The compelling reasons kids need nature were explained factually and forcefully by Richard Louv in Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder (affiliate link). In fact, that book inspired major new efforts to reconnect kids with nature including Children & Nature Network, National Wildlife Federation’s Green Hour, and No Child Left Inside.
Louv reaches new ground out in his next book, The Nature Principle: Reconnecting with Life in a Virtual Age (affiliate link). He uses anecdotes as well as groundbreaking research to demonstrate why we need to balance our use of technology with the restorative powers of nature. He cites seven overlapping principles to show that humanity can truly thrive when in partnership with nature.
- The more high-tech our lives become, the more nature we need to achieve natural balance.
- The mind/body/nature connection will enhance physical and mental health.
- Utilizing both technology and nature experience will increase our intelligence, creative thinking, and productivity, giving birth to the hybrid mind.
- Human/nature social capital will enrich and redefine community to include all living things.
- In the new purposeful place, natural history will be as important as human history to regional and personal identity.
- Through biophilic design, our homes, workplaces, neighborhoods, and towns will not only conserve watts, but also produce human energy.
- In relationship with nature, the high-performance human will conserve and create natural habitat—and new economic potential—where we live, learn, work, and play.
Nature isn’t somewhere else and Louv’s books are a must-read. Take them outside with you and enjoy them while the kids play.
The future will belong to the nature-smart—those individuals, families, businesses, and political leaders who develop a deeper understanding of the transformative power of the natural world and who balance the virtual with the real. The more high-tech we become, the more nature we need." ~ Richard Louv
Laura Grace Weldon is the author of Free Range Learning: How Homeschooling Changes Everything, a resource guide for raising life-long learners and also a collection of poetry titled Tending. She writes about learning, sustainability, and hopeful living for GeekMom, Mothering, and her blog. She lives with her family on Bit of Earth Farm where they raise cows, chickens, honeybees, and the occasional wild scheme. She's slow at work on her next book, Subversive Cooking, and recently published Blackbird, a book of poetry.
Thanks for the review! I'm definitely going to pick up Louv's books the next time I'm at the bookstore. I've recently been doing a lot of research on nature-based learning and instruction, and the types of benefits it has on kids. Louv's principles that you've outlined definitely fall in line with what I've been studying, and it seems like I could get a in depth analysis from his works. I'm curious to ask how you feel about traditional schools using nature-based learning, especially considering that you support homeschooling. An example I like to give of a public daycare that uses the nature-based learning method is Harmony Early Learning's Greenslopes location. I'm definitely interested to hear what you think about care centers and schools like these. Thanks again for the book review!