ecting with nature help us better understand and then improve our unsustainable path?
We came from nature, we are nature, yet statistics show we are becoming less connected with the very surroundings that sustain us. We are indoors more often- our natural circadian rhythms (our day/night cycle) have long been disrupted.
Discussion: read: Dictionary Removes Nature Words Download Dictionary Removes Nature WordsPreview the document
Read the PDF and respond in the Discussion post.
We will also explore your personal connection to nature here.
Author Richard Louv introduced the term “Nature-Deficit Disorder” in 2005 with the publication of his best-selling book, “Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder.” He coined the phrase to serve as a description of the human costs of alienation from nature and it is not meant to be a medical diagnosis (although perhaps it should be).
Although human beings have been urbanizing, and then moving indoors, since the introduction of agriculture, social and technological changes in the past three decades have accelerated that change.
Among the reasons: the proliferation of electronic communications; poor urban planning and disappearing open space; increased street traffic; diminished importance of the natural world in public and private education; and parental fear magnified by news and entertainment media. An expanding body of scientific evidence suggests that nature-deficit disorder contributes to a diminished use of the senses, attention difficulties, conditions of obesity, and higher rates of emotional and physical illnesses.
Research also suggests that the nature-deficit weakens ecological literacy and stewardship of the natural world.
If you aren’t connected to it, or know it, how can you love it and want to save it?
Respond to the Oxford English Dictionary removal of words that come from nature.
Do you agree with their decision? Is it a big deal?
Then pick one of these to respond to:
Select a word from each group: Words Taken Out and Words Put In.
Share your thoughts on each word and compare and contrast the implications (the harm or good) of their removal/addition
Select a sentence or phrase from the Reading or the Lost Words book introduction at the end that struck you maybe as profound or important or otherwise irrelevant. Talk about it.
Now please reflect on your own connections to the natural world
How often do you engage in nature? It doesn’t have to be as grand as hiking in Yellowstone. I mean, getting outside, walking, exploring and mucking around a bit?
Do you agree that connecting/reconnecting with nature will help us better understand and then improve our unsustainable path?
Macfarlane writes: “Just as nature’s names are vanishing from the language of children, nature itself is vanishing. Forgetting is an easy way to lose things – as each generation becomes more at ease with less nature, we forget what it is that we’ve lost,” “Keeping everyday nature alive in the words and stories of children in particular – who are the ones who will grow up and decide what to save and what to lose – seems to me vital.”
Is this a greater issue that should reach beyond children? What about adults who are the current deciders on what to save and what to lose? Should we explore their connection or lack there of with the natural world?