When I was taking an online course on reasoning and constructing good arguments (which I never completed, but that’s another post,) there was one interesting tidbit that was covered: some conclusion might be perfectly correct, but the argument leading to the conclusion could be flawed or unsupportive. That’s the most applicable thing that can be said to the following article, but there’s even more to it, so be patient for a moment as we examine this.
The Portland Family website has an article from April 1st listing 20 reasons why playing outdoors makes children smarter. The first thing to note is that this is not a value judgment; the article does not say this is better for children, which could easily go past as an opinion piece, but actually produces smarter kids, which is a measurable result. This is a tall order for anyone to demonstrate, and even university studies recognize that such a broad categorization (“playing outdoors”) can only imply correlation, since thousands of differing elements can fit within this descriptor. Anyone can say “watching TV is bad” (or “good” if you like,) but it’s not the TV that’s the crucial factor – it’s the programs watched, isn’t it?
Alas, there is no evidence that the claim is even researched – there is a quote from a clinical psychologist right at the beginning, likely meant to imply some kind of rigor within the rest of the article, but it actually fails to support the premise in any way. From there, it goes downhill so spectacularly that I suspected an April Fool’s joke, but the structure seems wrong for that. Let’s look at it in detail.
Seven of the twenty reasons (Outdoor play is a multi-sensory activity; Outdoor play promotes problem solving; Playing outside promotes leadership skills; Playing outside improves listening skills; Outdoor play encourages cooperative play; Time in nature helps children to notice patterns; Time spent outdoors increases persistence) could actually apply equally well, if not even more so, to video games. Five of the twenty (Playing outside brings together informal play and formal learning; Playing outdoors stimulates creativity; Playing outdoors is open-ended; Outdoor play is imaginative; Being in nature improves communication skills) refer to the structure of the activities, and have no reasoning nor support for being limited to outdoor pursuits. I dearly love this quote:
Rocks, stones and dirt present limitless opportunities for play that can be expressed differently every time a child steps outside.
Yes, certainly something that wooden blocks couldn’t provide…
No, not done yet! Now we get to the flat-out wrong assertions, such as “Being in nature develops respect for other living things.” I can only suppose the writer grew up in a city, where hunting wasn’t a widely supported pursuit, but I defy anyone to find any area of the US where this is not prevalent – a quick perusal of the outdoor sections of Walmart stores is enough to cast significant doubt on this gem, as is the amount of trash to be found at any prime fishing spot. Then there’s “Outdoor play widens vocabulary,” which is just stunningly ignorant; how the fucking hell is playing outdoors going to expand your vocabulary? The author says:
While playing outdoors, children may see an acorn, a chipmunk and cumulous clouds.
…which, what, all come with labels attached? Language is about communication, and relies on culture to define and promote. How many different studies does there have to be to demonstrate that expanded vocabulary comes with regular exposure to new words, most commonly experienced through reading? Is this somehow not addressed in routine schooling?
What about “Outdoor play encourages cooperative play“? Does it? Has the author never, ever seen a sporting event, or noticed that kids very frequently engage in competitive games while outdoors? It’s easy to make the claim that sports encourages teamwork, but left to their own devices, kids generally don’t concentrate on the teamwork aspect, but the competitive aspects instead – it takes structure and supervision to manage the cooperative bit, and it’s not clear this supersedes the competition, or even comes close. Personally, I’ve only ever seen children, and adults, concentrate on the win-loss record, and the team was only a means towards that end.
There are two items on the list, a whopping ten percent, that can reasonably be said to apply: Time spent outdoors improves children’s immune systems and Outdoor play increases children’s physical activity level, and even the first is up for grabs, since it’s unclear if greater exposure to immune-stimulants occurs in outdoor areas or in enclosed areas where there are more infected people.
