Warm early summer sunlight spills through the white pine and red oak canopy dappling the soft brown needle strewn forest floor. The pungent scent of pine and earth is subtly interrupted by the faint sweet aroma of apple blossoms that garner attention. The limber boughs of a century old tree bend all the way to touch the ground like the dome of a giant umbrella. A small, well-worn path appears from a little opening on the side and merges with a wider path winding through the trees. The woodland is home to the chatter of grey squirrels and returning songbirds, underbrush and sometimes bull briars, small patches of wild strawberries, black raspberries, and later in the summer blueberries. In the center, hidden from the view of sidewalk, driveway or neighboring yard is a small clearing. Children’s voices break the stillness, punctuated with laughter, as they emerge from a nearby field carrying branches, scrap wood, rocks, rusty tools and handfuls of bent nails in a galvanized pail. The group quickly forms a circle, dumping their gleanings to one side then clearing a spot on the ground down to bare earth. A young girl steps forward, her dark brown hair pulled clumsily back into a pony tail, grabs a nearby sturdy stick and begins drawing on the dirt as the others share ideas for what to do with the new-found resources.

This scenario is typical of a childhood half a century old or more. It was played out time and time again in neighborhoods across the country where children met in patches of woods, in fields, sand pits, ravines, or wherever they could find a spot to create or work on shelters and structures for themselves, away from adult eyes, where they were the architects and the experts. Everyone had their own expertise. Some knew weather, and some knew what was edible, and others were more adept at resource management, some had brawn for hauling and building, and others had the brains of budding engineers. In my neighborhood it was my brother who knew where to find just about anything we might need. He’d memorized every abandoned junk pile for miles around. Big or small, everyone had a place in our circle.

Before the explosion of television, handheld technology and virtual reality this was a child’s favorite toy. We were in direct contact with nature whenever school was not in session or else participating in some other social or familial obligation. And it was not only “play,” it was critical thinking, planning, researching, problem solving… all the precursors of higher order thinking. Did anyone teach this to us? Not really. This was our way of making use of our surroundings and the knowledge we gained from life experience. Children are naturally inquisitive, natural learners. For instance, when I got pine sap, “pitch,” on my hands or in my hair I was compelled to experiment and find a way to get it out. Much to my surprise I found peanut butter worked pretty well. Afterward I wondered what function pitch served. I noticed that pine trees bled in a thick oozy tar-like substance that dried to a pale clear yellow resin over time. I tried applying it to many things and under many conditions, including trying it out as a kind of varnish on my dining room chair. The scientific method was born in our young minds long before it was formally introduced in Mr. Gardner’s 8th grade science class. Our labs were in the verdant woods, tawny tall grass fields alive with tiny creatures to observe, frog ponds, saltwater marshes, and tidal pools regardless of the season.

Direct contact with nature also taught us to be conscious stewards of the land, protective of this natural world into which we were immersed. A huge 300 year old elm tree, that grew where the front woods met the paved street, succumbed to Dutch elm disease and was ordered to be cut down by the highway department. We made an attempt to convince the workers to spare it from such a horrible fate, but to no avail. When it was felled, and the wood taken away, we gathered to count the rings noticing some were thicker or thinner than others. We speculated the significance.

The experiences our small cadre of friends had in the neighborhood provided us with rich learning material rivaling the best Montessori or Waldorf schools had to offer. How could we be learning without instruction? How did we know if our assumptions about things were right? Actually I can be pretty sure we didn’t think about the things we built or observed in such a formal way, instead we filled our cranial database with a wide array of experiences as well as the underpinnings of critical thinking skills. It was the infancy of project-based learning.

Bibliography:
Hunter Murphy, Brenda L., based on an excerpt from: That Which Lies on the Other Side of the Fence; Master Thesis; UNL, Lincoln, NE; August 2014.