One of the most wonderful things that we can do for the children in our care today is to get them out into the garden, the park, the woods and the fields.
A place in the woods for young children
Outdoors is better than indoors, and the natural outdoor environment is best. Our indoor dominated practice is challenged by the ‘forest school’ movement and Richard Louv’s talk of ‘nature deficit disorder’. Perhaps more importantly it is called into question by fundamental principles.
Where did God put man but in the garden? The Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there He put the man whom He had formed (Gen 29). Generally in Scripture the garden is associated with good and the city with evil. There are notable exceptions, of course. But the first city in the Bible was built by Cain after he had murdered his brother, Abel. Then Cain went out from the presence of the Lord and dwelt in the land of Nod on the east of Eden. And he built a city, and called the name of the city after the name of his son—Enoch (Gen 416-17). The ideal, heavenly ‘city’ is described in terms of the natural environment: In the middle of its street, and on either side of the river, was the tree of life (first seen in the Garden of Eden), which bore twelve fruits, each tree yielding its fruit every month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations (Rev 222).
In the beginning there was a connected-ness: between man and God such that they could commune in the garden; between man and woman – she was made from him and for him; and between him and the created environment. All that connected-ness was seriously damaged through Adam’s disobedience. The relationship with God and between Adam and Eve was spoiled. Even the relationship between man and nature was affected. Salvation is about restoration and reconciliation through Christ. Re-connections are established in this world, and perfected in the next.
In a non-theological way Ferre Laevers in work on ‘Wellbeing and Involvement’ speaks about ‘linkèd-ness’. He says that the meaning of ‘religion’ is ‘re-linking’. He says that the ultimate goal of his approach to education is “the fundamental attitude of ‘connectedness’ with everything that lives, the sense that we are part of history, of the cosmos, of the ‘transcendental’.”
Long before Ferre Laevers, the great grandfather of early education Friedrich Froebel spoke about connectedness with nature and the spiritual significance of it. In the pioneering days Froebel secured much outdoor opportunity for children. In his kindergartens (children’s gardens) the young could be found playing games outside, tending the deliberately laid out planting beds and roaming the woods. Reflecting his own childhood lived on the edges of the Black Forest, Froebel wrote: “To climb a new tree means to the boy the discovery of a new world. The outlook from above shows everything so different from the ordinary cramped and distorted side-view. How clear and distinct everything lies beneath him.”
We find a similar value placed on children being outside in the work of Margaret McMillan. Recording the development of her open-air nurseries she wrote, “Children want space at all ages. …to move, to run, to find things out by new movement, to ‘feel one’s life in every limb’, that is the life of early childhood. … Bare sites and open spaces, let us find them.” McMillan wrote further of the freedom of the natural environment: “In the summer mornings all the children, but especially the toddlers, are glad, looking forward to the long, long day with all its wonders. The little ones run about in the grass. They climb the plank laid across the garden seat under the mulberry tree, they run down the hillocks in the meadow, and swing or ride under the streaming plane tree.”
Margaret McMillan’s words are suggestive of what is a defining virtue of the natural environment and it superiority over all else. It is freedom. The less natural, the less freedom there is. In contrast to the natural world, Desmond Morris wrote of the ‘concrete jungle’, of the ‘human zoo’. The city is for humans what the cage is for zoo animals. Similarly the classroom may be experienced as incarceration by the young child bursting with curiosity and energy.
Susan Isaacs wrote, “To be boxed up in the small nursery or sitting room of the ordinary middle class villa or superior cottage is a very trying experience for vigorous, healthy children of three to five years of age and a source of great irritation and nervous strain. Space has in itself a calming and beneficent effect.”
But let these be the final words: The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.