Last Child In The Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder Quotes
"Nature still informs our years—lifts us, carries us."
"Unlike television, nature does not steal time; it amplifies it."
"Nature offers healing for a child living in a destructive family or neighborhood."
"Nature can frighten a child, too, and this fright serves a purpose."
"Nature gives itself to children—for its own sake, not as a reflection of a culture."
"Nature inspires creativity in a child by demanding visualization and the full use of the senses."
"In nature, a child finds freedom, fantasy, and privacy: a place distant from the adult world, a separate peace."
"Nature-deficit disorder describes the human costs of alienation from nature."
"I go to nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put in tune once more."
"Like the boyz of the hood, as human beings we need direct, natural experiences; we require fully activated senses in order to feel fully alive."
"The know-it-all state of mind is just the result of being outside the mucous-paper wrapping of civilization."
"In that moment of dread and excitement, he became intensely aware of his surroundings."
"Our indoor life feels downsized, as if it’s lost a dimension or two."
"Nature is about smelling, hearing, tasting, seeing below the transparent mucous-paper in which the world like a bon-bon is wrapped so carefully that we can never get at it."
"Children live through their senses. Sensory experiences link the child’s exterior world with their interior, hidden, affective world."
"We are creatures identified by what we do with our hands."
"It’s all very well skimming across the surface of the ocean and saying you know all about the sea."
"Yes, we’ll say, 'it’s true. We actually looked out the car window'."
"The more we know, superficially, the less we penetrate, vertically."
"More time in nature—combined with less television and more stimulating play and educational settings—may go a long way toward reducing attention deficits in children, and, just as important, increasing their joy in life."
"If it’s true that nature therapy reduces the symptoms of ADHD, then the converse may also be true: ADHD may be a set of symptoms aggravated by lack of exposure to nature."
"An expanded application of attention-restoration theory would be useful in the design of homes, classrooms, and curricula."
"Research on the impact of nature experiences on attention disorders and on wider aspects of child health and development is in its infancy, and easily challenged."
"Even the most extensive research is unlikely to capture the full benefits of direct, natural experience."
"Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts."
"We need to find a better balance between organized activities, the pace of our children’s lives, and their experiences in nature."
"More to the point, parks increasingly favor what Robin Moore calls the "commercialization of play.""
"Time-analysis studies done at the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research showed that from 1981 to 1997, the amount of time American children up to age twelve spent studying increased by 20 percent."
"Television remains the most effective thief of time."
"The problem with computers isn’t computers—they’re just tools; the problem is that overdependence on them displaces other sources of education."
"A blanket wrapped too tightly has its own consequences."
"Scouting organizations must also respect, or endure, outrageous increases in the cost of liability insurance."
"ATTACHMENT TO LAND is not only good for the child, but good for the land as well."
"It is not half so important to know as to feel when introducing a young child to the natural world." – Rachel Carson
"If we are going to save environmentalism and the environment, we must also save an endangered indicator species: the child in nature."
"Passion is personal. Passion is lifted from the earth itself by the muddy hands of the young; it travels along grass-stained sleeves to the heart."
"Nature as antidote. Stress reduction, greater physical health, a deeper sense of spirit, more creativity, a sense of play, even a safer life—these are the rewards that await a family when it invites more nature into children’s lives."
"The most effective way to connect our children to nature is to connect ourselves to nature."
"If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder, he or she needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement, and mystery of the world we live in." – Rachel Carson
"Teaching children about the natural world should be treated as one of the most important events in their lives." – Thomas Berry
"Let Nature be your teacher." – William Wordsworth
"Flowers calm people down." - Mayor Richard Daley
"Kids from outside Village Homes did it, but our kids chased them out." - Michael Corbett
"I think the lettuce you buy at the store tastes better than the lettuce you get from a garden." - James, an eleven-year-old
"You cannot expect to preserve wilderness or endangered species unless you think about how to make the places where most people live sustainable." - Jennifer Price
"The laws of thermodynamics, the basic principles of ecology, carrying capacity, energetics...should be at the very center of ecological literacy." - David Orr
"A strong public argument for the expansion of camps and outdoor education can be made based on the restorative power of nature."
"When streams are rescued from the storm drains, they are said (delightfully) to be ‘daylighted.’" - Robert Michael Pyle
"The garden has already yielded some promising results...40 to 70 degrees less than the temperatures of the black-tar roof." - Nancy Seegar
"About 42 fish have died in 1999 but we still have over 400 fish." - Students' progress report
"Does four years in college make graduates better planetary citizens or does it make them, in Wendell Berry’s words, ‘itinerant professional vandals’?" - David Orr
"Where we could really design for urban wildlife would be to increase the number of pollinating birds and insects—including butterflies."
"Every garden in San Diego could contain a palette of plants that would not only be beautiful to look at but would provide nectar, and roosting and nesting sites for animals—as well as protective cover."
"Imagine the San Diego museum and zoo selling packets of indigenous seeds of pollinating plants."
"The natural history museum replicate the 'forgotten pollinators campaign' conducted by Tucson’s Arizona–Sonora Desert Museum, which works to repair pollination corridors."
"Local school districts currently offer studies on rain forests and global warming—but fail to focus on their home region’s own rich array of indigenous species."
"In the new zoopolis, our schools would use surrounding natural environments as classrooms."
"American Forests, the nation’s oldest nonprofit citizens’ conservation organization, estimated that San Diego’s urban forest removes 4.3 million pounds of pollutants from the air each year, 'a benefit worth $10.8 million annually.'"
"The political protection of these canyons depends on our ability to see each as part of a single, named, public resource."
"To trace the history of a river or a raindrop, as John Muir would have done, is also to trace the history of the soul, the history of the mind descending and arising in the body."
"The extent that we separate our children from creation is the extent to which we separate them from the creator—from God."
"The goal of this prescription must be not only to maintain the current level of health, but to dramatically improve it—to create a far better life for those who follow."
"The more often I see savagery in the wild—mixed in, of course, with everything beautiful—the more I appreciate people."
"We need a larger vision. We can make changes now in our family lives, in classrooms, and in the organizations that serve children."
"The nature that shaped so many of us was seldom self-organizing—at least not in the pristine way that Snyder suggests."
"The future of the small town and rural life is exciting. Children who grow up in a new Green Town will have the opportunity to experience nature as the supporting fabric of their everyday lives."
"The nature-child reunion is vital for the health and well-being of both."
"Our generation has a similar opportunity to make history."
"The spiritual necessity of nature for the young is a topic that receives little notice."