David Sobel’s piece “Look, Don’t Touch” in Orion Magazine has shaken up the small world of my little nature club and the big world of the Get Outdoors movement. I’ve just discovered Living On Earth‘s interview with Sobel, here.
If you haven’t had a chance to read the Orion essay, here’s the kernel of Sobel’s argument: “rule-bound” environmental education, in which kids are prohibited from picking, touching, messing about, disrupts the natural mechanisms that connect young children with nature for life and lead to strong environmental values in adulthood. He goes so far as to say, in the aforementioned radio interview, that berry-picking and mushrooming with parents, i.e., natural resource consumption as a focal point of nature experiences, has shown to have the most power. Much food for thought, there.
Cambridge Outdoors 