Back to School Month: Inventing A Child's Ecological Education

Science Blogs is celebrating the beginning of the new school year with a series of 101-style posts, introducing the basics of a concept. I've got a couple of basics posts I'd like to do, but this one seemed particularly apt to me. I'm a homeschooler, but it isn't only homeschoolers that struggle with the question of how you frame our ecological situation for children in ways that are honest, not too frightening, engaging, and age-appropriate. Because most schools of every type offer a very superficial education in ecology, most parents of kids going to school will need, just as badly as any homeschooler, a deeper option that better describes their world.

This will be a four part series, unfolding over this month, talking about texts and ideas for working on everything from basic science concepts needed for an ecological education to how to talk about global warming. My focus here is on books and ideas appropriate for elementary age kids, from first to fifth grade, simply because that's what I've worked on most intensively - those are the ages of my kids. For those homeschooling or afterschooling, I've tried to find books and ideas that are also attractive to slightly younger kids - 4-6 year olds who may not be fully ready to follow along, but who can be engaged and grasp some of this on a lower level

What do children need that they don't get when talking about ecology? First of all, I think they need the obvious, basic knowledge of the sciences - they need to understand the scientific method and how we find things out in the material world. They need to have a very basic grounding in how the world works - that is, you can't talk about how soil and water and life intersect until a child knows what soil is and how the water cycle works in a simple way. Where does our energy come from? What, for that matter, is energy and why do we need it? Where does water come from, besides the tap? What moves it along? How does a forest work? Who lives there? Why would it matter if an ocean got more acidic, or if the arctic got warmer? Without these basics, the larger questions can't begin to be answered.

The second thing they need is the ability to begin to grasp systems thinking - most education breaks things down into component parts, so for children before the high school level, there often won't be a lot of experience in thinking about how connections between discrete ideas work. Without the idea that there are connections, and some experience finding them, the connections between ecological connections and their world will always seem abstract.

For example, your six year old may have gotten a bean in a styrofoam cup in April or May when his school class was doing "planting" and "seeds." Realistically speaking, since beans don't like to be transplanted, and you probably forgot about the styrofoam cup for two weeks in the back of the car or she dumped all the soil into her backpack and you tossed the broken seedling, not much came of that except the styrofoam cup and some dirt to dispose of. Even if you did manage to make it survive, the cheap potting soil purchased in bulk by the school had no nutrients in it, and the bean probably died. Most likely, there was no connection from the seed past germination and the first sprout - certainly, the odds are that most kids (the kids of my readership probably somewhat excepted) won't have watched the process of flowering, or the formation of seed in the pod, and certainly won't be saving bean seeds for next year or measuring nitrogen levels in the soil.

I say this not to criticize anyone - I'm just as likely to be scraping the broken bean seedling into the compost as anyone else - but to point out that in order to see the world as an ecological whole, children need something they often don't get - a wide view alongside one that is broken down into easy pieces. Otherwise, there's a tendency not to grasp what the point of what they are learning is. This will be the subject of my second post.

The third critical thing in ecological education for children is that they get a grasp of human ecological and environmental history. This is often neglected precisely because "history" as it is taught to younger children tends to focus on showy events, or the lives of other children. The least showy portion of history is the history of soils and agricultural technologies, of woodlands and human practices. This is very tough to teach to kids who have been taught as we've all been taught, to prioritize big shiny events and big personalities in history. And yet it is essential - essential for a host of reasons, most of all because we live in a world that resolutely teaches children that what's at stake in our environmental situation is "nature" and simultaneously reveals that "nature" is something that exists "over there somewhere where things are wiild." In a world where very little is actually wild, it is very hard to engage children with the preservation of "nature" - an integrated sense of how humans are part of nature, and more importantly, how humans affect their climate, landscape and environment well and badly is central to the project of helping us save *ourselves.*

Finally, children need hands-on experience acting on their environment and getting to know their ecology directly - that means time in the water of the creek and time on the lawn and in the vacant lots where the weeds grow tall. It means time spent growing food and preserving it, watching the weather roll in and learning what's in their water and where it comes from.

In every part of this, it is really important to keep this age appropriate and not too frightening. I grew up with at least one parent who felt that it was important to always tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth to his children. I also remember the nightmares I had, and my sisters had, because we learned too much too soon due to this policy - frankly, I think it was inappropriate. I don't believe in lying to children, but I also don't think kids need to know everything at once. I think many teachers don't tell children enough. But overcompensating by telling them too much is equally unfair - a child without the power to actively alter their world does not need to know how unlikely it is that it can be altered at all. That's a recipe for a sense of powerlessness.

