by Todd Walker
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<p>I couldn’t believe what a student told me in Science class a few years back! </p>
<p>” You develop meat in the floor .” </p>
<p>What !? </p>
<p>I fought back the insist to titter. He was dead serious. Clearly,” No Child Left Behind” wasn’t working, or was it. We’re all ignorant on certain subjects, but growing meat in the anchor? </p>
<p>This was not a joke or escapade like querying a plumbing apprentice to deliver the piping stretcher off the truck.</p>
<p>His alienation from the real world was all too evident, alarmingly so, as he absolutely believed what he conceived. I excavate deeper. He said, as if this was common knowledge,” They( rancher-farmer) buy meat, like rib eye, unwrap the plastic, and bury the steak in the dirt like garden grains. It grows and farmers pick it, re-wrap it in plastic and people buy it in the grocery store .” </p>
<p>Yup, this conversation happened. It was almost like the stage from Neverland in the movie Hook. I was in the middle of a rainbow-colored food fight with the Lost Boys screaming BANGARANG !! </p>
<p>My’ Lost Boy’ had never been to a raise. Ever. He’s not alone. The complete lack of hands-on experience with the real world , not the electronic range, is at epic levels.</p>
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Students stitching husk baskets.
Our children have lost a vital, primal relationship with nature, the real world. They suffer from a condition called Nature Deficit Disorder( NDD ).
The term coined by Richard Louv in his notebook Last Child in the Lumbers, been caused by our plugged-in culture which hinders babies and adults indoors. On median, minors invest 1,200 hours per year staring at electronic screens. The disconnect from sort leads against what human brains are hard-wired to experience … the Great Outdoors!
Research presents that children who learn and play outdoors are enriched personally and academically in many ways 😛 TAGEND
Improved attention covers Enhanced imagination Increased academic success Improved construe grasp Higher levels of self-discipline, conversation and social abilities
The cure for NDD is simple. Get outside.
“It is one of the favors of wilderness life that it shows us how few things we need in order to be perfectly happy.”- HORACE KEPHART, Camping and Woodcraft, 1917
From personal experience with my oldest grandson, initiating him to woodcraft talents initiated a thirst to get outside. After his first hike to my cooked clique in the lumbers, he was noticeably desirous. Within 15 minutes of settling in, he turning now to me and said,” Ya know Pops, I don’t feel so scared now .”
Professionally, I’ve evidenced translations in students diagnosed with all sorts of three and four-letter ailments. This study reinforces my findings. Students who struggle to function inside the four-walled school-house seem to thrive outdoors. I’d argue that all students, especially those who willingly conform to the box-mentality, need to go wild.
The Hand-Brain Connection
Instead of swiping a digit over a pad, children need to touch dirt, clay, lumber, leather, fibers, swine, hand implements, and day-old campfire charcoal. Using fingers and paws to operate tools to create useful things from nature’s resources constructs the relationship with the real world. Hands-on learning with reflection on the purposes of the act of doing the stuff throws a breadth of experience no notebook or screen is available with. Experience is the rocket fuel for learning.
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Other research has indicated that working with our hands shapes our mentality happy. Cutting tree bark, bearing holes with an awl, and seaming areas to make a berry basket develops dexterity, a physical talent lacking in our smart-phone culture. Looking at an actual physical thing you created with your hands has reinforces beyond the crafted piece. The usefulnes is not so much the make but the active practice and engagement.
Junior high shop class augmented the hands-on education I caught from curing my father in his plumbing and welding business. I use the term “caught” since that’s how Daddy passed on his transaction skills. Mr. Johnson, our browse educator, taught us how to use all the cool power tools in that dust-covered cinderblock classroom. And we spawned nonsense, some of which I still have to this day. No bloody thumbs were left on the table of that monster radial weapon considered either. Helicopter parenting was not a thing during the Nixon Administration.
The tree stump in front of our single-wide trailer must have had a coffee can of hammers subside into it. I’d sit here and knock steel, and my thumb occasionally, into wood grain like it was my job. I was 8 or 9 at the time and content to “waste” claws. The repetitions helped me well on a few tree mansions in my youth, and the subfloor in our brand-new mansion Daddy building in 1975.
There are still Lost Boys out there shout BANGARANG !, out of contacts with the real world. There was, and I still have hope that there can be, a generation of boys and girls who sterilized their own flat motorcycle tires, carried pocket knives to the lumbers, picked rows of butter beans, and were content to be swallowed up by nature.
What if we could grow bacon on vines? I digress.
Keep Doing the Stuff of Self-Reliance,
~ Todd
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