It doesn’t take much examination of the posts here to produce the idea that I think outdoor activities are both interesting and beneficial, and I suspect that the majority of comments on the article are from people who were already convinced of the conclusion before even reading the content. The problem with this is, it isn’t enough to convince anyone not already disposed to the viewpoint, but more importantly, it evades the factors that really do bear some examination. A significant percentage of the items address not the location of the activity, but the structure thereof – problem solving, creativity, understanding (and respect) of natural elements, and pattern recognition are immediate examples. This last one should even be in the spectacularly wrong column, since recognizing patterns ‘outdoors’ (I’m going to assume the author meant natural patterns here, but this demonstrates the problem with overly-broad categories; traffic is ‘outdoors’) is hundreds of times harder than picking up on patterns in our engineered and designed interior spaces. And it’s not so much recognizing patterns at all, but being able to interpret them usefully and realize when there really isn’t a pattern to be found. Ghost stories come from finding patterns, mostly because someone is looking only for those patterns.
Most especially, playing outdoors is going to do nothing for making any child smarter to any noticeable degree; what’s required for that is the ability to use the environment as a learning opportunity, and to take the interest and even ick factors as an opportunity to explain what and why. That means the involvement of either a knowledgeable adult or a useful set of resources. However, this is by no means limited to outdoor activities, and can be fostered anywhere. Despite my regular pursuits outdoors, I have learned hundreds of times more from sitting at my computer – often to determine just what I had found while outdoors, since being outside tends to raise questions, not necessarily answer them. Which is not a bad thing – this alone would have made a perfectly good item to list, had someone used some forethought when writing their article. But the portrayal of ‘outdoors’ as being able to foster more developed brains in children is remarkably shallow and misleading, and dodges the opportunity to point out valuable practices instead. Many parents may be unqualified to answer all of their children’s questions about what they find outdoors, and the interest and value can die right there – unless the parent seeks out the resources that exist to turn it into a useful experience. How hard would it have been to encourage that?
There’s even a faint hint, perhaps only of the author’s motivation, with the item “Playing in nature reduces anxiety.” Not only is this an unsupported statement, and obviously dependent on what kind of nature it might be, there’s two hidden points therein. Playing reduces anxiety – that’s the definition, really. Playing in a ball crawl probably works just as well, but any such statement is more supportable if someone can actually present some facts, for instance. The really key element is the idea that kids somehow need to have their anxiety levels reduced. If this is the case (and this applies differently for every classroom and home experience in existence,) then the treatment shouldn’t be sending them outside to escape for a bit, but changing the structure that’s producing the anxiety in the first place.
There’s nothing that indicates this article is anything more than settling on a topic and then looking for ways to support it… frankly, that’s all I see, and hopefully this wasn’t a paid assignment. Yet the discerning person can look at the factors listed to support the conclusion and find a rough guide in defining a more rewarding and stimulating environment that may well increase intelligence. However, taking my word for it isn’t a recommended practice; do the research instead. Or find an article that gives sources and support for its content.
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Related posts:
Obviously, there is no place that’s nowhere – there’s an implied following word: nowhere good, nowhere nice, nowhere interesting, nowhere important… whatever. (Reading that last string of phrases makes me feel sorry for anyone trying to learn this language, because they really don’t make sense, do they?) But how much are we affected by using such terms? When we’re isolated from so much of our human accoutrements, are we feeling alone, desolate, or abandoned? Does this make us, even subtly, fail to appreciate what we’re actually surrounded by? Do we ignore that the lack of trash, of industrial noise, of exhaust fumes is actually a remarkably pleasant thing? Are we conditioned to miss the interactive system right at our feet, millions of lives playing out in the dance of energy and ecology that encompasses the planet? Or, can we actually enjoy the lack of human contact for a while and drink in the sound of the grasses and the taste of the air? Do we, however subtly, recognize that we’ve taken our technology and ‘civilization’ a bit too far and need to leave it behind, if only for a few minutes or hours?
If you’re the least bit familiar with frogs and toads, you know that anything but the most cautious approach to any pond where they hang out will send them sailing off the bank into the cover of the water, or vanish beneath the surface if they’re in the water in the first place. This, however, is a set of rules that does not apply to mating season.
