BY KEITH KROLL
In ``The Power of Play,'' a story in the Sept. 25 Kalamazoo Gazette, kids are asked to put down their video games and to go outside to play. Parents are directed ``to get your kids outside and get out of their way''.
While I wholeheartedly agree with the story's admonishments, it overlooks one major contributor to what ``Last Child in the Woods'' calls our children's ``nature-deficit disorder'' -- our schools.
No Child Left Inside, the ``movement'' to get kids outdoors and in touch with nature, suggests, ironically enough, No Child Left Behind -- the educational policy directly contributing to the problem.
An even greater irony is the United States House of Representatives passing the No Child Left Inside bill, providing ``funds to train teachers to use outdoor education to spark student learning.'' It is these same politicians who support NCLB, a policy which sends a clear message to schools that what really matters educationally is preparing for and taking standardized tests.
Numerous news reports and educational studies describe how schools continue to cut recess time in order to spend time on standardized testing. For example, Benjamin O. Canada, superintendent of schools in Atlanta, told The New York Times, ``We are intent on improving academic performance. You don't do that by having kids hanging on the monkey bars.'' The Center for Public Education reports that one in 10 schools nationwide has cut recess time or eliminated it all together.
But we don't have to look outside Michigan or even across our state for this mindset -- it's in our own backyard.
The article describes how The Kalamazoo Nature Center ``brings entire classrooms of children to the center for a week of outdoor learning.'' One such program is ``Annie's Big Nature Lesson,'' sponsored by Betty and Jerry Mason in memory of their daughter, Ann. According to its Web site, ``The mission of Annie's Big Nature Lesson is to immerse children, teachers and parents in the beauty and wonder of the natural world; to engage them in authentic scientific investigations by observing the local ecology, drawing and writing; to nurture citizens who value and protect natural resources.''
My wife, who teaches in an area school district, participated with her class in Annie's Big Nature Lesson at the Nature Center last spring. Students, parents, program patrons and the Nature Center staff thought the program a tremendous success.
This year my wife planned to return to the Nature Center for another week of Annie's Big Nature Lesson, but was told by her principal that her class would not be allowed to attend.
Why? No surprise. Participating in Annie's Big Nature Lesson would take classroom time away from ``academics,'' including preparing for the MEAP. This is the reality teachers face.
As long as our state and federal politicians support the deeply flawed educational policies of NCLB, and as long as school administrators, faced with the pressures of meeting Adequate Yearly Progress, think of teaching and learning as preparing for and taking standardized tests, our schools will deepen our children's ``nature-deficit disorder.''