Ok, this week we'll focus on the science basics. I won't offer lesson plan guidelines for teaching these, because you probably already are teaching some of them, and it is just a matter of finding out where the gaps are. Moreover, our family has never really sat down and either designed a curriculum for teaching them or acquired someone else's curriculum, because these things tend to happen by osmosis in our geeky household. My children are the sons of an astrophysicist and an eco-geek who can't help but teach their kids what they think is cool. When Simon was 5, as a birthday present Eric took him to his astronomy class. They were doing outer planets, and Simon at the time was space obsessed, an obsession fed heavily by his father. Finally, to a great deal of laughter from the room full of college students, Eric had to order Simon to stop (correctly) answering the questions so that his undergraduates could answer some. It is just in the air our kids breathe a lot of the time. So I can give you a list of textbooks, but I'll leave it to someone else to focus on how to teach basic concepts in science, and will leave curricular ideas for the next segment.

Basic Science:

I'm a huge fan of Basher-Books for my kids - there's a whole series of them, breaking scientific concepts down into cool little illustrated characters that look kind of like Pokemon. Simon Basher's illustrated concepts are clear and well-done - for the purposes of an ecological education I recommend _Basher Planet Earth_ as well as _Physics_ and _Biology_. These books aren't all you'll need - they are necessarily short summaries with heavy emphasis on the "cool" details, but they are great primers and a lot of fun and don't dumb things down.

We're also very appreciative of the Graphic Library's "Max Axiom" series of graphic illustrations of scientific concepts. Max Axiom is a slightly obvious cliche of the scientist-hero, but the explanations are pretty good. The Scientific Method, Ecosystems,b Adaptation, Evolution, Energy - all have their own comics and are extremely well done and clearly explained. The only quibble I have is that I think kids will likely be less impressed by the "superhero" aspect of this before they are really able to understand the most subtle explanations - in some ways the pitch of this series is a little off - say in "Photosynthesis" which presents a detailed analysis that IMHO, is pitched too high for the kind of audience who are likely to think these comic books are still cool. But since I'd rather things go over my kids heads than under them, this isn't a serious critique.

Bobbie Kalman has several series of books about science that introduce ecological and environmental concepts that kids will need. They focus on habitats, lifecycles, and explaining ecological concepts. These tend to be pitched a bit lower than the above books - although my six year old loves both series, I think both of the above are grades 2-5 more than the younger ones. Bobbie Kalman's books strike me as more appropriate for K-2, but obviously, kids and mileage will vary a lot. My only problem with these books is that they tend to have an underlying core of painful sincerity that gets old pretty quick - the books are well done, beautiful and good, but they take themselves a bit too seriously for me.

The venerable Magic School bus series is almost too obvious, but it has several virtues. First of all, the books will probably be available for pennies at your local yard or library sale - everyone has them if you want to own them. If you don't, your library has a bazillion of them. They are clear, and familiar to most kids. In fact, that familiarity may be their biggest weakness - I think any underlying educational value often disappears in the encounter-with-old-friends that any characters that also appear in a tv show have with kids. But particularly the older ones cover some really good topics "Inside a Hurricane" and "Visit the Waterworks" offer entertaining ways to teach younger elementary-aged kids about basic concepts that otherwise don't have too many fun books on the subject.

Finally, we love the Eyewitness series of books, particularly their _Living World_ _Earth_ and _Ocean_ volumes. These are hefty books with lots of incredible information for children. Adults will learn things too. They are encyclopedic, and thus bad books to read alound straight through - but they are great books for kids to pore over, and also wonderful for paging through or for reference when you encounter a sticky concept.

My kids also really love to look at textbooks designed for adults and college students if they are well illustrated and interesting. You will have to do some fast editing, of course and explaining of concepts, but don't assume that just because a book is pitched to adults you shouldn't use it with your kids.

Ok, more forthcoming!

Sharon

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Awesome! Thanks for all the books to review. My son is only 1.5 years old, but he already loves books and hubby and I are seriously thinking about homeschooling.

Sharon -

It's also the start of Science Fair season - any eco-friendly or sustainability science project thoughts would be greatly appreciated. It'd be really great for my HS freschman if she could hop onto a topic that could actually advance the state of play.

thanks!
Daniel

PS First-time long-time, &c.

I loved the Horrible Science (and Horrible History, and Murderous Maths) series of books when I was around age 7-11. They're great fun; probably not terribly systematic in the way they present information, but they sometimes get into a surprising amount of depth in a very accessible way. Perhaps they're only published in the UK, not sure. I'd definitely recommend them, though.

Oh, great, now I have to buy the whole Max Axiom series. It's ... uh, for my child. Why, yes, she is a cat. She's, uh, very smart for her age.

Do I have to do a cat version of this curriculum now? They are so much smarter than we are, I'm not sure how well I'd do at that.

