ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION

    It is time to fundamentally change the education system in he United States.  In the one hundred and fifty years of public education, the model was based on the factory system.  The original purpose was primarily to educate a large and diverse emigrant population in the basics: the three Rs, reading, writing and arithmetic.  And to do so in the most cost effective way. The basics are lower cognitive skills primarily requiring rote learning. Like in a factory, the raw material – the students – enter in the first grade and proceed through the system as if on a conveyer belt to matriculation, the finished product. This was the system I went through during the 1940s and 1950s and was mostly the case when I started teaching in the early 1960s.  We are in a far more complex society today.  The demands on students are far greater and increasingly so.   Lower cognitive skills is far less relevant today, though most school systems are still based on this 19th century factory system.  At the same time, the willingness of students to submit to rote learning is far less, as well.  In plain words, the United States educational system is no working very well.  On most tests taken by students from other developed countries and the United States, American students often does not do well and often are towards the bottom of those tested.  Some of the reasons are beyond the control of the schools, requiring reforms beyond the scope of this essay.  However, there are structural changes that can be made within the school system that can be implemented right now that can make significant improvement in the quality of education.  At the same time learning can be exciting and enjoyable for the students.
What is required is having the environment be the pedagogical core of learning.  After all, it is the environment that is the basis for how we live, where we live, and for the quality of life itself.  All science and mathematics start with the environment, yet is often taught as if they were disconnected.  In the factory model it was more efficient to teach the “facts” and not bother showing connections. The final product, workers, were usually not required to use higher cognitive skills to perform their employment tasks.  This is not the case today.   Increasingly the divide in the work place and in society is between those that can function at more complex thinking levels and work skills requiring this type of thinking.  Learning by being in a natural setting provides an avenue by which children are able to spark their natural curiosity about what they experience through their senses and carry this over to their classrooms.  Learning this way is the natural way.  It starts with the child instead of being imposed by the teacher.
Through my generation young people were more connected to the environment then children today.  From the beginning of our society through World War Two the majority of people lived in towns or in the country.  I grew up in Port Angeles; our home was on the side of a valley.  I had a tree swing, made forts in the woods, and had to care for my dog when a mountain beaver clawed his nose.  Our family raised most of our own vegetables.  We got eggs from a neighbor; saw rabbits, chickens, and turkeys being slaughtered for our meat.  My first serious girl friend in the tenth grade was a farmer’s daughter.  I knew how to milk a cow and prided myself that I could hit a cat’s mouth with a stream of milk at five feet.  These types of experiences are not usually available for most children today.  Meat comes in plastic cellophane covered throwaway containers, fruit and vegetables, poultry, and eggs are located in the produce department in the local supermarket.  This increasingly disconnection between the natural world and the individual retards the mental development of our children and creates a psychological barrier from our environment.  We take the environment for granted and discount its importance at the same time.  These disconnect leads to viewing the environment as something that we can exploit for our advantage and not value it for its intrinsic sake.  Our own survival and that of all other species requires us to reverse this trend.
The most effective way to do this is to place the environment at the center of our children’s educational experience.  A child in kindergarten or the first grade can observe ants climbing a tree, marvel at how it can lift leaves and twigs many times its size.  A child is naturally curious will be aroused to inquire into the explanations.  She may want to paint a picture of a tree and find other ways to express what she has observed.  By the third grade she will more likely to understand photosynthesis because of her on-going experiences with nature.  In tenth grade biology she will better understand the functions of cells, the physics that create the balance between canopy, trunk and roots, mathematics, an inspiration for writing, painting, music.  The list is endless.  Nature provides many opportunities for action-based education.  Milking spawning salmon, raising the eggs, count returning fish; observe the interaction between species in the wild.   Having spent time teaching to young teens for some years at Morgan (now Kellogg) and Einstein Middle School I experienced their frustration at being penned up for most of the day.  How much more rewarding and of educational value it would have been if they were able to work with their hands part of the day removing non-native species and replacing them with native plants and doing other similar activities.  It would have given them an investment in the land.  When so invested, students are less likely to litter and otherwise degrade “their” land.  They have created an investment in the environment.
We have in Shoreline a unique opportunity. One that rarely comes along and once lost will not have the opportunity later on.  There is the possibility to acquire sixteen acres of mature lowland forest, some of the trees that are at least 85 years old.  It is located adjacent Shorecrest high school and within walking distance of both Briarcrest grade school and Kellogg Middle School.  It is easily accessible to the rest of the district’s schools as well as the public at large.

Sincerely,
Terry Clayton
408 NE 44th St.
Seattle, WA 98105
206/919-0151

(Terry Clayton recently retired after teaching for 40 years, most of which was in the Shoreline School District.)