Last child in the Woods notes (transcribed)

HIGHLIGHTED IS NOT OG NOTES FROM BROBECK

Page 7-26

  • Nature being “worth it” and not “stealing time”
  • Freedom, fantasy, privacy
  • “Nature-deficit disorder’
  • Not only were children outdoors often in a bygone era, but so too were parents
  • Anecdote on pages 11-12   * Talks about how kids nowadays can’t be completely alone in nature   * They can’t create their own entertainment   * Kids today have never experienced what it's like to be in nature → so much urbanization → parents have to coax their kids to go outside
  • “They can’t just hear nature out there alone. They can’t make their own entertainment. They have to bring something with them”   * Kids wearing headphones down the mountain while skiing
  • Parents and their worry about children alone in nature
  • Computers are “more important than nature” because that’s “where the jobs are”
  • Not enough hours in the day to spend any time outside, but also kids who do spend it outside → their nature is being taken away from them
  • Daniel C. Beard → wrote Shelters, shacks and shanties
  • The American experience with nature:   * \          1. Direct Utilitarianism     * 1893 - Chicago’s world’s Columbian exposition     * Frederick Jackson Turner “frontier thesis” → “the existence of an area of free land, its continuous recession, and the advance of American settlement westward”     * End of the era of free land → land available for homesteaders     * Lewis and Clark     * Davy Crockett     * struggle   * \          2. Romantic attachment     * Teddy Roosevelt and the national parks     * Disney’s Davy     * Time of celebration     * Suburban manifest destiny   * \          3. Electronic detachment     * A severance of the public and private mind from our food’s origins     * A disappearing line between machines, humans, and other animals     * An increasingly intellectual understanding of our relationship with other animals     * The invasion of our cities by wild animals     * Rise of a new kind of suburban form
  • Great urban parks…suburban manifest destiny… Teddy Roosevelt
  • “The third frontier is populated by today's children”
  • Food is from venus; farming from mars
  • LA - “wild” and “urban”

Page 27-70

  • Planned communities and “illegal use” of open space   * Doing just as their parents did in Scripps Ranch
  • “Perception is nine-tenths the law”   * Many parents and kids now believe that outdoor play is forbidden even when it is not
  • Government protections of land use, endangered animals, population pressures
  • “As open space shrinks, overuse increases”   * Increased development is creating density overflow and little space for citizens → crowding out nature in the process
  • The sharp decline in unstructured outdoor play time in US children   * Reduced leisure time with family and more time in front of computer and TV   * Robin Moore → charted shrinkage of natural play space in urban England   * Keiki Haginoya → photographer of children playing
  • Nature deficit disorder (36)
  • *Elaine Brooks   * Communit college teacher → brought students to hill top to expose them to nautre they had never experienced before   * Explored thirty acres of La Jolla     * Filled fifteen notebooks with plants, rainfall, and observations of species living there     * Knew everything about this one plot of land in San Diego   * Wanted to pass along her love of nature   * Isolated patches of wild land are valuable to know   * Fay Avenue Extension
  • “People unlikely to value what they cannot name”
  • *biophilia   * Hypothesis by Edward O. Wilson   * Urge to affiliate with other forms of life   * Humans have an innate affinity for the natural world
  • “Digging in the garden has a curative effect on mentally ill”
  • Gardens and pets…   * Now a healthcare approach to releaving stress and anxiety. Can be curative to patients being in the presence of an animal or soil
  • the obesity epidemic and organized sports. A parallel?   * Sedentary wth the exception of that hour of “outdoor” time   * Not sufficient for counteracting the amount of eating and sitting kids do these days
  • Healing qualities of nature
  • Diminished life of the senses
  • Road trip anecdote (63-64)   * Kids used to look out the window during road trips for entertainment   * Considered boring today, but they may be a result of the increased urbanism and little amounts of fun interesting things to see today   * TVs in our cars now
  • Tech approach to every aspect of our lives
  • “These young people are smart, they grew up with computers, they were supposed to be superior -- but how do we know that something is missing”   * Nature is missing → missing such a big developmental part of our lives
  • The know-it-all state of mind. What does this mean?   * Kids today grew up in a world of narrow yet over-whelming sensory input   * Superficial sensory skills   * Know-it-all state of mind very short-lived when introduced to big things   * Similar to dunning Kruger effect → think they know everything until they don’t

Page 71-112

  • Howard Gardner and the eighth intelligence
  • Darwin, Muir, Carson-- and the general characteristics of those with this form of intelligence
  • **Leslie Stephens (78-79)
  • “Adults have appropriated tree house building, just as they have Halloween”
  • Who wants to build a treehouse!? (82)
  • The “loose-parts theory”?? **
  • Wiki:   * Jane Goodall   * John Muir   * Rachel Carson   * Samuel Langhorne Clemens   * Edith Cobb   * Louise Chawla
  • “America’s genius has been nurtured by nature”
  • Recess, PE, and ADHD (link?)
  • “Our brains are set up for an agrarian nature-oriented existence that came into focus 5000 years ago”
  • “Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts”

Page 115-159

  • Real modern life “hurdles” to be crossed to increase exposure to nature
  • “Our lives may be more productive, but less inventive”
  • A childhood without nature is missing “vital ingredients”
  • Television and tech’s “thief of time”
  • **Generation M (matrix)
  • ** central argument: “Time in nature is not leisure time: it’s an essential investment in our children’s health”
  • Superchild syndrome
  • Tina Kafka quote (122)
  • An exploration of the societal effects of fear (“bogeyman syndrome”)
  • What is the argument in the last paragraph of 129?
  • **ecophobia
  • ** “if we fill our classrooms with examples of environmental abuse, we may be engendering a subtle form of dissociation”
  • What is “silicon faith”?
  • ATVs and the land - a disconnect with respecting nature?
  • Decline in natural history class…
  • Theodore Roszak and his criticism of environmentalist tactics
  • National park declines in visitors
  • Attachment theory

Page 163-200

  • Nature as antidote
  • Belief something isn’t worth doing unless we do it right
  • Reading
  • “Boredom is fear’s dull cousin”
  • **Acedia
  • “Parents must walk a fine line between presenting and pushing their kids to the outdoors”
  • “It’s better to know one mountain than to climb many”
  • The “high-achievement trap” (176): does this sound familiar?
  • Controlled risk
  • Good and evil and real fear and danger
  • An interesting case for hunting and fishing
  • “Remove hunting and fishing form human activity, and we lose many of the voters and organizations that now work against the destruction of woods, fields, and watersheds”
  • Fishing and birding

Page 203-234

  • John Dewey -- experiential education
  • Finland’s education
  • environmental-based education: pros and cons?
  • “Butterfly theory” of teaching
  • Fly fishing, gardening
  • Eco-schools - ecological literacy
  • “School isn’t supposed to be a polite form of incarceration, but a portal to the wider world”

Page (237-287)

  • CA civil code section 846
  • Overdevelopment and the compounding impact on our regional parks and beaches
  • “Legal fear has infected the culture”
  • Zoopolis
  • Biophilia
  • Green urbanism
  • Economic benefits of green space
  • Chicago
  • Adventure playgrounds… in Irvine?
  • Jefferson, Thoreau, homesteading
  • The agrarian movement
  • “No future is inevitable”

Page (291-316)

  • Nature and spirituality. How is spirituality defined?
  • Faith-based views of the environment
  • Environmental change- learning from the successful recycling and anti-smoking campaigns
  • The ending- a personal reflection of parenting. Blink and you miss it?

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