Setting children free to explore the natural world.

In it I call for children to spend more time out of the classroom, experiencing our beautiful countryside and nature first hand. The pamphlet followed some worrying new research showing that children in the UK are being increasingly denied the opportunities to go on school visits, excursions and field trips.

Looking into this modern problem, I found that factors such as misplaced concerns over health & safety, fears of litigation, a lack of male teachers to supervise older boys, and an overstuffed curriculum with too much focus on short term tests and targets, are keeping many children cooped up in classrooms away from the important experiences to be found out of doors.

Tackling Climate Change is a challenge that will be as important to the next generation as it is to ours and an early interest in the natural world will lead our children into the subjects and qualifications essential to successfully tackle this problem.

I believe that school trips and hands on contact with nature are a crucial part of that process. But much more than this, chances to explore the countryside, to pond dip or plant seeds are hugely valuable in their own right; to give our children a sense of connection to the world they live in, to help inform a good judgment of risks and to develop independence, leadership and character.

My pamphlet concludes that we ignore at our peril the part that schools can play in instilling both an empathy for the natural world and a greater understanding of the environmental challenges that we will be forced to overcome in future decades.

We need to recognise that the seeds of the vital new skills and environmental knowledge that are developed in our higher education colleges and universities are planted much earlier in life.

Furthermore, in the face of the enormous changes we all face adapting our lives and economy in response to Climate Change, the population as a whole can only benefit from a greater understanding and knowledge of the beauty, the limits and even the harsh realities of the natural world.

The pamphlet is available at http://www.gregorybarker.com/docs/roottobranch.pdf