Back to Nature

Outdoor education has a real and crucial role in exposing students of today to a natural world that may be otherwise unknown to them.

It’s hard to imagine, but there are children in today’s education system who don’t know, or at least really understand, from where much of their food, clothing and other essentials comes, or how it gets to them.
Then again, is it so hard to comprehend? How many of them have reason to know the production cycle of packaged pasta, or tinned vegetables, or the pizza that’s delivered to their front door on demand?
Perhaps, too, when the argument about our dependence on “nature” is expressed again, stop and consider how much timber and other natural products are these days a part of our lives? How much “real” wood – and not the plastic patterned kind – can be found in the office of 2007?

This is the scenario confronted by those education specialists who are attempting to close the gap between students of today and the “great outdoors”. When the gap is growing ever-wider, there are a lot of students who can’t see much “great” about it at all – and don’t know why they should learn.

Dr Peter Martin is one of those who tries to convert the non-believers. The first – and sometimes apparently insurmountable – issue, says Dr Martin, head of the Department of Outdoor Education and Environment at La Trobe University in Bendigo, is that that gap is growing wider with every successive generation.

“When we think of nature, we think of the generic outdoors,” says Dr Martin. That, he suggests, means we place Uluru on a par with Antarctica; a polar bear with the giant grizzly. It’s like the reference to news and what “matters” to us; a motor vehicle accident in the next street means more than an earthquake killing thousands in Peru.
“If we relate to the environment in the same way as to people, it means we have develop a relationship with a place over time,” Dr Martin continues.

“As educators, the question becomes: How will we introduce these people to this place?
“Ultimately, outdoor education is charged with developing trusting relationships between people and the earth. It’s about creating a relationship so that people care for nature, not just about it.

“Outdoor education in schooling is about trying to get an emotional bond between students and the land, in a very specific way.” The key to developing this relationship, Dr Martin says, is exposing students to the outdoors and instilling in them some knowledge about it and what makes it “tick”.

Just as in our relationships with people first impressions make a difference, so do our relationships with nature depend on initial experiences. And at a time when many school students have little or no exposure to the outdoors, the introduction provided by outdoor education programs can be crucial in forming life-long attitudes and behaviours.

“The first task is just to give the kids the skill and the interest to be able to go into the outdoors in a way they feel comfortable – being able to cook a meal, pitch a tent, recognise the equipment they’ll need,” Dr Martin says.
“This is the key, early focus, from which they can explore the relationship further.”

Dr Martin says his own research has shown that the most effective method of creating a caring relationship for nature is to encourage an emotional response. “Emotional ways of knowing and responding to nature need to be encouraged throughout any activity or program,” he wrote in a paper published in the Australian Journal of Outdoor Education in 2004. “The students in this research who reported the greatest changes in everyday environmentally-related behaviour were also those who stated most interest and identification with more spiritual connections to the natural world.

“A passion for spending time with nature, easily promoted through adventure activities, blended with reflective moments may well be the greatest gift we can give our students to take with them into the future of the world.”
Dr Martin says that at one extreme, contemporary outdoor education is examining the impact of human beings on the planet, and the role of “the outdoor education world” in its future. “There’s certainly a strong sense of environmental ethics,” he agrees. “We ought to be able to exist harmoniously that all the other species here, and as the dominant species should be mindful of our custodial role.

“Kids have a very strong fascination for animals, but usually have very little contact with Australian native fauna. If outdoor education can go a little way to establish that bond, people will start thinking about their habitat more.”