One of our UVM interns from last semester, Melanie Wetmore, wrote a paper on Nature Deficit Disorder, a proposed framework for understanding the effects of our cultural disconnect from nature. Presented here is a shortened version of her essay. Enjoy!
Mother
Earth Knows Best
Why reconnecting children with nature
might just be the cure for America’s newest ‘disorder’
On a
brisk October morning in Burlington, Vermont, a strange, nasally,
high- pitched squawk echoes throughout a misty, dew drenched field.
While most elementary school teachers don’t get their students
attention by screeching American crow call, Teage O’Connor’s way
of ringing the morning school bell is slightly more exotic. The
children, currently playing in the nearby field, excitedly spring
over to the trailhead.
Crow’s
Path is a nature connection program in Vermont focused on providing
children with a positive outdoor experience. Students miss their
regular school day once a week to come out to the woods. These
alternative education programs utilize nature-based mentoring to
reconnect youth to the natural world.
Over
the past two decades, children in the United States have lost an
estimated nine to twelve hours of outdoor free play per week.
Instead, sedentary childhood lifestyles are becoming the norm, with
children spending about thirty hours a week in front of a television
or computer screen.
More
than one third of our American youth are categorized as ‘obese’
or ‘overweight’. Pediatricians warn that our current youth may be
the first American generation to die at a younger age than their
parents, a trend unique in American history.
The
rate at which American children are prescribed antidepressants has
doubled in the past five years, with the most notable of increases
occurring in pre-school aged children. Almost
8 million American children suffer from mental disorders, with
Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) topping the list. In
his novel Last Child in the
Woods, Richard Louv claims
Nature Deficit Disorder as an appropriate layover description of a
potential aggravator of attention difficulties for many children.
Nature
Deficit Disorder (NDD) isn’t a medical diagnosis, but rather a term
coined by Louv. NDD describes the implications for human health from
the developing void between humans and nature.
The ‘biophilia hypothesis’,
theorized by Edward O. Wilson, suggests that humans have an
instinctive relationship with other living organisms, both flora and
fauna. Nature mentors throughout the state agree that it is every
human’s natural instinct to play in and be a part of nature. And
today at Crow’s Path- that’s exactly what they’ll do.
Nature-based mentoring, a strategy used at Crow’s Path, focuses on
practicing primitive skills, naturalist teachings, and nature
immersion to help students build self-esteem, engage their senses,
and develop outdoor skills. The
Coyote’s Guide to Connecting with Nature,
a manual written by Jon Young for nature mentors, bases it’s
curriculum on the indigenous ‘medicine wheel’, modeled after the
four Cardinal directions.
The
medicine wheel is symbolic of the ‘never ending cycle of life’,
and the natural cycles all humans encounter within their lifetime.
North American indigenous tribes used this practice for teaching,
healing, and cultural traditions.
Each
morning at Crow’s Path begins in the East with spontaneous games.
The curriculum follows the sun, moving next into the South. The South
portion of the day is focused on teaching naturalist skills such as
fire by friction, wild edible identification, or carving. Next is the
West, when students gather around a fire to share stories from their
day. Lastly is North, expressed through personal reflection.
Crow’s
Path, located on the Lake Champlain waterfront was founded by O’
Connor in 2009. A forest flourishing with biodiversity surrounds
Crow’s Path campus on Burlington’s Rock Point property. Deep red
sumac berries line the trails, puffs of milkweed fluff drift through
the sunny meadows, and purple asters litter the waterfront beaches
that Crow’s Path claims as its classroom.
...to be continued
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