Nature is probably one of the most valuable gifts given by God that provides people with all the necessary resources for living and enjoying. Unfortunately, with time, people stop appreciating a chance to be a part of an amazing natural world and prefer using the current technological progress that does not make the life more captivating, just easier. The most terrible thing about this natural neglect is that parents do not find it necessary to talk about the importance of the natural world with their children; this is why the child’s relation with nature is under a threat nowadays.
The importance of environmental consciousness is huge indeed, and people have no right to neglect it at any stage of life. Even if many people still prefer the technological world to the natural world, this fact does not provide them with a right to ignore the role of nature, its impact on human lives, and its actual worth. Researchers have come to the conclusion that people, and children at first, are under a threat of a kind of nature-deficit disorder (Louv, 2008).
Children’s understanding of nature has been dramatically changed, and the idea of constructivist environmental education seems to be one of the possible solutions to be made in order to try to change the situation and explain children how it is necessary to treat nature in spite of all temptations available nowadays.
Children’s relationship with nature is an urgent concept that undergoes considerable changes during the last centuries and numerous discussions by such researchers like Turner, Louv, Kahn, and Dean; the importance of environmental consciousness is evident, still, people continue to ignore it and minimize the function of constructivist environmental education as it does not change the way children treat nature due to the existence of such factors like parental influence, technological progress, and the role of surroundings.
Human-nature relationship is a very controversial topic. On the one hand, humans remain to be a part of the natural world and continue interacting with it in a variety of ways. On the other hand, people do not find it necessary to believe that they are lower than nature, they depend on the natural world, and they have to respect it in spite of trying to tame it. It seems that people cannot allow themselves admitting the fact that they do not have enough opportunities and powers to gain control over nature, this is why it is easier for them to neglect it as well as any kind of environmental consciousness starting from childhood.
Turner (1996) mentions that “most of us do not “talk about of normal and abnormal or good or evil; we talk about what we like and dislike” (p. 24). This phrase proves that people do not want to adjust to something, but consider their own feelings and interests in order to choose the most appropriate issues and conditions for living. This is why human-nature relations are usually based on people’s attitude to nature, their awareness of the natural world, and their abilities to learn what to expect from nature and how to take the best from it.
Unfortunately, nature is usually considered as a good means to relax, get refreshed, be healed, etc. A human does not want to think about the necessity to heal nature and show respect for it. As a result, children suffer a lot from grown-ups’ inabilities to create appropriate relations with nature and teach them the basics of the natural world, its impact on human lives, and the abilities to improve the whole world.
In fact, children-nature relationships depend on a variety of factors such as parental inabilities to promote environmental consciousness in time, technological progress and its impact on how children understand and accept the world, and surroundings that define the level of children’s knowledge and skills. Children relations with nature have been changing over time, and each of the above-mentioned factors played a considerable role in these relations. Recent investigations show that “there are strong indicators of an absence of direct experience with the natural world in many children’s everyday lives” (Charles & Louv, 2009, p. 1).
Several decades ago, children got an access to various natural resources: farms, woods, forests, summer camps, etc. Children were eager to learn better this world and become its part. Nowadays, the questionnaires demonstrate that children want to have a personal computer, iPhone, or iPad in order to become the part of the modern world. They do not find it necessary to remember about nature and its gifts. What they really want is to follow the current achievements and be in trend.
And those children, who find it interesting to observe nature and its components, are defined as strange, abnormal, or simply not interesting for a society. So, it is interesting to learn how parents, technologies, and surroundings may define the essence of the relations between children and nature, conclude whether something may be changed and how children’s understanding and values of nature can be structured and developed.
First, the relations between children and nature are predetermined by parents. It is not a secret that parents are one of the main and first sources that introduce new information about the world to their children. They inform how to behave, become the examples of how to treat different things, objects, animals, and people, and say what is allowed and what is forbidden. Louv’s investigations offer a variety of ideas on how parents may introduce nature to their children.
For example, parents may not feel safe when their children try to go deep into the woods (Louv, 2008), and some parents use the world of nature as one of the possible distractions for their children that cannot last forever. Fortunately, there are still many adults, who find it an obligation to explain their children how to treat the environment, how to keep an order with nature, and how to use the sources offered by the natural world (Kahn & Friedman, 1995).
It is clear from the interviews that parents want to explain their children how crucial environmental consciousness can be for children and how interesting the surrounding world can be. Of course, there is no necessity to be obsessed with nature like it was introduced in Hunting a Christmas Tree, when the author compared her desire to have a fir for a holiday to a hunting process and suffered from the necessity to take a tree’s life and the development of such feelings like “sorrow, guilt, anticipation” (Dean, 1992, p. 12).
Relations between children and nature should not be special. They just have to be, and parents should become successful guides to the world of nature for their children. In this case, environmental commitments and sensibilities will be properly formed in childhood.
