This article by SF Chronicle Writer Peter Fimrite adds another data point in a growing pool of evidence that technological advancements and economic growth are bringing about a largely unnoticed poverty: For the first time in history a generation of youth will grow up inside of climate controlled buildings and spend more time exploring virtual worlds than the natural world around them. I suppose that it is a matter of perspective, but I find it tragic.
Yosemite may be nice and all, but Tommy Nguyen of San Francisco would much prefer spending his day in front of a new video game or strolling around the mall with his buddies.
What, after all, is a 15-year-old supposed to do in what John Muir called "the grandest of all special temples of nature" without cell phone service?
"I'd rather be at the mall because you can enjoy yourself walking around looking at stuff as opposed to the woods," Nguyen said from the comfort of the Westfield San Francisco Centre mall.
In Yosemite and other parks, he said, furrowing his brow to emphasize the absurdly lopsided comparison, "the only thing you look at is the trees, grass and sky."
The notion of going on a hike, camping, fishing or backpacking is foreign to a growing number of young people in cities and suburbs around the nation, according to several polls and studies.
State and national parks, it seems, are good places for old folks to go, but the consensus among the younger set is that hiking boots aren't cool. Besides, images of nature can be downloaded these days.
It isn't just national forests and wilderness areas that young people are avoiding, according to the experts. Kids these days aren't digging holes, building tree houses, catching frogs or lizards, frolicking by the creek or even throwing dirt clods.
The article goes on to point out what I thought was the greatest irony, that formal education is often prioritized over the informal experiences that natural interaction provides.
Kim Strub, a 46-year-old Mill Valley mother of 13- and 16-year-old girls, said kids these days just don't have the time to get out in nature with all the pressure to get good grades and be accepted into a prestigious college.
"There is probably five times as much homework than there used to be when I was a kid," she said
Here's the irony, a parent can take any national park in the NPS network and easily fill a day learning about history, botany (we just did this last week), anthropology, geology, ornithology, or any number of other topics. Studying these topics in a wild place kick starts the imagination because a child doing this is taking the subject in context.
It seems that we are focusing more on knowledge than imagination. Einstein said that imagination is more important than knowledge. I'm not going to disagree.
A hat tip to the friendly folks at Yosemiteblog.com for brining our attention to this article...