Outdoor Education Philosophy
Most schools have an Outdoor Education programme, be it a camp or some sort of a leadership experience away from their usual four-walled classroom spaces. We all know about our beautiful South African environment and the opportunities it provides, and most teachers have done at least some reading about experiential learning. Unfortunately, though, our students and their experiences in the outdoors tend to be curtailed by paperwork, academia and more testing. We focus on helping the students the best set of results that they can, and unfortunately this is just not enough.
You see, the problem with much of what happens in schools is that it is too learner-centred. The students benefit from their knowledge personally, and it allows them to qualify with a Matric Certificate, but that is where their education stops. With them. Schooling should be more than preparation for a set of exam results. It should be the chance to make a real difference in the environment and the community.
Our wild places are under constant pressure, and with a population that is nearing eight billion, we continue to encroach on these spaces and unfortunately, everything that lives in them. Educated decisions are made in managing them, and those soldiers who try to preserve our natural heritage do their job with the best intentions and should be lauded. However, they cannot do it on their own. They need numbers on the ground.
This is where my embryonic idea of an Outdoor Education programme comes into it, and it differs slightly to what we do at the moment in schools when it comes to immersing students in the environment.
The current trend in providing experiences outside the classroom for students is predominantly founded on the principles of resilience. We send boys in particular out on camps where they are able to test themselves and find their limitations. They might experience discomfort, but the trade-off is self-discovery. And this premise is vitally important. Particularly for boys. The problem, though, is that some students begin to associate the outdoors with hardship, and in later life, a hike as a way to escape, to rejuvenate or to enjoy, is probably not their first option.
So, some schools bring an element of fun into their outdoor programme. They interweave challenges with activities like archery, rock climbing and river rafting. Hopefully these detours provide a break from the trials and testing and enable to students to realise that being outdoors is not just about testing yourself. It is a place to enjoy, recharge and renew.
There is a third tier, though, which few camps ever consider. It is seldom that Outdoor Programmes resonate with an underlying understanding of preservation, ecology and conservation. For students, most of these words are covered in the classroom and as such, are considered taboo. These words create screen-saver eyes and students add them to the list of all of the responsibilities that we as adults tend to give them to shoulder. But being outside, in a wilderness environment provides a scope for making a real difference, not just talking about it. And that is where my ideas come in.
As I mentioned earlier, dedicated conservationists do their bit to sustain the environment, but imagine if they had help from school children. Imagine if we were able to take students into an environment that has all the hallmarks of a threatened wild Africa. Most of our school camps find themselves immersed in some sort of socio-economic-environmental battle anyway, so why not allow the students to become one of the foot soldiers? What difference could they make if they studied the ecology of a given area, in collaboration with students from other schools, building up a research base of information long term to aid conservation? The possibilities of studying ecosystems, micro and macro with relationships between species and individuals and the impact that they have on one another is an exciting prospect.
All of this is made even more feasible with technology because technology is at a place where camera traps, GoogleEarth and communal websites make achieving such goals more than 'pie in the sky'. Trophic balances reflect the quality of the environment, and studying something as small as a dung beetle, could have far reaching effects. And more than that, it is all do-able in something that has more scope that a single individual's efforts. If we deal in the practical ecology of an area in a manner that is hands on and experiential, the students will appreciate the affects that we have on nature. Obviously they will need to be guided by Game Rangers and Teachers, and in doing so, I think that the affects of their conclusions could be far-reaching. Why not build an activity like this into all of our camps, and provide a forum for this findings to be collaborated with other students?
And we can also bring in the community. Because a project like this is not just about the students who can afford it making a small difference, it is about all of us. Understanding how to care for our natural world is about understanding how to empower people to realise that it is their own individual responsibility. Training locals on how to mark and recapture small insects and animals, for instance, might be a starting point, and if they are remunerated, we might find it the beginning of further involvement and collaborative ideas.
A project like this is about every single one of us doing our bit, instead of expecting others to make a difference on our behalf. Humanity may have a right to clean water, for instance, but if we do not exercise accountability and responsibility in sustaining the water we have, that right would no longer be realistically achievable. Nature has a marvelous Godly ability to heal itself, as long as the onslaught that we produce is not continuous. If we are able to understand nature by inculcating an ethical responsibility towards it among our students and indeed the greater community, maybe the world will have a fighting chance.
Take a look at the countries with the most developed education systems, like Finland and Denmark. It is no coincidence that they have a steadily declining population growth. The reason is because the citizens of these nations have realised that more people require more resources and are therefore not sustainable. Much can be read into this, but maybe the most profound epiphany (which most of us already know) is that education done correctly promotes responsibility and maybe if we look at our environmental impact, education will have the power to create a global ethical consciousness towards our environment.
Unfortunately there is a chasm between the impoverished who cannot afford this sparkling education and the affluent who can but often don't do the right thing. Maybe including opportunities like this in our camps will bridge that gap within the parameters of understanding each other and the impact that we have on our world.
There is a poetry in nature that we need to preserve, and we can only make a difference by balancing self-discovery with enjoyment with environmentalism. The youth are able to produce inspiring solutions to problems, but we need to plant the seed within them in order to create teenage conservation soldiers. Maybe then our students will become something like Warrior Poets: boys and girls who are able to halt our wanton pressure on nature through their empathy and understanding of it.