Second, the role of technologies should be taken into consideration when the idea of children-nature relations is discussed. Many children think it is enough to use their computers and TV to learn the peculiarities of nature. They truly believe that 3D TV-sets make them closer to the world of wild nature and become a considerable part of wildness. Probably, children, who think this way, have not read Turner’s story about wilderness, where he defined the place as wild only “when its order is created according to its own principles of organization” (Turner, 1996, p. 112).
Technologies can hardly make children closer to nature and improve their understanding of the environment. Though children may know a lot about the environmental threats, the ozone holes, and the lack of oxygen in the developed countries, their real contact with nature is minimized due to the possibility to learn all this from the Internet, books, or TV. Children do not want to check their knowledge on practice but use what is available 24/7 (the Internet or other type of media). At the same time, it is wrong to believe that technology destroys the relations between nature and children.
People do it. People cannot understand that technologies may become the best providers of children to the world of nature. Instead, they are fascinated with the technological opportunities got. For example, children admire a picture of a magnificent tree and enjoy its beauty, size, and colors that are perfectly introduced by means of a professional camera. At the same time, they fail to realize that a tree is a natural gift that is more important than the beauty transferred. In other words, a technological device makes nature closer to children, but a person destroys or perverts its true function.
Finally, it becomes clear that children cannot develop appropriate relations with nature because of wrong interpretation of the surroundings. So, surrounding is another important factor that defines the way of how children value nature and develop environmental consciousness. Louv’s research identifies lack of time, dependence on a public opinion, and an access to special environmental programs as the main barriers to the development of good children-nature relations. Louv’s story teaches the reader about the possible functions of nature in regards to children.
The natural world may cause rather controversial emotions: on the one hand, nature may inspire creativity due to the necessity for children to participate in a variety of activities, promote freedom as there are no boundaries, or evoke fantasy that can improve children’s understanding of nature; on the other hand, nature can really frighten children by the necessity to be independent and take responsibility for all actions and decisions made. Several decades ago, children treated nature in a different way as they know nothing about possible fears or freedoms that come from the media.
All they could do was to enjoy the natural world, with its challenges and beauties. Children knew they could use everything available to them. They did not have a chance to face violence that came from the screen or experience a variety of choice that became possible with the Internet. Children just did what they liked, and they like what they knew, and they knew what was offered outside, the natural world. They did not suffer from lack of time as they were provided with days to enjoy nature. They did not consider public opinion as they did not have the Internet to get to know about it.
Children did not grasp the importance of environmental programs as they did not want mix their practical and theoretical knowledge. Nowadays, surrounding does not prevent children-nature relations. It is considered that surrounding facilitates the development of such relations; still, the experience proves that people are not able to use the surroundings accordingly and have all chances to destroy the relations with nature in childhood.
Different authors present their own ideas about how the relations between children and nature can or have to be developed and actually develop. The peculiar feature of this topic is that each idea or suggestion has its point and may be considered as a correct one. Still, there are also many counterarguments as some people are not ready to accept the truth or cannot understand what aspect of the issue is really appropriate. It is interesting to investigate various opinions, compare them, and define which one is more or less adequate.
For example, the ideas of Dean and Turner (1996) may seem to be too radical as they both use the superlative degree introducing their arguments. Dean (1992) describes the process of cutting a tree as a daunting project at the result of which a tree has to lose its life in order to feed the soul of a person. How dramatic and unfair development of human-nature relations! Still, some children may still demonstrate the similar attitude to nature. In Louv’s interviews (2008), there is a fifth-grader girl, who has a special attitude to nature like being in her “mother’s shoes” (p. 13) with an ability to be free and do what she wants and likes to do.
And nobody, even her mother, knows what makes her so happy. It proves that a child’s attitude may not depend on parental impact on child’s education, technological progress, or surroundings. Some children may just want to be closer to nature, and it is their own independent decision. Still, research shows that there are not many children of this type.
In his turn, Turner wants to underline the fact that children are not able to get an access to the true wilderness; this is why they are deprived of an opportunity to understand a real essence of the natural world. Parents are afraid of the consequences of their possible passion to nature as their actions may lead them to support something illegal that can influence human freedoms (Turner, 1996). Parents’ fears predetermine the way of how children may understand nature and develop appropriate relations.
Children are in need of professional support and explanations of how nature can influence their lives, but they cannot find the necessary sources. In the interviews organized by Kahn and Friedman (1995), children demonstrate different attitudes to nature and the environment as some of them have families, who like to talk about the role of the environment and human connection to nature (Arnold’s family), and someone’s families (Eboni’s family) do not find it necessary to focus on the relations with nature as they have more serious problems like food shortage, low incomes, etc.
One of the most powerful ideas about children-nature relations was offered by Louv. His nature-deficit disorder based on children’s inabilities to spend more time outdoors is considered as a crucial reason of the dramatic change within children-nature relations. Parents are usually afraid of their children and try to keep them safe from any kind of danger that comes from nature. Unfortunately, they do not understand that their lack of knowledge about nature influences their children’s abilities to learn more about the same subject.
