J O A N . J A E C K E L and E R I C . U T N E Calling for the Transformation of Education Through Developmentally-Intelligent Design THE 4 TRENDS

Guest Editorial Reprinted from GREEN MONEY JOURNAL winter08/09

In this issue we're making the case that, society-wide, things are getting better because of four positive education macro-trends: 

• Holism 
• Inner Growth 
• Civil Society, and 
• The Learning Organization

Even our highly industrialized and regimented educational system which standardizes, alienates and instills helplessness in students, is being transformed into one that instead protects and nurtures children's growing minds.

In our view, we're not just at a crisis point; we're at a threshold of opportunity. 

There's no one to blame, no good old days to go back to, nothing to fix or save. Why would we want to fix or save a Model T? The old educational paradigm was revolutionary in its time and today, not so much. 

The 15 Inspired Educational Transformers in this special issue of GreenMoney Journal describe the first steps to a new, civilized educational paradigm-a shift away from systematically making children feel that there is something wrong with them towards a culture of developmentally intelligent learning. 

We question the outdated industrial-age framing of education as a commodity-pretending that minds are empty vessels to be filled and measured, rather than fires to be ignited (see articles by Arthur Zajonc and Betty Staley). 

The paradigm is shifting. New, flexible, self-organizing approaches to learning run less on rigidity and more on plasticity (like our "neuroplastic" brains say Linda Lantieri and Jane Healy). These new approaches can be recognized and evaluated without invoking "rigor" (as in "knuckle crunching," "tough," and "mortis") Deborah Meier and Ingrid O'Brien suggest. Plasticizing experiences like the arts (Gayle Davis), nature (Richard Louv) and working with animals (William Crain) train our minds to think clearly and flexibly, while seeing with wondering eyes and compassionate hearts. 

We noticed that the four positive education macro-trends correspond to the four positive cultural macro-trends which account for the Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability (LOHAS) sector: being Green, socially responsible business, investment and philanthropy, meditation and contemplation (with neuro-scientifically proven benefits!), and conscientious individuals as a new sector, "the cultural sector" or "civil society." The conscientious educator takes the social change lead (see articles by Ron Miller and Ocean Robbins). 

A civilized educational system moves public education and private education to the next level of cooperation. We can cultivate people who weave originality, community, and service into civilization's fabric from generation to generation, as Joan Almon so movingly describes. Like cradle-to-cradle manufacturing, generation-to-generation education doesn't end with graduation. The developmentally intelligent educator is a cultural healer who first, does no harm, (see article by Deborah Meier), wastes no lives, and returns bright, loving and enterprising "nutrients" into the social soil. Let us step up with confidence and be like Betty Staley, Sonja Williams and Elizabeth Goodenough! 

We gratefully acknowledge over a decade of support for whole childhood from Susan Kendall Newman/Paul Newman-Newman's Own with gratitude. 

Finally we thank you, Cliff and the GreenMoney Journal team for opening your pages and treasured readers to these views. 

As the election is over and nation-building begins in America, please forward this issue to everyone you know and start a conversation! 

Here at GreenMoney.com you will find an expanded online version of the special education issue including an exclusive article by Ocean Robbins, founder of Youth For Environmental Sanity (YES!). 

- Joan Jaeckel and Eric Utne, Guest Editors 

Joan Jaeckel is a thought-change activist for social transformation through intelligent human design. Email: joan.jaeckel@gmail.com and website: http://www.whole.org

Eric Utne founded the Utne Reader and is an educational innovator and social entrepreneur. Website: http://www.earthcouncils.org 

Dedication: 

This issue is dedicated to the Ten Civil Societarians who are exemplary friends of Childhood and Youth: 

1. Geoffrey Canada, Harlem Children's Zone
2. Van Jones, author of Green For All: Building a Green Collar Economy 
3. Dave Eggers, 826 Valencia 
4. Rachael Kessler, PassageWays Institute 
5. David Orr, Center for EcoLiteracy  
6. Deborah Solomon, Resources for Infant Educarers (RIE) 
7. Wayne Jennings, The International Association for Learning Alternatives 
8. Steve Bonchek, Harmony Education Center 
9. Craig Kielberger, O Ambassadors 
10. Sir Ken Robinson's TED talk, "Do Schools Kill Creativity?"
    

R I C H A R D . L O U V The Coming Wave of Natural Education Reform

Reprinted from GREEN MONEY JOURNAL winter/08/09

Many of us are no longer willing to allow the growth of what, in Last Child in the Woods, I dubbed "nature-deficit disorder" - the psychological, physical and cognitive costs of human alienation from nature. During the past couple years, as I've spoken on this issue in the United States and other countries, I've been moved by the number of college students who come up to tell me that they've decided to change their career choice, that they're now committed to bringing nature to the lives children (and adults) - including in education.

Environmental educators and others have worked for decades to reintroduce children to nature. But in recent years, too many school districts have turned inward, building windowless schools, banishing live animals from classrooms, and even dropping recess and field trips. But we are beginning to see progress. There have been a number of recent successes in the United States and elsewhere that may point to a cultural shift, reflecting a rapidly expanding grassroots children and nature movement - which has changed the tone of the public conversation. 