Here’s something that I didn’t notice until I was proofing the images after arriving home. I captured several toads perched in obvious locations and calling eagerly, but note the ripples surrounding this one, produced by the frequency of its calls. I have to say that this was subtle, because I missed it entirely even while taking numerous frames of several individuals. Then again, looking at the apparent point of origin of the ripples, maybe something else is at work here – do toads like beans? Maybe the calls are actually cover sounds, like how we cough loudly sometimes to disguise our, uh, nether emanations (yeah, like that ever works.) But then again I don’t see bubbles, so let’s stick with the mating calls as the culprit.
Here, we’re still wondering if spring has finally decided to settle in, or if its meds are going to wear off and send it scurrying for safety someplace, wherever spring goes when it’s not around – my guess is a shop that does specialty jams. The past few days have been spent dealing with the peripheral effects of a minor surgery – not mine, but that of The Girlfriend’s Younger Sprog, removing a bracing bar they’d put in earlier (make up your mind.) The surgery only took 40 minutes, but all the hoohah around it, not to mention the rescheduling because of an emergency that occupied the surgeon, meant two days of, really, not a damn thing happening while taking a very long time at it. The weather wasn’t bad then, though still a bit chilly, but now that all of that’s past I was able to take advantage of today’s warmth and went out looking for stuff, knowing full well that it’s still early yet.
There was one fisher around who certainly did not miss me, no matter how you interpret that wording, and this was a targeted find, meaning one of the specific subjects I was looking for on this little trip. The same comments about shooting position apply here too, since I was on my side on a rock in the river, head hovering only centimeters over the water to get this portrait. While it may seem like I’ve flopped the image, the fishing spider (genus Dolomedes) was hanging out in just this position on the side of a log in the water, warming itself in the sun. They’re often pretty mellow and will allow a cautious approach, but I admit to coaxing this one to turn this way after it had shifted away from me, facing down into the water in a position that would have required a waterproof camera to nail the eyeball shot. Which makes me realize now that an image of the spider reflected from the water’s surface would have been supremely cool to obtain, even though the river was too turbulent here to attempt that – I’ll keep it on the list. I need to point out the other face visible, an owl-like visage on the abdomen – had you missed it? And yes, I remain true to form; a post without creepy things would make any regular reader (is there such a thing?) wonder what happened to me.
And the same with National Wildlife Week, which has just passed. Sure, wildlife is visible throughout the year, yet there are still times when you’re far more likely to be able to spot it than mid-March. The northern latitudes are still waiting on spring and may even be seeing late snowstorms, and here at the mid-latitudes of North Carolina we can see activity of the birds, but the best season comes when the spring’s newborns are leaving the nests or dens, and the plants that serve as food for so many species are leafing out in earnest. And from a photographer’s standpoint, a setting that includes actual foliage is only going to help.
There’s a reason that I show mostly tight closeups in pics taken locally, and it’s because my immediate surroundings are loaded in every direction with ugly landscapes – houses, fences, wires, cars, and so on. So presenting a better idea of how bad this time of year is for wildlife photography would require driving someplace more scenic just to show how un-scenic it is anyway, which seems almost pointless for a blog post. But perhaps I can still pull it off – this pic is from just now, out in the yard. The drop from the steady rain is acting as a lens, and what you see through it (inverted) is the bare tree that represents most of what’s visible right now – couple it with patchy brown grass and dead leaves on the ground and you have the idea. This is, by the way, a full color shot. It’s still an improvement over living in New York, but not by much, and I can’t help thinking we’re overdue for much better conditions. But at least you know what’s to blame for too many posts ripping philosophy or religion ;-)
Turn the lens so the glass is facing upright, and apply a drop of lens cleaning fluid to a cloth – never directly onto the lens. Gently, with a circular motion, wipe the lens surface from center to edges. Since some alcohols often leave a residue, you may want to follow up with a dry cloth (or corner thereof) to completely clean the lens. 
“Hello?”
