The Nature of Learning: Why Kids Need to Get Outside More
Being in nature boosts performance and physical and mental health. So why are most school kids cooped up?
Those glorious days of free-range youth, when we ran through forests or fields after school and spent weekends and summers outside by parental decree, are long gone, replaced by all-day activity scheduling and the lure of social media and video games. Fading, too, is the connection with nature that’s been ingrained in the human psyche and biology throughout time. In just a generation or two, we’ve pulled tots and adolescents away from the natural world, helicoptered them safely inside the house or locked them up in windowless daycare centers and concrete classrooms, all the while robbing them of the very nature of childhood being.
Meanwhile, 20 percent of US school children are obese, triple the figure from the 1970s, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“Children are designed, by nature, to play often in physically vigorous ways,” says Peter Gray, author of “Free to Learn” (Basic Books). “That is how they develop fit bodies and the capacity for graceful, well-coordinated movement. “Over the past several decades, children’s opportunities to play freely and vigorously have been greatly reduced, and…
