A few thoughts in response to Grant Linney's article in The Globe and Mail of September 5, 2006.
Even though I just moved on after doing a series of articles on landscapes during the month of August, I just could not resist writing one more little piece on it after reading an article in yesterday's Globe and Mail.
Grant Linney, the author, starts off by saying that the Canadian wilderness has for long been part of our mental and cultural landscape. Until quite recently, Linney states, outdoor play was an ordinary part of growing up. As a result, these kids were, says Linney, "much more aware of our intimate connections to the outdoors and its natural systems." Linney laments that this is no longer so, and that kids today are increasingly spending leisure time indoors.
In his view, the growing trend towards indoor play is the result of our growing fear of the outdoors. If we are not intimidated by regulations, procedures and liability waivers before embarking on an outdoors adventure, then we might imagine West Nile viruses or pedophiles lurking in the bushes. Or perhaps we might imagine running into an outdoor terrorist training camp, such as the ones in the Toronto area.
The result of this fear and increasing unwillingness to expose our children to the outdoors, says Linney, quoting Louv from Last Child in the Woods, is "nature deficit disorder."
Besides being skeptical of our ongoing need to pathologize anything unpleasant, from feelings of sadness to playing indoors, I am also skeptical of the point Linney is making.
Lack of outdoors experiences might very well contribute to our overall sense of alienation and isolation from our landscape. But it seems to me that Linney only partly solves the problem.
Linney suggests that kids will develop "ecological literacy" and become "the ecologically literate citizens that our planet so desperately needs" if they engage in a healthy dose of safe and educational experiences in the outdoors. Yet the current dismal state of our natural environment hardly proves Linney's statement that those kids of former generations really were so "much more aware of [their] intimate connections to the outdoors and its natural systems." Perhaps outdoor experiences are a beginning toward ecological literacy, but it's not the whole answer. Not even close.
To read the full text of Linney's piece, check The Globe and Mail, Tuesday September 5, 2006, page A13.
References
Grant Linney. Reclaiming the Outdoors for Our Children. In: The Globe and Mail, Tuesday September 5, 2006, page A13.
