Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder [Kindle Edition] Author: Richard Louv | Language: English | ISBN:
B0015DRPAY | Format: PDF, EPUB
Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder Free PDF
Download books file now Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder [Kindle Edition] Free PDF for everyone book 4shared, mediafire, hotfile, and mirror link "I like to play indoors better 'cause that's where all the electrical outlets are," reports a fourth-grader. Never before in history have children been so plugged in—and so out of touch with the natural world. In this groundbreaking new work, child advocacy expert Richard Louv directly links the lack of nature in the lives of today's wired generation—he calls it nature deficit—to some of the most disturbing childhood trends, such as rises in obesity, Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), and depression.
Some startling facts: By the 1990s the radius around the home where children were allowed to roam on their own had shrunk to a ninth of what it had been in 1970. Today, average eight-year-olds are better able to identify cartoon characters than native species, such as beetles and oak trees, in their own community. The rate at which doctors prescribe antidepressants to children has doubled in the last five years, and recent studies show that too much computer use spells trouble for the developing mind.
Nature-deficit disorder is not a medical condition; it is a description of the human costs of alienation from nature. This alienation damages children and shapes adults, families, and communities. There are solutions, though, and they're right in our own backyards. Last child in the Woods is the first book to bring together cutting-edge research showing that direct exposure to nature is essential for healthy childhood development—physical, emotional, and spiritual. What's more, nature is a potent therapy for depression, obesity, and ADD. Environment-based education dramatically improves standardized test scores and grade point averages and develops skills in problem solving, critical thinking, and decision making. Even creativity is stimulated by childhood experiences in nature.
Yet sending kids outside to play is increasingly difficult. Computers, television, and video games compete for their time, of course, but it's also our fears of traffic, strangers, even virus-carrying mosquitoes—fears the media exploit—that keep children indoors. Meanwhile, schools assign more and more homework, and there is less and less access to natural areas.
Parents have the power to ensure that their daughter or son will not be the "last child in the woods," and this book is the first step toward that nature-child reunion. Direct download links available for Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder Free PDF
- File Size: 638 KB
- Print Length: 412 pages
- Page Numbers Source ISBN: 156512605X
- Publisher: Algonquin Books; Updated and Expanded edition (April 22, 2008)
- Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
- Language: English
- ASIN: B0015DRPAY
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
X-Ray:
- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #27,358 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #11
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Science > Nature & Ecology - #14
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- #11
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Science > Nature & Ecology - #14
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Parenting & Relationships > Parenting > Babies & Toddlers > Child Development - #47
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Sports > Outdoors & Nature
When I was growing up in Boise Idaho, I thought nothing of spending an afternoon away from my parents fishing ponds along the Boise River. As I graduated to fly fishing, I spent time on the river itself. Closer to home, the canal which ran below South Federal Way offered a miniature green belt where my friends and I built forts and rode bikes. Urban as Boise was, even then, this tiny greenbelt was still sufficiently wild that I would occasionally find a porcupine in our front yard. Our cats were fairly adept at finding quail (and bringing their still quivering bodies to us) and in general I found it easy to retreat to a relatively tame and yet exciting out of doors. Children today have no such privileges. Indeed, as Richard Louv points out, they are literally suffering from nature deficit disorder and its effects are far more pervasive than most of us would be willing to acknowledge. Increasing urbanization is part of the problem, but only a small part. A larger portion of the blame lies with the unintentional effects of our best intentions: legislation and regulations to protect and educate children.
Louv's hypothesis, in brief, is that we have entered a third frontier. Following the argument of America's first great historian, Frederick Jackson Turner, Louv suggests that America's frontier did indeed close in the 1890s, but it was replaced almost immediately by a second great frontier: life on farms, institutions such as scouting, and outdoor activities were, he argues, commonplace until the 1980s. But, just as Turner's thesis begins with the 1890 census, Louv finds the 1990 census an equally useful demarcation point, for beginning with this census, separate farm records are no longer kept, due to the decline in the rural population.
"For the young, food is from Venus, farming is from Mars," says Louv. But the not-so-young, that is, the parents of our present young, are often just as alienated from reality. Food comes from the refrigerator-- well, okay, it really comes from the grocery or convenience store-- but then it ultimately comes from truckers and the Oscar Meyer factory, or General Mills maybe. No? It comes from Papa John's Pizza, delivered by driver to our doors, ready to eat. What more is worth knowing? Western culture, certainly US culture, accelerates in this noetic disconnection from its natural sustenance. However, this is but a sub-thesis for Louv, one quickly passed.
Where the topic is a personal knowledge of nature, the word `nature' is itself problematic. Within current theory, all material we can experience-- whether a polyethylene terephthalate water bottle or an oak tree-- is reducible to quarks and gluons, and is thus "natural." The reader must bare in mind what the author means by `nature': something like, those aspects of the geophysical and biological world somehow minimally altered by man (or something like that). Not that I have a more economical definition for Louv's purposes, but often his usage of `nature' is ambiguous. Avoiding this seems difficult.
Louv's book contains many important discussions, but it's repetitive and generally seems unfocused. He repeatedly introduces ideas (generally by citing/quoting various individuals) as if having more validity than they do, often then admitting that he might not assent to much of the citation he has just introduced. This dilutes and blurs the discourse; material is included that should not have been.
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