Nature: The Greatest Teacher
The writer – ecologist George Monbiot has been carrying out a teaching and learning experiment in “placing ecology and Earth systems at the heart of learning” with his daughter and her best friend (age 8, 9) while schools are closed in England, and while he admits it hasn’t been easy (there’s a reason teachers are certified professionals), it’s been deeply satisfying.
The girls have created 15 A4 panels, and “Each panel introduces a different habitat, from mountaintops to the deepest ocean, the forest canopy to the soil, on to which we stick pictures of the relevant wildlife.”
“Each panel introduces a different habitat, from mountaintops to the deepest ocean, the forest canopy to the soil, on to which we stick pictures of the relevant wildlife.”
Each item on each panel leads to something else – e.g. “rainforest ecology leads to photosynthesis, that leads to organic chemistry, atoms and molecules, to the carbon cycle, fossil fuels, energy and power,” and it doesn’t really matter where you start or finish given the cyclical nature of the Earth’s systems. Monbiot has been letting the girls guide their own learning.
And they’re doing field work with the soil; as he notes, [soil ecology is] “an extraordinary and neglected subject, upon which all human life depends.”
Much of their investigative work and exploration – and their “field experiments” – can be done in the outdoors, and as schools slowly start back in session, hopefully in the fall, what better atmosphere than the outdoors for children to be learning while the pandemic is still among us?
Sadly, in England as elsewhere, the funding for outdoor education is practically non-existent.
In yesterday’s post, we noted how important it was for every neighborhood in large urban centers – we were discussing New York, but the principle holds true for every big city where available space and soil are limited – to have a park, one that was regularly maintained and re-planted throughout the four seasons of each year. That’s one small way city children could be outdoors for a few hours each week, and begin to learn first-hand about the earth – soil, plants, the seasons, and everything those core subjects entails. Schools with sizable playgrounds – open spaces could consider starting seasonal gardens, with each class assigned its own plot, or whatever works best for the students and school’s organizational structure.
Check out our next post, too – some thoughts we had along the same lines as Monbiot in respect to a curriculum for Havasupai children in Arizona.