Why Outdoor and Garden Education Matters
By Catriona MacGregor Glazebrook
Young people today face many challenges that their parents did not have to deal with. Global warming, internet addiction, and the increasing rates of obesity and other chronic health issues are all ills that are new and prevalent among the younger generation.
While these challenges seem insurmountable, there are known solutions to address them. Garden education and outdoor education tackle all three of these problems.
Young people are out of touch with the environment, with many spending less time outside a day than a prison inmate. On average, children aged 10 to 16 now spend only 12.6 minutes a day on vigorous outdoor activity, compared with 10.4 waking hours of being relatively motionless. [1] Taking children outside to teach them about nutrition and science can reconnect youth with nature and a healthful lifestyle.
Through gaining a greater understanding of nature, youth will be better prepared to make decisions that protect the environment. Yet, outdoor and garden education is not limited to environmental awareness. It's about using a school's surroundings as a framework to support inspired learning about science, math, social studies, and many other academic topics. And unlike classroom instruction or reading a book, hands-on experiential outdoor education can last a lifetime.
Additionally, it has been proven that outdoor experiential education can significantly lower discipline issues and “Close the Achievement Gap.” While many studies have shown this, perhaps the most notable is a report by the State Education and Environment Roundtable (SEER) called “Closing the Achievement Gap: Using the Environment as an Integrating Context for Learning.”
A group of twelve states' departments of education founded SEER in 1995 with the intention of strengthening student achievement in academic standards. They chose high-quality environmental education (EE) as a centerpiece for classroom instruction.
"Closing the Achievement Gap” gathered evidence from studying 40 K-12 schools. The in-depth study and report indicated across the board that students learn more effectively within an environment-based context than within a traditional educational framework, i.e. in the classroom alone. This evidence comes from site visits, interviews, survey results, and even gains on both standardized test scores and grade point averages.
The benefits of these types of programs include:
Improved performance on standardized academic tests in reading, writing, math, science, and social studies.
Reduced discipline and classroom management problems.
Increased engagement and enthusiasm for learning.
Greater pride for and ownership of academic accomplishments.
Click here to obtain an executive summary of the report.