Our sensitivity to nature, and our humility within it, are essential to our physical and spiritual survival. Yet, our growing disconnection from nature dulls our senses, and eventually blunts even the sharpened sensory state created by man-made or natural disaster.
The children and nature movement is fueled by this fundamental idea: the child in nature is an endangered species, and the health of children and the health of the Earth are inseparable.
By bringing nature into our lives, we invite humility.
Every child needs nature. Not just the ones with parents who appreciate nature. Not only those of a certain economic class or culture or set of abilities. Every child.
Nature is imperfectly perfect, filled with loose parts and possibilities, with mud and dust, nettles and sky, transcendent hands-on moments and skinned knees.
What would our lives be like if our days and nights were as immersed in nature as they are in technology?
The dugout in the weeds or leaves beneath a backyard willow, the rivulet of a seasonal creek, even the ditch between the front yard and the road-all of these places are entire universes to a young child.
Natural play strengthens children’s self-confidence and arouses their senses-their awareness of the world and all that moves in it, seen and unseen.
The future will belong to the nature-smart-those individuals, families, businesses, and political leaders who develop a deeper understanding of the transformative power of the natural world and who balance the virtual with the real. The more high-tech we become, the more nature we need.
An environment-based education movement – at all levels of education – will help students realize that school isn’t supposed to be a polite form of incarceration, but a portal to the wider world.