Releasing education into the wild: an education in, and of, the outdoors

ABSTRACT

This paper considers the recent growth in different kinds of learning outside the classroom, especially Forest Schools. It shows how the activities associated with Forest Schools often involve mainstream curriculum content delivered in outdoor settings, with a focus on developing skills and attitudes that can be utilised when back in the classroom. Drawing on the works of Henry David Thoreau and Anna (Nan) Shepherd, we suggest that there is an important distinction to be made between an education in the outdoors, and an education of the outdoors. Through a close reading of ‘Walden’ and ‘The Living Mountain’, we argue that both works provide perspectives on being in the outdoors that offer rich educative possibilities. The paper suggests that an education of the outdoors is characterised by a form of attention that opens pupils to a different way of encountering and engaging with the world that is transformative.

KEYWORDS:

• Outdoor education
• Thoreau
• Shepherd
• knowledge
• attention

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. In the north west of England, a group of academics from Edge Hill University are pioneering partnerships with teachers, educators and university academics learn how to deliver and develop Beach School. See: ‘Beach School: Teaching and learning on the beach’, [online], Available at: < https://www.edgehill.ac.uk/news/2019/04/beach-school-enhances-learning-and-teaching-opportunities/> Accessed 6 January 2020.

2. See [online], Available at: <http://www.forestschoolsuk.co.uk/about-forest-schools/what-is-forest-schools.aspx. Accessed 22 June 2018 >.

3. See [online], Available at: <http://www.forestschoolsuk.co.uk/about-forest-schools/what-is-forest-schools.aspx> Accessed 6 January 2020].

4. See [online], Available at: http://richardlouv.com/blog/what-is-nature-deficit-disorder/Accessed 6 January 2020.

5. See [online], Available at: < https://www.nutrition.org.uk/nutritioninthenews/pressreleases/1059-bnfhew2017.html>, Accessed 6 January 2020.

6. See the report in the UK newspaper, the Guardian: [online], Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jan/13/oxford-junior-dictionary-replacement-natural-words, Accessed 6 January 2020.

7. See: [online], Available at: https://www.edgehill.ac.uk/news/2019/04/beach-school-enhances-learning-and-teaching-opportunities/Accessed 6 January 2020.

8. We deliberately use the non-capitalised noun ‘nature’ here in contrast with the capitalised ‘Nature’ that appears in some of the literature on which we draw later in the paper – particularly in the work of Henry David Thoreau. While both ‘nature’ and ‘Nature’ appear in Thoreau’s writings, the latter seems to be used more to denote the breadth of Thoreau’s understanding of the term (incorporating scientific, aesthetic, as well as syncretic religious and spiritual aspects). Thoreau’s own understanding of Nature differed in some respects from his fellow Transcendentalists, as well as from his contemporary and friend, Ralph Waldo Emerson. For Thoreau, Nature was not merely emblematic of higher truths. The natural world was the sacred world; as he writes: ‘Is not Nature, rightly read, that of which she is commonly taken to be the symbol merely?’ (Thoreau, 1849/1983, 382). By using ‘nature’ we refer merely to the character and inherent qualities of the outdoor, natural environment.

9. While Thoreau’s works are not considered mainstream texts for education in the sense that, for example, Dewey’s are, his work has been drawn on widely in relation to teacher education (Howe 2009), vocational education (Unwin 2004), higher education (Fulford 2012, 2016; Hochstetler 2013; Standish 2006), and education more broadly (Buell, Cramer, and Marshall 2016; Campbell et al. 2004; Saito 2006, 2017; Standish 2013).

10. Thoreau writes: ‘In the Winter of ’46–47 there came a hundred men of Hyperborean extraction swoop down on to our pond one morning, with many car-loads of ungainly-looking farming tools, sleds, ploughs, drill-barrows, turf-knives, spades, saws, rakes’ (1854/1999, 262), and: ‘For sixteen days I saw from my window a hundred men at work like busy husbandmen, with teams and horses and apparently all the implements of farming, such a picture as we see on the first page of the almanac’ (1854/1999, 265).

11. We recognise that the aim of this project was different to ours in writing this paper. However, we find that Masschelein’s ideas of entanglement, and in particular, attention without intention, are highly relevant to our discussions.

12. The etymology of ‘experience’ relates to being put outside (ex) of ourselves; of exposing ourselves to trial, danger (periculum) or risk.

13. We suggest through the use of this term that the kind of attention that we find transformative is not only possible in nature, but in a range of different places – even in cityscapes (as Masschelein 2019 work shows).