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Childhood and Nature: Design Principles for Educators by David Sobel, Stenhouse, 2008, 159 pp., ISBN 978-1- 57110-741-1
What's the relationship between School and Mother Nature? With this question, David Sobel opens his 2008 book, Childhood and Nature: Design Principles for Educators. His previous publication, Place-Based Education: Connecting Classrooms and Communities (2004), published by the Orion Society, is filled with stories of students learning and making a difference "through a balanced focus on economic development and environmental preservation [as] the community and its businesses get revitalized, state curriculum standards are met, and students are given invaluable opportunities to learn in real-world settings" (p. 2). In Childhood and Nature, Sobel draws from Place-Based Education and adds an important focus on the role of schools in educating children about their connection to the environment, even in a time of heightened mandates. Further, this book focuses on what it means to begin to plan for instruction by focusing on the child rather than by focusing first on the transmission of environmental facts and figures.
Sobel uses the example of No Child LeftBehind mandates to discuss how teachers might focus on curricula essential to the future of our planet while working within educational systems that appear to constrain innovation. Thus, Childhood and Nature is an incredibly important text in helping teachers and administrators see (and trust) the possible as they engage students in taking action regarding environmental issues in and beyond their own backyards. Sobel also urges readers to insist on alternatives to conventional schooling by which "children actively learn to 'not-think' about the relationship between what goes on inside the school walls and outside in the social and natural communities" (p. 2). He provides many explicit examples of just how educators might make such alternatives a reality.
In the opening pages, Sobel makes explicit connections between curricular standards and curricula that support students in "getting smarter and making the community better and protecting nature" (p. 8). He builds models for teaching for environmental action that help teachers understand how such learning must begin with the experiences of the child. In Chapter Two, Sobel provides experiential descriptions as well as empirical data to communicate the importance of building children's awareness of environmental stewardship. He emphasizes that such awareness cannot be...