The nonprofit Children & Nature Network ( http://www.cnaturenet.org ), for which I now serve as chairman, has tracked and encouraged more than fifty regional campaigns that are helping reintroduce children to nature. These campaigns, often focused on children's health, will offer added power to a nascent, overdue movement for what might be called natural school reform. Bucking the status quo, an increasing number of educators are committed to an approach that infuses education with direct experience, especially in nature - one that redefines the classroom. 

On September 18, the U.S. House of Representatives took a step in that direction, by voting to approve the No Child Left Inside Act of 2008. Approved by a bi-partisan vote of 293 to 109, the bill would require K-12 school systems to build environmental literacy, strengthen teacher training and provide federal grants to help schools pay for outdoor education. In coming months and years (whether or not the Senate version of the bill is approved) educators will be encouraged to return nature to the classroom - but the key to success will be if sufficient support comes to educators who take students beyond the classroom, into the rich environments of nearby nature: parks, farms, the woods and creeks and canyons adjacent to schools. 

This approach to education is not new, and the definitions and nomenclature of this educational movement are tricky. In recent decades, the approach has gone by many names: community-oriented schooling, bioregional education, experiential education and, most recently, place-based or environment-based education. The basic idea is to use the surrounding community, including nature, as the preferred classroom. When it comes to reading skills, "the Holy Grail of education reform," says researcher and educator David Sobel, place-based or environment-based education should be considered "one of the knights in shining armor." Students in these programs typically outperform their peers in traditional classrooms. Sponsored by many state departments of education, a 1998 study documented the enhanced school achievement of youth who experience school curricula in which the environment is the principal organizer. 

More recently, factoring out other variables, studies of students in California and nationwide showed that schools that used outdoor classrooms and other forms of nature-based experiential education were associated with significant student gains in social studies, science, language arts, and math. One recent study found that students in outdoor science programs improved their science testing scores by 27 percent. 

A nature-balanced life reduces many barriers to education, including stress and attention deficit. Researchers at the University of Illinois have shown that the greener a child's everyday environment, the more manageable their symptoms of attention-deficit disorder. Teachers could also benefit from natural education reform. Canadian researchers found that teachers expressed renewed enthusiasm for teaching when they had time outdoors. In an era of increased teacher burnout, the impact of green schools and outdoor education on teachers should not be underestimated. 

One exciting development is the increasing popularity of nature preschools, where children learn to track wildlife even as they learn to read. Design approaches are central to the movement. "Natural spaces and materials stimulate children's limitless imaginations and serve as the medium of inventiveness and creativity," says Robin Moore, an international authority on natural school design, who heads the Natural Learning Initiative. New schools must be designed with nature in mind, and old schools can be refitted with playscapes that incorporate nature into the central design principle. Another approach is the use of nature preserves by environment-based schools, or the inclusion of established farms and ranches as part of these "new schoolyards." Norway's departments of Education and Agriculture support partnerships between educators and farmers to revamp school curriculum and to provide more direct outdoor experience and participation in practical tasks. 

Ultimately, K-12 education cannot be transformed without reforming higher education - which sets many of the standards and expectations for primary and secondary education. In higher education, greater public knowledge about the generational nature gap should educate policy-makers to require universities to teach the fundamentals of natural history, which have been displaced in recent decades, especially at research universities, by a patent-or-perish emphasis on microbiology and genetic engineering. Higher education can also more consciously engage students as researchers on topics involving the relationship between children and nature, and the opportunities that will emerge as nature takes a more central role in people's lives. 

In coming decades, environmental challenges will require fundamental changes in our lives and institutions, including the reintroduction of nature to the classroom and the young to the natural world. 

Article by Richard Louv, Writer 

Richard Louv is chairman of the Children & Nature Network and the author of seven books, including his most recent, "Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder" (Algonquin). He is the recipient of the 2008 Audubon Medal, and has served as an adviser to the Ford Foundation's Leadership for a Changing World award program, is a member of the Citistates Group, appears often on national radio and television programs, and speaks frequently in the United States and overseas. 

Useful links for this article include: 

o The Children & Nature network: http://www.childrenandnature.org 

o Related research and studies: http://www.childrenandnature.org/research/Intro 

o Toronto Star report on homework loads and play: http://www.childrenandnature.org/news/detail/canadian_report_advocates_less_home... 

o New York Times article: Why are Schools Designed Like Prisons? http://www.childrenandnature.org/news/detail/why_are_schools_designed_like_priso... 

o Finland education system: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/4033593.stm 

o Track No Child Left Inside Act: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h110-3036 

* Natural Learning Initiative: http://www.naturalearning.org/aboutus/rmoore.htm

E L I Z A B E T H . G O O D E N O U G H Secret Spaces of Childhood and the Pedagogy of Place

Reprinted from GREEN MONEY JOURNAL winter08/09

There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in.

