Annotation+4


 * Full citation? **

No Child Left Outside


 * Where are the author/s located, what are their backgrounds and what kinds of expertise do they have? **

Kaid Benfield


 * List of at least three details or examples from the text that point to something important about culture, education and/or the challenge of environmental sustainability in the United States. **

When Benfield brings up the results of his survey (did you bike/walk to school)--in a single generation Americans have gone from almost exclusively walking and biking to school to hardly any allowing their kids to do this. From the stories I've heard from old folks it seems that walking multiple miles to school in all weather conditions was normal, so why is it that now, when we largely live in urban areas and average not more than a mile from school, students are escorted by their parents? In addition to the worries about abductions and other crimes, I think a lot of it has to do with the change of family structure. I wasn't there, but I feel like in the generation of now-adults, they were part of large families when cars weren't always affordable, so maybe they only had one car per family and weren't able to drive their kids to school. Also the moms were probably exhausted from having so many kids and didn't have time in their day to make sure their kids made it to school safely. Also maybe a little bit of survival of the fittest was implemented--when you have six kids maybe its okay if one goes missing. Just kidding. In todays generation of the minivan mom--where cars are literally designed for shuttling kids--it has become a standard role for a typical parent to drive kids to and from everything--school, sports, music lessons, etc. All this forced activities, and the homework, are stifling kids freedom to cure their own boredom. That and the addictive culture of gaming and Netflix.

32% of kids are overweight--this is an unbelievable number. That is one in three students who will have weight problems. My parents didn't send me to school with two bags of cookies and a diet coke for lunch, but I never really received an education on how to be healthy and what nutrition is. When we were in Tamarac the other week, it was pretty remarkable the variety of snacks that were brought to school. Some students had a bag of apples or cucumbers, while others had nothing but junk food paired with a sugar-filled beverage. Decrease in physical activities and increase in junk food is a bad combination that has only produced a troubling epidemic.

"Without the freedom to play, they will never grow up."--this is an interesting idea. I was part of a generation of over-protective and over-controlling parents in youth, and I wonder how much that has contributed to our personalities as young-adults. I grew up in California so I believe that the culture of youth there is different from east coast culture, so maybe coming to a university with students of many different backgrounds has helped us all evolve out of our younger selves, but the current generation of young adults doesn't have the best reputation--can we blame our parents?


 * What three quotes capture the critical import of the text? **

“'Childhood is, or has been, or ought to be, the great original adventure, a tale of privation, courage, constant vigilance, danger, and sometimes calamity,” Chabon [|wrote in //The New York Review of Books//] , but adults have contrived to provide “a door-to-door, all-encompassing escort service. . . We schedule their encounters for them, driving them to and from one another's houses so they never get a chance to discover the unexplored lands between.'”

"Gray goes on to document that, over that same period of time, mental health in children has declined sharply, as measured by standardized tests that have been essentially unchanged for 50 years. The presence of anxiety disorder and major depression are now five to eight times what they were in the 1950s, and the suicide rate for children under age 15 has quadrupled."

"...empathy has declined and narcissism has risen, because kids no longer learn social skills from unsupervised peer activity outside the school environment"

These three quotes are all about the same thing--that the decreased unsupervised outdoor activities is essentially ruining our children.


 * What is the main argument of the text? **

Benfield is arguing that the educational environment of today, the twelve year journey that is supposed to shape and prepare our youth for adulthood, needs to be less structured and focussed on academic prep (eight years of violin lessons might get you into college but it won't make you a better person) and allow for exploration and freedom that encourages exercise and outdoor activities.


 * Describe at least three ways that the main argument is supported. **

 Benfield addresses the change between generations of adults and the current youth through childhood-they differ dramatically. He provides statistics showing the increase in weight problems and decrease in mental health likely caused by the death of outdoor activities. And the text he provides from Gray which touches on strong ideas about how the freedom of childhood is a necessary and important step in growing up.


 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Georgia,serif;">What parts of the argument did you find most and least persuasive, and why? **

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Georgia,serif;">I really liked this article, I think it was really relevant to my own experiences. I don't think I had quite the media addiction kids have today in our i-Device filled world, but I definitely didn't have the freedom to explore and lack of supervision that our parents did. It has created a culture where students have to be rebellious in order to achieve that freedom, and get punished for it. It's kind of shocking that a woman can even be arrested for child endangerment for letting her kids play outside, whether she was there or not. There are threats in the world but I don't think the proper reaction is to watch our kids every minute of the day.


 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Georgia,serif;">Explain how the argument and evidence in the text relates to our effort to conceptualize, design and deliver EcoEd? **

I think that increased outdoor exposure for children will have a positive result in all the ways discussed in the article, but it also brings kids back to the earth and maybe this will encourage them to care more about our natural world.


 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Georgia,serif;">What additional information has this text compelled you to seek out? (Describe what you learned in a couple of sentences, providing at least two supporting references). **

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> I would like to see the studies done on how over-protective anti-freedom childhood translates into adulthood and how it may cripple people in their adult life, or maybe it has no affect at all.