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European educationalists of the mid-nineteenth century were responsible for setting a long lasting biological agenda to engage people with nature, which stressed the importance of seeking 'wonder in every insect, sublimity in every hedgerow, past worlds in every pebble, and boundless fertility upon the barren shore'. This broad philosophy from an age of serendipity, and education for its own sake, is now all but played out. Our essentially urban culture, the time, budgetary and subject constraints of a national curriculum, the imagined dangers of being outdoors, media hype of endangered global ecosystems, and above all, the educational emphasis on molecules rather than organisms, have produced a generation of class-bound teachers focused on DNA. Experts are now required to provide their school with a nature walk, and work sheets about its commonplace plants and animals. The comparative study of body plans through dissection is banned from the classroom. Youngsters grow up to live in an adults world where people and nature are poles apart.
European educationalists of the mid-nineteenth century were responsible for setting a long lasting biological agenda to engage people with nature, which stressed the importance of seeking 'wonder in every insect, sublimity in every hedgerow, past worlds in every pebble, and boundless fertility upon the barren shore'. This broad philosophy from an age of serendipity, and education for its own sake, is now all but played out. Our essentially urban culture, the time, budgetary and subject constraints of a national curriculum, the imagined dangers of being outdoors, media hype of endangered global ecosystems, and above all, the educational emphasis on molecules rather than organisms, have produced a generation of class-bound teachers focused on DNA. Experts are now required to provide their school with a nature walk, and work sheets about its commonplace plants and animals. The comparative study of body plans through dissection is banned from the classroom. Youngsters grow up to live in an adults world where people and nature are poles apart.
Paradoxically, it was the political commitments made by the majority of world leaders at Rio di Janiero in 1992, that has pointed to the need for a revival in nature study in the broader context of the impact of local economic development on urban communities. This is an important area of applied cultural ecology.
Paradoxically, it was the political commitments made by the majority of world leaders at Rio di Janiero in 1992, that has pointed to the need for a revival in nature study in the broader context of the impact of local economic development on urban communities. This is an important area of applied cultural ecology.
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