Author: Chen Lili (Associate Professor, School of Marxism, Sichuan University of Foreign Chinese)
In July 1956, Rachel Carson, while completing the Ocean Trilogy but not yet devoting herself to writing Silent Spring, published a long article in the journal Friends of women's families titled "Stimulating Children's Curiosity." In the text, she takes her and her young nephew Roger Christie's natural experience and observation around her residence in Maine as the main line, and conveys her natural education concept to the people of the time: children should take the accessible nature as the teacher, perceive nature as the path, follow the nature as the thought, and respect nature as the purpose. It's a parenting mantra for parents who lived more than a decade after World War II, immersed in postwar optimism and progress, technology first, and urban ghosts. In 1965, on the basis of adding some pictures, the article was published as Carson's posthumous work, entitled "The Heart of Wonder" (also translated as "The Miracle of All Things"), which was widely disseminated around the world and has been circulated to this day.
Carson's concept of natural education has been inherited, and in addition to being deeply influenced by Thoreau, Schweizer and others, a period of education as a child is crucial. Carson was born in 1907, coinciding with the natural learning movement flourishing in the United States, and according to Carson's researcher Linda Lear, Carson's mother was a fan of the movement, influenced by some of the promoters of nature learning movements such as Anna Botsford Combstock and Liberty Bailey. They believe that children should be teachers of nature. Whether it is a lake and a forest, or an artificial environment such as a park or a garden, as long as it is the nature of the child's five senses, it can become a "book of nature" that guides children to learn. The purpose of children to perceive natural objects according to their own hearts is not only to acquire natural knowledge, but also to cultivate children's "understanding of sympathy" for nature and increase the pleasure of life. Carson's mother incorporated these ideas into Carson's childhood education and influenced her throughout her life. She has a lifelong love for the ocean and nature, prefers nature writing, and is good at passing on obscure and difficult scientific knowledge to the public, alerting the world and inspiring the deaf.
In the 1980s, as the study of children's history and family history flourished in the West, some historians began to write about the profound connection between the artificial environment or the natural environment and children's growth. In 1989, the American historian Elliott West published Growing Up with the Land: Childhood on the Frontier of the Far West, which is regarded as one of the models of early exploration. At the same time, themes such as naturalistic education, playgrounds for urban children, and outdoor activities for urban children continue to attract the attention of Western education historians and urban historians. In 2003, the American historian Bernard Megan published "Children and Nature in History" in the journal Environmental History, one of the most influential journals in the field of global environmental history, calling on historians to study the "important theme" of children and nature on the basis of commenting on existing relevant achievements. In 2009, the American environmental historian Kevin M. C. Armitage has studied the nature learning movement that influenced Carson deeply in the historical context of the natural resource conservation movement in the progressive period, and is the author of The Nature Learning Movement: The Forgotten Popularizer of The Ethics of Natural Resource Conservation in the United States. It is this book and other related research that represents a new generation of environmental historians increasingly writes about the history of children's interactions with nature, which were rarely discussed before. In a certain sense, environmental history's concern for the interaction between children and nature is one of the products of multidisciplinary cross-cutting research and dialogue.
Judging from the development of environmental history itself, there is no shortage of children in previous studies. Some studies focus on the environmental health of children in historical periods from the perspective of "interaction between the body and the environment", such as children's malignant tumors or physical disabilities caused by toxic substances, and heavy metal poisoning caused by excessive blood lead levels in children. Researchers focus much on toxic substances in the environment and their environmental health risks, just as Carson focused on chemical pesticides and their residues in Silent Spring. Since the 21st century, in addition to continuing the above research path, some environmental historians have conducted research from the perspective of "children interacting with nature". They focus on natural education, outdoor education or nature education activities for children in a certain historical period, such as nature learning sports, summer camps, etc.; Attention was also given to youth organizations, such as Boy Scouts, and case studies were conducted. Scholars root these activities or organizations in different temporal and spatial contexts, analyzing how networks of different factors, such as class, gender, ethnicity, economy, perception, and cultural traditions, act on the connection between children and nature. They pay more attention to carson's "Heart of Wonder" wrote about children's accessible natural objects with natural elements, such as mountains, lakes and seas, park nurseries, etc. The core issue of concern to them is how and why children's natural environment has changed since modern times. Correspondingly, in different historical periods, what is the relationship and interaction between children and nature, what is the impact on children, and how to shape children's views of nature, behavior towards nature, and so on.
