Tomorrow’s Elders

Posted on Monday, June 9th, 2008

By ahedgehog

By Tim Drake

www.primitivepursuits.net

Research suggests that young people who spend time in nature grow up to have a greater awareness of environmental issues, yet Richard Louv points out in Last Child in the woods that children of this generation are spending far less time in nature.   David Orr puts it simply:  “The ecological crisis is in every way a crisis of education.”  Despite evidence that ecological literacy and time spent outdoors is critical, the National Environmental Education & Training Foundation reports that, “U.S. environmental and sustainability education . . . has yet to achieve ‘core’ subject status,” and that environmental education is only taught by 44% of high school teachers.

Where does this leave the rest of us …. I like to say it leaves us with an overwhelming need to be great role models! Ask questions, make observations, and share your enthusiasm for nature. At any time we can reach out with excitement to the person closest to us and ask “What kind of bird was that” and who knows what will happen next!

A few weeks back I was on a shuttle down to the Florida Keys. This being some what of an exotic, far-off place for me, you might expect I was amazed by all the new sights, sounds, smells and tastes.  My senses were on overload and every plant and tree we passed begged to be identified.  Are those fruits edible, is that poisonous, what is that, why is that, and many more questions were running through my mind. I did what any one with a burning naturalist question could do, I asked a local. The first answer I received was that one particularly odd looking tree was called a gumbo limbo. It was also said to be like the tourists who visited the keys for its bark was red and peeling! With this humorous, not soon to be forgotten tree description I found myself in the company of Stuart Pimm. As it turns out not every local or person you turn to for information will be a professor of conservation biology at Duke University but you might get lucky!

The flip side of all of this is how we ensure that the future generations have someone to turn to with their environmental questions. How do we put a naturalist scientist on every street corner to offer guidance? Who will be tomorrow’s elders? Today more than ever the average person understands very little about their own back yard let alone the delicate balance of greater eco systems. Environmental issues are often at best misunderstood and a disconnect from the natural world seems to be the norm. In some places the “Natural World” has been marginalized to city trees (which are typically non-native) and children are sadly instructed to “put that down” because it’s dirty.

Happily though a child’s spirit is tenacious and humans inherit draw to the natural world is very strong. Passion is contagious and one person can affect many. As long as those of us who carry a piece of the puzzle continue to share the process with our families, neighbors and communities we will succeed. The natural world will continue to grow and heal if we just give it a chance.

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