The Indoor Epidemic
How Parents, Teachers, and Kids Can Start an Outdoor Revolution
By (author) Erik Shonstrom
Publication date:
08 November 2017Length of book:
174 pagesPublisher
Rowman & Littlefield PublishersISBN-13: 9781475825909
The Indoor Epidemic is an accessible, readable book that educators, parents, policymakers, and general readers can use to develop an in-depth understanding of the role the outdoors has played in our evolutionary and cultural history—and how it affects their own daily life. Readers will be astounded by the depth to which a sedentary, indoor lifestyle has negatively affected their ability to live a fulfilling life.
But it’s also a story, the story of our connection with the world, its inhabitants, and our own relationship with nature. It’s the story of what we know is right for our children, and yet what we deny them because of the imagined importance and fabricated effectiveness of indoor schooling.
The book’s readability, and its emphasis on practicality, will deeply engage readers. Furthermore, it serves as a guide to parents who are seeking to understand how to utilize the natural pathways to learning—simply by getting children outside.
But it’s also a story, the story of our connection with the world, its inhabitants, and our own relationship with nature. It’s the story of what we know is right for our children, and yet what we deny them because of the imagined importance and fabricated effectiveness of indoor schooling.
The book’s readability, and its emphasis on practicality, will deeply engage readers. Furthermore, it serves as a guide to parents who are seeking to understand how to utilize the natural pathways to learning—simply by getting children outside.
Educator Shonstrom (Wild Curiosity: How to Unleash Creativity and Encourage Lifelong Wonderings, 2015) draws on his own outdoor learning experiences in this look at how our indoor-based education system lessens children’s capacity for abstract thought and damages their physical and mental health, selfworth, and emotional maturity. By ‘going outside’ Shonstrom means heading off into nature to explore in order to help elevate students’ inquisitiveness, mindfulness, and playfulness. He is intrigued by the egalitarian spirit of outdoor learning and how it levels barriers such as gender, race, and economics. There’s a change in the relationship between student and teacher when the class is outside, which can be empowering to the child. A school without walls is also an excellent place for environmental studies, making the lessons more concrete. A former Outward Bound instructor, Shonstrom is inspired by his youthful readings of adventure stories, Walt Whitman, nature writers, and environmental philosophers, and he also cites leading researchers in cognitive development. For all who care about and are involved with children and their education.