Children detach from natural world as they explore the virtual one

In historic preservation matters, I argue that we need to have a system of plaques and other methods (history trails, education systems, tours) to identify and explain history. If we don't do this, how will people know why and what matters?

This article from the San Francisco Chronicle references the work of Richard Louv. The online copy has an interesting graphic with survey results on various activities that children experience, as well as a list of outdoor-related resources. From the article:

It isn't just national forests and wilderness areas that young people are avoiding, according to the experts. Kids these days aren't digging holes, building tree houses, catching frogs or lizards, frolicking by the creek or even throwing dirt clods.

"Nature is increasingly an abstraction you watch on a nature channel," said Richard Louv, the author of the book "Last Child in the Woods," an account of how children are slowly disconnecting from the natural world. "That abstract relationship with nature is replacing the kinship with nature that America grew up with."

A lot of it has to do with where people live - 80 percent of the U.S. population lives in urban areas, where the opportunities for outdoor activity apart from supervised playgrounds and playing fields are limited.

But Louv said the problem runs deeper. Wealthy suburban white youngsters are also succumbing to what he calls "nature deficit disorder."

"Anywhere, even in Colorado, the standard answer you get when you ask a kid the last time he was in the mountains is 'I've never been to the mountains,' " Louv said. "And this is in a place where they can see the mountains outside their windows."

The nature gap is just as big a problem in California, where there are more state and national parks than anywhere else in the country. A recent poll of 333 parents by the Public Policy Institute of California found that 30 percent of teenagers did not participate in any outdoor nature activity at all this past summer. Another 17 percent engaged only once in an outdoor activity like camping, hiking or backpacking.

The numbers coincide with national polls indicating that children and teenagers play outdoors less than young people did in the past. Between 1997 and 2003, the proportion of children ages 9 to 12 who spent time hiking, walking, fishing, playing on the beach or gardening declined 50 percent, according to a University of Maryland study.
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1. I was talking to a farmer a couple weeks ago and he was recounting talking with children about agriculture. One child talked about how beef came from the supermarket, not from cows not from farms. "Giant grows good beef," the child said, "Better than Safeway."

2. I have written before that DC needs to recapture its rivers as places for urban environmental education.

3. Same thing for the parks. If NYC can have urban camping in city parks in the summer, why not DC?

4. Plus, I think we should have an urban campground in the city. Say at Fort Totten?

5. This is an area that Timothy Beatley of UVA writes about too, in terms of our awareness of the natural world around us. I couldn't tell you what the plants are that are native to this region, or birds...

Jordan Pineda (center) and Ellis Webb (right) take part in a family campfire program at the Presidio. Photo by Laura Morton, special to the Chronicle