- Graham Greene, The Power and the Glory (1940)

If you drive around cities and suburbs in the U.S., you will notice that children no longer play much outside. As you observe streets devoid of children, your first assumption may be that they are at school or at parks competing in team sports. Gradually it dawns on you that as more green space is paved over, as inner cities are further neglected, as fear of strangers intensifies, children are relegated to worlds without sidewalks or main streets connecting them to a wider community of neighbors. At this point you ask, "Where do the children play?" 

In the last 30 years the range of independent mobility for North American 12-year-olds has shriveled from one mile to 550 yards. Children have less privacy, yet paradoxically, more access to media. Current statistics indicate more hours are spent watching screens than attending school. Should we worry that growing up minimally engaged with plants and animals might prove dangerous to nature itself? 

The UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre's report on the well being of children indicated that of 21 wealthy nations in 2007, the United States was rated at the bottom of the list and came in last or next to last on three of six criteria--health and safety, behaviors and risks, and family and peer relationships. These statistics suggest that childhood itself is increasingly under fire as a worldwide demographic, cultural invention, and 

social institution. Grim as the figures are, they only hint at the reality of growing up in a society disrupted by violence, driven by competition, and divorced from nature. As Brian Sutton-Smith, play specialist, has put it, "the opposite of play isn't work. It's depression." 

How educators use and create spaces for children determines how the next generation experiences reality. Yet, in a world of high stakes testing, we may be losing not just recess but also those psychic locales where imagination and confidence can grow. That's why we need collaborative pedagogies to look at where children and adults learn most enjoyably. Certainly practices of self-discovery where learning and play meld deserve to be treated with as much care by educators and families as the cultivation of literacy and mastery of math. Yet we know little, it seems, about the vitality recreation draws from sites of natural beauty. 

Starting as a question about how the young process their own ecology, Secret Spaces of Childhood developed in 1998 at the University of Michigan as an investigation of cultural memory. Campus-community partnerships, coordinated by Residential College students, grew from our study of children's literature. Curious about the power of fantasies like "Crusoe's Island" or the "Secret Garden" to shape our core identities, I wondered how children's stories change over time, and how images like Hogwarts or Tarbeach fashion feelings within society. 

A two-day conference enabled a thousand children to celebrate Nichols Arboretum with performances and story telling. At the Residential College, architects, children's authors, educators, storytellers, and artists discussed issues of environmental justice and the need to preserve sanctuaries for free play. Walls displayed illustrations from children's books. Participants shared a sense of having been profoundly shaped by hideouts of their own making. Even the sole public zone in the exhibition, Gerald McDermott's charcoal drawing of a medieval winding stone staircase at the Detroit Institute of Arts, conjured a "pathway to the infinite": "We all have secret spaces…where we separate ourselves from the rest of the world, and incubate. We imagine ourselves into existence." 

Recently The Poetry of Everyday Life has provided me tools to plan and even document community-engaged scholarship, observing how and where children make their own structures, whether in shelter building, collage, poetry, or drawing. Seminar participants seek to understand the role of children's voices in public and city life; to develop teaching, collaboration and leadership skills in school settings; to experience poetry as an imaginative response to local geography such as the Huron River watershed. Partnering with local children and their teachers, we embark on field trips, journal, write poems and make art about place-making, organize a poetry reading, and mount an exhibition at the Ann Arbor Public Library. 

Some explore the role of forts; others photograph and map schoolyards, theme parks, and designated "kid spaces" as these reflect class backgrounds and assumptions about the nature and needs of elementary school children. Or they examine and compare specialized curricula related to local organizations like Retired Police Horse Adoption, The Greening of Detroit, and Hands On Museum. Some document contested land use or a problem that prevents playing in the neighborhood (application of pesticide, recent crime, lack of access). 

The project produced mini-documentaries about children's "places of special meaning" and how "ordinary" spaces often inspire stories. It filmed children's author Christopher Paul Curtis (The Watsons Go to Birmingham-1963) in his hometown Flint speaking with schoolchildren about their experiences of play and place. Such sharing can help us look around and find common ground with others. Some of these children helped inspire Where Do the Children Play? airing on American Public Television through 2010 (http://www.michigantelevision.org/childrenplay ). As William Cronon puts it, "To protect the nature that is all around us, we must think long and hard about the nature we carry inside our heads." 

Article by Elizabeth Goodenough, Scholar and Activist in Children's Studies 

Dr. Elizabeth Goodenough of the University of Michigan helped produce "Where Do the Children Play?" a project that encompasses an award-winning PBS documentary written and directed by award-winning filmmakers Christopher Cook and Mark Harris for Michigan Television, a three-volume anthology, and an outreach campaign to promote outdoor play via community conversations throughout the U.S. Located at the Ginsberg Center in Ann Arbor, WDCP? builds partnerships with organizations such as the Alliance for Childhood, the National Wildlife Federation, and Children & Nature Network. In addition to A Place for Play: A Companion Volume to WDCP?, Goodenough's books include Infant Tongues (1994), Secret Spaces of Childhood (2003), and Under Fire: Childhood in the Shadow of War (2008). 

More information at http://www.wfum.org/childrenplay/index.html