Restoration-Based Education: Teach the Children Well

Abstract

Opportunities to “dig the earth” have become increasingly critical during this age when young people often spend more time in front of a computer screen or video game than outside. A corollary to this increasing interest in indoor activities is a decrease in the general public’s ecological literacy, even as public participation in natural resource management issues has increased and the scientific complexity of such concerns has magnified (Orr 1992; Bingle and Gaskell 1994; Nelkin 1995; Miller 1998). Understanding about the environment is declining, and a recent survey found that adult environmental concern in the United States is at the lowest point in two decades (Jones 2010). Although more than three in four Americans report they reduce energy use, recycle, and buy environmentally friendly products, these numbers have barely changed from a decade earlier (Morales 2010). Indeed, despite increased media and political attention focused on climate change, U.S. citizens are no more concerned about that issue than they were ten years ago; only a very few consider the environment the most important concern facing the nation (Newport 2010). A National Environmental Education and Training Foundation /Roper Survey (Coyle 2005) also found America’s environmental knowledge to be poor, with an alarming number of adults believing outdated and erroneous environmental myths.