Sharon

In raising my kids, the experiential was the grounding, and the books, explanations and ultimately ecological theory was based on that. We were constantly looking at stuff, touching, sniffing, affording contact with and opening the doors of perception to the marvels of the natural world through the senses. Years of this immersion preceded the rather toned down version of reality that is encountered on the printed page.

Many years later, and again with a 1.5 yr. old in my life, but this time in the forest in Costa Rica, I find a similar, innate interest in the living creatures that share our land. the next task is to instill the values, and some of the techniques of peaceful co-existence.

Tom Peifer

The operative words are "age appropriate". I tried to mix Magic School Bus & Zoobooks with Robin Hood and Goosebumps. I found most children's ecology materials either too serious, too preachy, too political or too highbrow. Kids can grasp the immediate - yard, neighborhood, beach or mountains. Like the above reader, books, TV, web sites & DVD's were secondary to hands-on experience accompanied by explanations that could be understood.

No, I just want an excuse to buy the nifty comic book with the super-scientist on the cover. (Really, I want my own magic lab coat!)

Cats get the food chain concept very easily, but sustainability not so much, unfortunately.

As soon as a child knows her/his ABCs you can show them the periodic table of elements. If it interests them they will love how it's organized like a language and how the words are represented by one or two letters. My 2 1/2 year-old has taught himself 3/4 of the periodic table. He loves it. And I use that as a springboard to discuss what goes on in the body, in soil, in water, in "nasty plastics" that he's not allowed to put in his mouth, Mommy's vitamins (calcium, potassium), what common things are made of, etc. I acted out hydrogen vs. helium at a party for him -- hydrogen LOVES to form compounds with nearly all the other elements. Helium sticks to his own. This are lessons he'll no doubt apply to the kids at his preschool.

Some TV channels or shows like discovery channel are already taking advantage of it, their not boring to watch anymore. Letting your kids watch those shows would start some interest.

Another suggestion: kids should learn plant identification. It's not that difficult, at least for most genera--identifying sedges or grasses down to the species level, for example, is for experts, but kids can learn to distinguish red oaks from white oaks. Many adults can't tell an oak from a maple.

I live in Mexico, and don't have ready access to a lot of the materials you mention. But I would definitely like to second the use of well-illustrated adult materials with kids. In my case, it's a stack of old "Science News", of all things. Certainly, I have to heavily edit my explanations to her 5-, recently 6-year-old level, but she clearly enjoys it. In fact, listening to her repeat the explanations to other adults in her own words (verbatim repetition is not even an option, since I explain in English, and she speaks Spanish with almost all other adults she knows), I am consistently impressed by her level of understanding.

Honestly, I think that one photo of Alex the parrot looms as large in her interior world as her constant exposure to, say, Dora the Explorer.

(An interesting footnote: if you ask her what science is most interesting, she'd probably say "space". In fact, when my mother, a particle physicist with cosmology-related work, had a conference, my daughter initially declined to go because "she'd already know it all", though of course she quickly learned differently. But in Science News, her favorite articles are consistently the more human-scaled stuff - animal behavior, studies of human social networks, that kind of thing.)

Oh - but still, of course, thanks for the resources. I'll get my hands on what I can.

Ecology is about the relationships of organisms with one another and with their abiotic environments. To understand ecology one has to first know the organisms and know enough about physical science to understand something about the abiotic environments organisms live in. This said, I endorse posts #10 & #12. Teach the periodic table. Teach plant & animal identification. Teach maps. Teach geological time. Only once the child knows the plants & crits, knows some physical science, has a geographic & temporal perspective, can she begin to explore the relationships between organisms & their environments over space & time.

Another thing: be humble trying to teach ecological relationships. I had a BS in zoology & my coursework had included some environmental science, and aquatic & terrestrial ecology. This, on top of a lifetime being outdoors whenever possible, made me think I knew some ecology. Then I went to grad school in an Ecology & Evolution program, where I learned that virtually everything I thought I knew about ecology was an oversimplification, an artifact of the temperate latitudes that didn't transfer to the tropics, or was just plain wrong. Be careful about trying to teach what you, yourself, don't know well. No one posting on this forum knows ecology really well. I say this because I don't believe that ecology is understood well by anyone. The interactions between organisms & their environments are just so profoundly complex that humans have only just begun sorting them out. This said, teach ecology, if at all, with a spirit of humility & mutual discovery. Remember that ecological "rules" (I won't elevate them to the level of scientific "laws") tend to be general truisms that typically have many exceptions. Don't be ecologically dogmatic and don't pontificate about ecological relationships. Discover nature together with the child(ren) it's your privilege to help educate.

And oh yeah, I don't endorse post #11. Kill the TV. Chase the kids outdoors.

By darwinsdog (not verified) on 20 Sep 2010 #permalink