor learning activities both at school and in non-formal environmental education centers, teacher training and the creation of state environmental literacy plans (Chesapeake Bay Foundation, 2008).

In explaining the importance of NCLI, it would be impossible not to expound upon the controversial legislation from which it is derived and whose name is the ironic basis for its formation: the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). This federal program (enacted as part of the Bush administration’s 2000 educational agenda, and whose strong emphasis on annual standardized testing was felt by all schools, nationwide, in 2005) stresses core subjects only (math and language arts) and has been responsible for the reduction of instructional time for all other subjects, including science and social studies—the traditional subjects in which environmental education is taught (Sadker, Sadker, and Zittleman, 2008).

It might seem like a statement of the obvious to note that the intersection between healthy people and a healthy environment is universally critical to the future of youngsters everywhere, yet the movement to reconnect children with nature is still in its infancy. The retreat indoors is not only limiting to the next
generation, it’s downright dangerous. Public health workers already see the effects in fatter, sicker children whose life expectancy is alarmingly shorter than those of their parents. As the American Public Health Association notes in its publication, The Nation’s Health, “The future…is in the hands of today’s children, many of whom are more likely to view nature through the screen of a television rather than the netted screen of a camping tent,” (Krisberg, 2007).

Which brings us back to little Sally Brown, still in her bean-bag chair, still watching nature on TV. Take note, little yellow-haired girl: Get up, put on your mittens, and go out and play in the snow. Your future depends on it.

Reprinted from Phi Delta Kappan, November 2008.

Clare Lowell is an assistant professor of education at Marymount Manhattan College in New York City.