In addition to the inheritance and development of the academic level, the writing of the history of children's interaction with nature in environmental history also comes from the strong practical concern of the discipline itself. At the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century, some scholars and educators represented by Richard Love and others noticed the phenomenon of children and nature becoming alienated, and Love even put forward theories such as "the last child in the forest" and "nature deficiency", which had a wide impact. The view, which takes Rachel Carson's death in 1964 as a watershed, suggests that the previous generation of Americans born between 1946 and 1964 "may be the last generation to regard land and rivers as spiritual homes," while those born after 1964 have their childhoods immersed in indoor environments constructed by factors such as cities and electronics, and that "their family and cultural ties to the countryside are disappearing" and "children are denaturing." This is happening not only in the United States, but also in other countries that are experiencing or have become highly urbanized. It has not only attracted widespread attention from the field of environmental education, but also been perceived by a new generation of environmental historians, which has prompted them to look back at the process of urbanization, industrialization, and technology in modern times to explore the reasons for these changes and their specific evolutionary processes.
However, environmental historians' study of the history of children's interactions with nature is much more complex than the relatively linear concerns described above. In 2014, environmental historian Pamela Lenny-Krberg published Nature in Childhood: An Environmental History of American Children's Upbringing Since 1865. In the book, she points out that "the environment shapes children, good and bad, and in turn, children shape the country." This means that the impact of the environment on children is complex and concrete, and it is difficult to use a linear narrative similar to decay or progress theory such as increasing alienation or increasing closeness, and the writing of the relationship between children and nature in environmental history should be rooted in the specific differences in different space-time categories, in order to present the conflict and wrestling, complexity and diversity. The authors also point out that in the face of the general trend of American children's living environment shifting from rural and rural to urban and suburban in the late 19th and mid-20th centuries, "children are not simply experiencing these changes, they are also actively playing a role in the transformation of the country" and "like all people, children live in interaction with their surroundings." This means that environmental historians focus on writing the history of two-way interaction between children and nature, not only paying attention to the complex impact of different natural environments on children's lives and growth, but also paying attention to children's initiative in environmental adaptation, environmental experience, environmental cognition and environmental behavior. This agency is both influenced by adults and at the same time distinguished from adults and has the independent characteristics of children.
In recent years, new works have been continuous. In 2020, Jeffrey M. C. Sanders publishes Destroying Children: Youth, the Environment, and the Postwar American West; In 2022, the first issue of environmental history magazine featured an article by Janet Boland examining the important role children play in saving endangered species, among others. We may be able to glimpse some characteristics and trends from these recent studies. First, in the use of research materials, environmental historians mainly conduct research on first-hand information such as children's natural observation notes and diaries, and strive to deal with the existing problems of "child history without children" mentioned by some scholars to a certain extent from the historical level. Second, from the research perspective, scholars try to explore children's environmental cognition and environmental behavior from the perspective of children's "main position", and write about the differences, autonomy and initiative of children in the process of interacting with nature, which are different from those of adults.
By looking back at some of the representative achievements in recent years, it can be seen that these studies not only expand the academic research horizon of environmental history, but also profoundly respond to the current social reality, and their value is not limited to the field of environmental history. Although the natural environment in which children live today is far from Carson's childhood, it is common that the relationship between people and nature in childhood is related to their attitudes and behaviors toward nature in adulthood, so writing the environmental history of children's interaction with nature is not only about the past of human beings, but also points to the future of human beings.
Guangming Daily (2022-06-13, 14th edition)
Source: Guangming Network - Guangming Daily