At their turn, children should know about plants, animals, and other significant elements of the natural world in order not to be surprised or stay unaware for a long period of time. Children have to get a certain portion of knowledge from time to time and become a considerable part of a society. Parents have to follow how their children learn something new, what they learn, and how they are going to use their knowledge. If parents are not able to complete their functions, other adults (teachers, kindergarten workers, grandparents, aunts, uncles, etc.) may replace them for some period of time.
Taking into account the ideas offered by different researchers during the last several decades, children have to get an access to constructivist environmental education that presupposes a priority of such processes like “assimilation, accommodation, and disequilibration… the active mental life of children and the ways in which children construct increasingly more adequate ways of understanding and acting upon their world” (Kahn, 1999, p. 213). To improve children-nature relationships, parents should think about the possibility to combine practical and theoretical aspects of their environmental consciousness.
It is not enough for children to know about nature and its possible effects on human life. Children should want to cooperate with the natural world and experience its challenges, opportunities, and lessons. Unfortunately, parents do not usually know how to offer appropriate constructivist ideas and try to use technological assistance or surroundings, which have been defined as the disturbing factors and barriers in children-nature relations earlier in the paper. It may happen that children want to know more about nature and their possible relations, still, they do not have opportunities.
Some children want to have nothing in common with nature as their interests and preferences are connected with technologies or other aspects of a human life. Finally, there are the children, who do not know what they want, and they need some portion of help and suggestions. In this situation, parents cannot neglect their roles and think about the most interesting ways of how to introduce the world of nature to their children and take the most important elements of children-nature relations.
In my opinion, people try to pay too much attention to the issues like children-nature relations. Parents want to get their children involved in the world of nature, researchers want to prove the necessity of environmental consciousness among children, and some environmentalists try to impose their opinions about the role of nature and the natural effects on a human life. Unfortunately, there are many other problems and problematic relations in our everyday life.
There are the people, who cannot develop appropriate relations with each other, the events that cannot be understood by the representatives of different cultures, and the thoughts that cannot be accepted by different people in the same way. People get involved in wars, suffer from hunger, cannot find well-paid jobs, lose their homes, etc. It seems to be unfair to focus children’s attention on the necessity to develop relations with nature and neglect the development of relations with people around. Nature has a number of positive functions like healing a human soul, refreshing, relaxing, and inspiring.
Still, people spend much time and money on these relations. Environmental education does require certain attention but does not have to be imposed. Of course, it is wrong to neglect environmental consciousness at different stages of life.
Children may want to play outdoors and take as much as possible from nature. However, it is impossible to earn good money from human-nature relations, feed a child using the world of nature only, buy new clothes made of leaves or plants, or ask a tree for help. Such environmentalists like Turner or Dean have not probably faced such problems like poverty or hunger, when children could not think about anything but food or good sleep.
They define the process of cutting a tree as something terrible and not appropriate or children’s inability to enjoy the wildness as something unacceptable. There are the children, who have to leave outside and use nature as the source of living. It is hard to imagine how beneficial children-nature relations can be. This is why I think that children-nature relations may become a crucial point for consideration only in case other global problems and challenges are overcome and forgotten.
In general, each person has a right to build his/her own point of view about children-nature relationship. People investigate the chosen sphere of relations, define their role in a society, and explain why they consider this topic as one of the most important for consideration. Though my opinion contradicts a variety of ideas offered by such great researchers like Turner, Dean, Khan, Friedman, and Louv, our contradictions may be explained by several facts.
First, many investigations have been conducted in 1990s. Maybe, during that period of time, people did not have a possibility to analyze the problems based on poverty and learn its peculiarities the way I can do it today. Second, the environmental problems seemed to be crucial several decades ago as people were involved in the technological progress and could not resist an opportunity to neglect the environment in order to learn another technological achievement. Finally, it is necessary to admit that my counterargument does not support the idea of complete neglect of environmental consciousness.
I truly believe that children should develop and support their connection with the natural world; still, this type of relations should not be as passionate and enthusiastic as Dean or Turner tries to introduce it. It is necessary to create some limitations by means of which children may want to know about nature and its role in a human life. Of course, it helps to improve everyday routine and distract children for some period of time.
It may teach children to be humane and respectful of everything that surrounds them. Still, human-nature relations should not be prioritized all the time. People face a number of problems developing interpersonal relations; this is why they may not just be ready to the relations that have to be developed between them and nature.
Reference List
Charles, C. & Louv, R. (2009). Children’s nature deficit: What we know – and don’t know. Children & Nature Network. Web.
Dean, B. (1992). Hunting a Christmas tree. Orion, 11(1), 9-15.
Kahn, P. H. (1999). The human relationship with nature: Development and culture. London, England: The MIT Press.
Kahn, P. H. & Friedman, B. (1995). Environmental views and values of children n an inner-city black community. Child Development, 66, 1403-1417.
Louv, R. (2008). Last children in the woods: Saving our children from nature-deficit disorder. New York, NY: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill.
Turner, J. (1996). The abstract wild. Tucson, AZ: The University of Arizona Press.