[Odonata-l] More on getting people outside

Mon Nov 13 08:44:34 PST 2006

Hi, Jim.

That's a great summary of the situation. I was a young child in  
Chicago, and I wandered through all the vacant lots, of which there  
were still plenty, with my friends and caught snakes and salamanders  
and bugs. I don't think we did much with them, just liked to see them  
and catch them. I moved to Miami when I was 11, and it was a nature  
paradise in comparison with Chicago (this was many years ago, but  
nature is still rampant in southern Florida). I'm sure those  
experiences turned me into a naturalist and biologist. I immersed  
myself in learning everything I could about nature as a kid,  
including keeping aquaria with fish and aquatic insects and at one  
time or another probably having just about all the herp species of  
southern Florida in terraria. I got into collecting butterflies and  
then beetles, and by the time I got to graduate school I was hooked  
on dragonflies. Early on I became a birder, and that has been a  
lifelong joy. What a shame that those experiences are missing from so  
many kids' lives nowadays. I think even people in the country aren't  
as oriented toward nature as they used to be, and I assume country  
kids are captured by the TV and computer much of the time just like  
city kids. Your idea of micro-nature is a good one, but I think it  
would still have to be augmented with macro-nature in any ways possible.

Obviously, if parents are concerned about their children going to  
"unsafe" places by themselves, they're going to have to find the time  
to take them there!

All these discussions about nature education are very significant to  
odonatology, which is why I'm not averse to having them on this  
listserve. I am quite critical of the modern attitude toward nature  
of "look but don't touch," especially as a paradigm rather than an  
individual preference. It culminates in regulations against  
collecting insects such as dragonflies, the only effect of which is  
to nip some kinds of research in the bud. It does nothing for  
education, research, or conservation, in my opinion. I can only  
implore people to develop strong programs to bring people back into  
intimate contact with nature (looking and touching) as we were  
decades ago. I realize the world has changed, and nature has become  
more restricted, but I think the responses to that have not all been  
the right ones.

Dennis

On Nov 13, 2006, at 6:20 AM, Kirkpletho at aol.com wrote:

> In the United States, I think our approach to urban land use and  
> our more cautious parenting are contributing to the decline in  
> unstructured experiences in nature.
>
> I grew up in Portland, Oregon, USA -- then a small city of about  
> 350,000.  My earliest unstructured experiences in nature were in  
> the early- and mid-1950s.  Back then mothers allowed young children  
> to wander the neighborhood unsupervised -- there was little fear of  
> kidnapping or sex abuse, and we already knew how to stay out of  
> traffic.  Within two blocks of our house was a large field of  
> perhaps four or five acres.  We spent much of each summer there  
> catching garter snakes and grasshoppers.  A half-mile from our  
> house was a spring brook and artificial pond on the Reed College  
> campus -- we were allowed to go there when accompanied by an older  
> child, and spent as much of our time there as we could trying to  
> catch turtles, salamanders, and dragonflies.  My father regularly  
> took my brother and me to more distant undeveloped areas where we  
> were pretty much free to do what we wanted.  One of my favorites  
> was a large, concrete "flycasting pool" at a city park, where  
> odonates abounded.  We also went to a floodplain area near the  
> confluence of the Willamette and Columbia Rivers, where we caught  
> treefrogs and saw turtles.
>
> Today the field we loved is covered with a grocery store and its  
> attendant parking lot.  The flycasting pool has been drained  
> (supposedly to maintain water quality for endangered salmonids in  
> the stream from which it drew water).  The floodplain is an  
> industrial park.  The Reed College campus still has the spring  
> brook and pond, but parents are reluctant to allow their young  
> children to go there because of the heightened awareness of sex  
> abuse and other threats, and also because parents are held to a  
> higher standard of parenting and might be prosecuted, or at least  
> persecuted, for letting their children roam as freely as we were  
> allowed to roam.  The vast majority of neighborhood parks are fully  
> developed, with no undeveloped areas for children to explore.   
> Public areas that are undeveloped are posted with many use  
> restrictions -- a child entering those areas with a dip net or  
> sweep net almost certainly would be admonished by "environmentally  
> sensitive" folks against collecting anything -- nature is to be  
> seen, not touched (this attitude may be derived in part from the  
> perspective of bird watchers, who far outnumber other amateur  
> naturalists).  Local and regional land use management favors  
> "infill," so any remaining privately-owned undeveloped areas within  
> the urban growth boundary are not likely to last long.
>
> I think a partial response to this trend is to expose urban  
> children to microscopy and allow them to explore life in a puddle,  
> aquarium, backyard fish pond, moss on a wall, etc.  Nature survives  
> in a completely urban setting -- you just have to look more  
> closely.  While many lousy microscopes are sold for use by  
> children, truly usable microscopes are available for about the  
> price of a high-tech game system.  What we need are people who know  
> something about how to use a microscope and something about "micro- 
> nature," plus a forum in which those people can communicate that  
> information to children -- and then stand back to assist only when  
> a child asks for help.
>
> Jim Kirk
> 5003 SE 45th Avenue
> Portland, Oregon, 97206 USA
> kirkpletho at aol.com
> _______________________________________________
> Odonata-l mailing list
> Odonata-l at listhost.ups.edu
> https://mailweb.ups.edu/mailman/listinfo/odonata-l

-----
Dennis Paulson
1724 NE 98 St.
Seattle, WA 98115
206-528-1382
dennispaulson at comcast.net

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