Cultures of Habitat by Gary Paul Nabhan

[locke]

I’m currently in the middle of reading Cultures of Habitat - On Nature, Culture and Story by Gary Paul Nabhan. I’m not finished with it yet, but I’ve enjoyed it enough already to post it as a recommendation here. I’ve just read this passage and I’m including it here as a sample.

I have a wish for humanity: that all of our children would become field naturalists as they grow up. Imagine living in a society where every youth has the chance to explore the earth on foot and in hand, getting to know its creatures on a first-name basis.

This is not a death wish, mind you. I am not trying to inoculate the masses with Giardia microbes, Lyme disease, poison ivy, or chigger bites.

The reason that I want everyone to become field naturalists has nothing to do with financial or professional rewards - or, for that matter with the hope of advancing science. To the contrary, ecology seems to be the field in which I am most likely to fail to prove any scientific hypothesis I attempt to test. And that’s why I like it: I am constantly reminded how wrong I can be about how the world works.

That’s half the problem: most of us need to be humbled more often, to be reminded that nature is not only more complex than we think, it’s more complex than we can think.

The other half of the problem is that most children today grow up robbed of the chance of discovering anything at all on their own. They are told early on that scientists in little white coats discover all the world’s “facts” in neat, antiseptic laboratories. These facts are then handed to an ecologically illiterate public on an equally antiseptic platter filled with pasteurized, homogenized truisims to nibble on as stale appetizers empty of much of their former nutrition. Trouble is, all those tidbits taste far more bland than any wild fruit plucked right off the tree.

And so I wish to champion the art of discovering, a process far different from the heroic act of discovery. Through the process of discovering, we seldom achieve any hard-and-fast truth about the world, its cornucopia of creatures, or its cultural interactions with them. Instead, we are inevitably assured of how little we know about that on which each of our lives depends.

I think I’ve found a new idol. A few of his other books that have caught my interest are Gathering the Desert, Enduring Seeds - Native American Agriculture and Wild Plant Conservation, Cross-Pollinations: The Marriage of Science and Poetry and Coming Home to Eat: The Pleasure and Politics of Local Foods.

[Brian]

That’s Awesome! How cool would it be if they could implement a “mandatory” field naturalist program in public schools instead of the No Child Left behind program? I’ll have to check these books out, Thanks Locke!

[Pathfinder]

There is actually a movement afoot that is inspired by Richard Louv’s book “Last Child in the Woods” that calls itself No Child Left Inside. It is being put forth by environmental and education groups all over the country. Part of its approach would be to include natural history about one’s bioregion as part of any required testing for grade school and high school. While funding is of course really tough right now, the concept alone is pretty dang amazing at this point in history.

[tonyd]

Funding is looking better for many No Child Left Inside programs. I am associated with some folks in Portland, Oregon that are working one push.

Personally, I look upon mandatory programs with a grain salt. As they do not really represent that freedom of discretion and opportunity to “be wrong” that the author of On Nature Culture and Story referred to.

No matter how well intentioned, I worry schools will still always implement “benchmarks” that require a specific answer or experience to be had by a child (or adult).

True respect for personal experience and accountability in any education program is rare. Though my friends implementing No Child Left Inside are cool on their own. I just have strong experiences that lead to distrust with schools.

[Huby7]

This post pretty much hits on the same points that tonyd made, but it feels good to get them out there anyway.

The direction this thread is going takes me back to a chat that I had with Urban Scout a few months back. I asked him what he thought about the Wilderness Awareness School’s publishing of Coyote’s Guide to Connecting With Nature: For Kids of all Ages and their Mentors. I was surprised when he said that if he was going to recommend any book on connecting kids to nature it would be The Unschooling UnManual that’s put out by Natural Child Project.

I own Coyote’s Guide, and I’m almost done reading TUU. Now I can see why Scout said what he said.

Now I’ve found myself reading this quote by William Torrey Harris, U.S. commissioner of education from 1889 to 1906, out of Derrick Jensen’s Walking on Water.

The great purpose of school can be realized better in dark, airless, ugly places.... It is to master the physical self, to transcend the beauty of nature. School should develop the power to withdraw from the external world.

Yes, I realize our schools have changed in the hundred years or so since Mr. Harris was commisioner of education, but his remark still speaks to my schooling experience throughout the '80’s and 90’s.

It almost seems that any schooling experience runs contrary to that of the naturalist’s experience. There’s just to much mystery in the naturalist’s experience.