The Great Indoors
The days when parents tell their children to “just go outside” may be over.
Children’s adovocates, environmentalists, business executives and political leaders fear that we are raising a generation of “indoor children,” who are largely disconnected from nature. Let’s add parents to the list of people who fear that their children are growing up completely unaware that there is anything going on beyond Play Stations computer games.
Parents out there! Please read this very imortant, poignant article from yesterday’s Washington Post. “Getting Lost in the Great Indoors” by Donna St. George discusses the national movement to “leave no child inside.” Capitol Hill hearings, state legislative action, grass-roots projects, a U.S. Forest Service Initiative to get more children into the woods and national effort to promote a “green hour” in each day are now joining forces to get American children outside.
In fact, today, 40 civic leaders will launch a campaign to raise $20 million that will fund 20 initiatives across the country to encourage children to go outdoors.
What? I can’t believe it’s come to this. That we have to find a way to get children outdoors. But it has.
University of Maryland professor Sandra Hofferth conducted a study between 1997 and 2003, where she found that there was a decline of 50 percent in the proportion of children 9 to 12 who spend time outside hiking, walking, fishing, beach play and gardening.
The phrase “nature deficit disorder” has even been coined.
More on this tomorrow.
What’s do you think about this, and how do we encourage (or force, insist, demand) that our children go outside?
June 20th, 2007 at 10:46 am
How much of the study looks at the time the parents are spending out doors? My first inclination is that parents go outdoors and the children will follow.
BTW….
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