The outdoor education

Too standardized in our approaches?

The Chesapeake and Beltway are sweltering this week. The summer haze is fully here with its orange blah. Rain is scant, leaving us more than 11 inches below average.

i just spoke with a friend who lives in the upper Midwest with a great niece commencing pre-school in a largely all-outdoor school. Children do eat indoors and retire into a brick-and-mortar classroom under extreme weather conditions. The point is to invite and instill a sense of communing with nature for youngsters from their earliest organised experiences.

It sounded admittedly weird to me but perhaps it is better preparation for them than our current tendency to seek conditioned air within a closed environment. Set tables, chairs, boards, etc are the norm. Certainly an outdoor environment ought help with the growing number of infectious diseases as the germs and viruses will have freedom to escape, at least in theory.

Two centuries ago our homes were hardly air tight. Technology today allows us to seal in the cooler or wearmer air, as appropriate, in a manner unimaginable in the past. We also have all the wonderful tech which consumes us.

What is learning, however, even in pre-school? Are huge white boards or projection capabilities truly essential for learning or for meeting our tests? Perhaps those props are not needed anyway. Education in the United States began trending towards ‘experiential learning’ three decades ago. It’s hard to imagine a school bent on communing with nature, associating it with life or death or our daily existence, being anything other than experiential. It simply will be quite different.

Or have we embraced our traditional school model because it’s easier to administer? We know that the statistics harvested after the pandemic years indicate students fell behind in math and other subjects which are vital but is it those subjects or the learning processes that matter? The pandemic years utilised technology-driven education that we had been told for a quarter century—online education—was the solution to the nation’s educational inequalities. Now we are not so sure, if not downright rejecting of the ideas.

What did we trade by focusing on traditional approaches to achieve the metrics we hold so dear?

The more I think about this idea of an outside school, the more I love the intrigue, the excitement, the personal explorations, and the sense of personal presponsibility it will instill in the children. Not every one will be successful but we hardly have a fully positive educational experience at any traditional elementary or high school anyway. I still believe entirely in readin’ writin’, and ‘rithmatic but worry we are too focused on standardising everything for a sense of ‘equity’ that simply will never reach its expected outcomes. Perhaps we ought be trying some radically different methods to teach civility, respect, and the traditional subjects under inspiring teachers who love the outdoors, too.

I submit we need return to recognising that education is actually quite personal excitement and fulfillment as much as it is other things. Children who succeed, even in learning about caterpillars, may be more responsible in conjunction with those who larn about computers and books.

Here was our morning sky in Annapolis. Pretty but definitely late summer conditions. I hope the kids starting the pre-school in the upper Midwest today have a blue sky experience ahead with more diverse educational opportunities as a portion of that world where todays’s preschoolers will live.

Thank you for reading actions Create Consequences. I appreciate your time and those who support through subscriptions.

Be well, be safe, and be ready for the days ahead. Life can be so good. FIN