A friend sent me a story about a school (a Waldorf school in Portland Ore., I think) that is starting an all-outdoor kindergarten!  That's the best thing I've heard of in a long time.  

(Although how they're going to fill in the bubbles on those standardized tests is a mystery ...  ;^)

Save the world: Reduce greenhouse gas emissions 5% annually.

This issue is a public health problem and a conservation problem.  

As kids get more disconnected from nature, the rates of childhood obesity, attention deficits, and juvenile diabetes increase.  This represents an opportunity as pretty much everybody (outside of DC) can agree that we care about the health of children.  If we reconnect kids to nature, we will see their health improve.  

The second part of the problem is the need for conservation leadership in the future.  If kids are no longer connected with nature, who will give a damn about the parks and the forests in 20 years?  Who will the leaders be, not only to protect habitat and wildlife, but to deal with the impacts of global warming?  

The good news is that Rich Louv's fine book, built in part with the research of many folks over the past couple decades has sparked a movement that is growing, giving us reason for hope.

childrenandnature.blogspot.com

My 3 year old attends an outdoor kindergarten here in Germany. Similar to the Waldorf school mentioned, just that the hours are 8am - 5pm every day all year for kids 3-6 years old, making it a possibility for those who work full time. It's wonderful, the kids spend the whole morning outside in the forest, come in for lunch and a nap, and play some more inside or outside in the afternoon.

I am surprised and disappointed that this kind of kindergarten hasn't even started to emerge in the states. Given the abounding problems facing young children, this would be a great way to hit those problems where it hurts. I would also like to move back "home" at some point, but I can't image sending my kids to any other kind of kindergarten.

Thanks, Michael, for your interesting comments, with which I am inclined to agree -- without, however, failing to appreciate the concern of Erik and Louv.  I do not have children myself, so this is not a problem that I have had to deal with.  But my guess is, it is good for children to have plenty of time walking through trees and on beaches and over hills, so long as they are given some basic instruction about what they are experiencing, especially the living creatures that they may encounter, and so long as they are clearly told not to abuse or destroy.

Our own Biodiversivist sounds like an excellent parent in this regard.  I wish I could have had a father like him.  Not that I would wish on him having a child like me! : )

When I was starting high school, we moved from the city (Philadelphia) to a single suburban house in a development cut out of an old Gatsby-era millionaire's estate.  The hill behind our house was undeveloped, and some distance over it stood the abandoned Italianate mansion.  I was not an out-doorsy explorer: the two or three times that I ventured up that hill, through the trees, I came back with poison ivy, which confirmed in my mind that there was not much point in exploring.

On the other hand, I loved observing the wildlife of those woods from inside the house.  There were raccoons, skunks, snakes, and occasionally a deer.  But my favorites were the pheasants (Phasianus colchicus; non-native), whole families of which would cross our backyard in peace.  I could watch them forever.  And so, imagine how appalled I was, when my cousin visited us, and he expressed surprise that we made no attempt to hunt, kill and eat our pheasants!  Of course, his father my uncle had made the same stupid remark on another occasion.

My cousin, by the way, went on to become a chemical engineer, specializing in petroleum, and has made a career with Sun Oil.

In yesterday's NY Times, in the Week in Review section, Charles McGrath has an amusing little review of an odd old (faux-old, really) book that has been trundled out, "The Dangerous Book for Boys," by Conn and Hal Iggulden.  Apparently it is a sort of how-to book which teaches little that one would think might interest boys, and very little that is at all dangerous.  Even odder, the film rights have been purchased, and it is going to be turned into a movie, with some kind of narrative composed to sustain it.  McGrath writes:

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Since the book has no story, writers will have to be hired to dream one up.  A report in Variety suggested that the plot of the movie is likely to involve fathers who struggle to balance their instinctive need to protect and their offspring's craving for adventure, even though the evidence mostly suggests that these days it is the sons who are risk averse, unwilling to unplug themselves from their iPods, and the parents who are eager for their offspring to go outside and have some old-fashioned fun.
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On the matter of boys specifically, and not just all children together, irrespective of gender: Are we having a testosterone crisis in our culture?  On the one hand, it seems there is ample evidence that when we send men and boys out into the outdoors, life is simply not worth living for them unless they can interpret the entire experience as a serious game, a competition, in which there will be a winner and a loser, and in which they hope to display their impressive manhood.  On the other hand, we dread that our sons are turning into a generation of soft, shrinking, closeted wimps.  So what is really going on?

Chickens are our cousins! So are other sensitive animals! Enough is enough! No more factory farms!