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 4^16-17). 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.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Louv, Richard, Last Child in the Woods, Atlantic Books 2009

Laevers, Ferre, Experiential Education at Work, Centrum voor ErvaringsGericht Onderwijs vzw 1997

Froebel, Friedrich, The Education of Man, Dover Publications 2005

McMillan, Margaret, The Nursery School, Dent 1919

Morris, Desmond, The Human Zoo, Jonathan Cape 1969

Isaacs, Susan, The Educational Value of the Nursery School, The British Association of Early Childhood Education 2013

The ark is such a wonderfully suitable image for a Christian school.  In 1995 when we started Mr Noah’s Nursery School, Dave Donkin, model maker and one time member of Iden Green Congregational Church, made a model for us portraying Noah’s ark.  That image immediately became the logo for the little school and it has stayed with us through these years.  Having opened a new classroom which we call ‘The Ark’, Dave has made another model.  This time his work is in a style not so colourful and stylised, but instead it is quirky and stimulating to the imagination.

Of course, the story of Noah and the ark has much that is clearly appealing to young children.  Among the attractive elements are:

• the colours of the rainbow
• the animals
• varieties of weather
• a charming story line — we all love  a good story.

There can be no wonder that toy arks and Noah picture books are such great favourites.

Going beyond this, the ark is a symbol of the school itself.  Cornelius van Til (1895-1987) was a very significant Dutch American theologian.  He was the teacher of Francis Schaeffer and a seminal influence.  He had a particular interest in education and wrote this: “What an easily intelligible symbol the ark that Noah built is of the unified culture of Christians, who unify their efforts in the family, in the church and in the school, about the all-comprehensive redemptive work of Christ.”  These words are not perhaps quite so ‘easily intelligible’ to us – his writing is quite difficult to understand!

Van Til goes on, “In particular, what an easily intelligible symbol the ark of Noah is of the Christian school as it lives by the grace of God and then unites the various aspects of human culture….”  The ark is a suitable symbol because it speaks of

• Divine provision.  The ark was God’s provision for Noah and his family and in deed for the future of humanity.  We should regard Christian schools as the provision of the Lord for believers and for many others beside.
• Shelter and safety.  Conspicuously, Noah and all in the ark were safe.  It might not have been very comfortable; one may suppose it would have been smelly and sometimes scary, but at least it was safe, and the only safe place to be.  In days when our world is a frightening place, awash with all sorts of hazards and dangers especially for the young, the Christian school provides a refuge.  It is a place where the very young, and those who are young but regard themselves as worldly-wise (adolescents), can be protected from moral and spiritual threats.
• a distinctive culture.  This is the main thrust of what van Til says.  There is a completely different culture in the ark in comparison with that among those who remain outside.  The whole worldview is markedly different. Those outside are careless concerning the impending disaster and content to go on as if there were no moral and spiritual issue to be faced.  Those in the ark, even if they are not personally committed to God, even if they are full of doubt about Him and the future, they are under the banner of the Judge and Redeemer.  The prevailing ethos focuses on a new start that excludes violence and yields to the Lordship of God.

At Mr Noah’s Nursery School a deliberately Christian culture is expressed in the stated values:

• Loving one another.
• gentle Living
• Learning together

It is not imagined that Christians have a monopoly of these aspirations, but these three certainly represent core Biblical ideals.  Everyone knows that love is the duty of Christians; men are represented in Scripture as having responsibility to look after the world and to handle it as careful stewards; we are called to be disciples — the very word means learners.

Then let us return to the story-line of the ark’s journey.  The ark is a perfect vehicle for the Christian message.  All the essential elements of the gospel are present.  There is sin, judgment, and destruction and salvation. There is revelation and covenant.  Children who engage with the narrative imbibe the categories and concepts of Christianity.  A great obstacle to our contemporaries receiving the gospel is that the very thought patterns are foreign and as incomprehensible as an unfamiliar language.  C S Lewis said that his purpose in writing the Chronicles of Narnia was that children who heard them read, or who read them for themselves, would become familiar with the themes of good and evil, victory and defeat, justice and mercy, and even of Christ and the devil, so that later in life, hearing the gospel, they would recognise all these things.  The story of Noah and the ark introduces the Christian gospel in bold symbolic form in precisely the same way.

*This is the substance of the address given at the Mr Noah’s Nursery School AGM on 6^th June 2013 when Dave Donkin’s beautiful and provocatively quirky model of the ark was unveiled.  This fascinating ornament sits in the centre of the room as a label, the room being named ‘The Ark’