Ernie Atencio

This morning I ran into a friend who works for Rocky Mountain Youth Corps, a local AmeriCorps and Youth Conservation Corps program that employs young people in all variety of community service and conservation projects around northern New Mexico. He is always so pumped about his work, new educational initiatives, inspiring success stories. I’ve worked with youth in the past – was once an Outward Bound “hood in the woods” myself – so I know it can be both brutally challenging and deeply gratifying. I understand why he’s always excited.

Today he was talking about the New Mexico No Child Left Inside Coalition. This is not new, but got me thinking and plowing back through some old material.

Richard Louv’s 2005 book, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature Deficit Disorder, certainly got a lot of people’s attention. That it is healthy for kids to have unstructured play outside is not a new idea, but Louv’s book drew clear connections between a deficit of nature in children’s lives and a costly epidemic of learning disabilities, behavioral disorders and childhood obesity. And the final link is the kind of adults those kids with nature deficit disorder turn into. No wonder we’re in such and environmental mess.

Louv spoke at a Quivira Coalition conference in Albuquerque two years ago and had hard-bitten ranchers teary-eyed as they recounted their own wild country upbringing. It rings true.

Since then dozens of New Mexico youth, educational and conservation organizations have coalesced together to get children unplugged and outside to learn in and from nature. I know people imagine all us Westerners always out on the land, running cattle, hiking the peaks, hunting and fishing and running rivers. But as one example of the disconnect, the New Mexico State Parks Division estimates that although 80 percent of our rural state’s school kids live within a half-hour of a state park, less than 10 percent have ever visited one. The coalition proposes to pay for this outdoor education program with a 1% tax on the sale of TVs and video games (undoubtedly the prime culprits), which would raise an estimated $4 million dollars a year. That could provide a lot of precious and transformational experiences for a lot of children.

I’ve got nothing against tests and educational performance standards, but our local school district seems to be in such a perpetual panic to meet No Child Left Behind standards that my son probably spends more of his school day preparing for and taking tests than he spends outside. We’ll all be happier when it’s the other way around.