Dear Reader,

Years back, some kindly contractor erected a small deck at the bottom of the bank that runs from Dodge Street down to the river.  It’s a wood-and-iron affair, maybe ten feet on a side, dangling just above the water.  Past either end of it, oaks and maples also dangle just above the water, with a handful of leaves starting to turn autumn colors and fall into the rapids.  There are two benches on the deck. As I write this I am sitting on one of them.

The water moving swiftly over rocks and around little islands is quite loud, but the birds might be louder.  There are perhaps two hundred of them in my field of view, on and above and around the river.  We have ospreys and eagles here, mallards and wood ducks and Canada geese, an occasional blue heron, and a plentitude of gulls.

But a little while ago, as I sat on this bench, laying out some things for and Ink & Echoes piece by G.K. Chesterton, the sounds of water and waterfowl were suddenly drowned out by the arrival of some other wildlife.  A busload of grade-school children unexpectedly joined me on this ten-by-ten deck.  They were accompanied by one teacher, appropriate ratios of parental volunteers, and goodness knows how many phones.

There were apologies from the adults, sorry for crowding and interrupting my work day.  I assured them it was not a problem — it was delightful to see all the children out in nature; and they assured me I needn’t worry — they would “be done in about five minutes.”

Five minutes?

It was not an exaggeration, or not much of one. That’s all these poor kids got. 

For immediately after the last student had descended from the bus and slotted himself into the remaining square-foot of deck space, the teacher perched herself atop the other bench, the one next to mine, and hollered for everyone to turn and look at her.  We turned and looked at her. This meant that the students’ backs were to the river and to the maples and oaks dangling over it and to the two hundred birds. The children faced instead the metal bench the teacher stood upon and Dodge Street in the distance. She then proceeded to show them some images of birds that can be found in this area. “Guys, this is a mallard.”

That was pretty much it.  After the turned-around ornithology lesson, everyone was herded back up the bank, put on the bus, and gone as quickly as they’d come.  It was indeed all wrapped up in about five minutes.  The sound of the rapids and seagulls resumed . . . State Nature Studies Requirement successfully checked off.  

It was a bit sad. But, I suppose, at least these kids had some time out doing something, sort of, in nature. In many schools, immersive “virtual educational worlds” are eclipsing both nature and classrooms (even when physically still in a classroom). It was not so terribly long ago that I was these kids’ age, but things have changed terribly since.

As a child (in institutional school some years and homeschooled in others) I was blessed to have long, timeless passages spent wandering in nature, or drawing the trees and birds I saw, or sitting by a window reading a book.  This sort of thing was part of my education, facilitated by my teachers and parents, and until quite recently part of most people’s education.  If my all-too-brief-field-trip observation is at all indicative, it would seem that trends in schooling at the moment lean toward fast exposure to abstractions of things instead of slow exposure to actual things.  

As it happens, the former is a rather good description of the way modern computer systems are trained: AI models are inhaling digital text and images (of mallards, let’s say) at hyperventilating speed. We are attempting to teach our children in the same way we teach our machines.  Indeed, it is increasingly the machines that are doing the teaching — even when, occasionally, that occurs somewhere outdoors.  We should not be surprised if they teach as they were taught.  The only surprising thing will be if this works out well for anyone (other than the machines).

MRI scans of the brain show that people engaging in rapid digital-information parsing exhibit a storm of activity in the prefrontal cortex, whereas reading a classic novel or sitting and watching (real) birds does not engage the brain in the same manner. By comparison to what we are now all used to, such traditionally paced activities “under-stimulate” the brain.  This can be an uncomfortable state if we are accustomed (a.k.a addicted) to the significant dopamine hit that attends hyper-stimulation.  Thus our minds want to flit from thing to thing.  (The work of Dr. Gloria Mark — corroborated by other researchers — has demonstrated that the average human attention span while looking at screens is down to about forty-seven seconds; perhaps the five-minute field trip was something of an honors class.) Yet it is precisely the state of lower stimulation found in older, slower forms of education and engagement that allows for — indeed is indispensable for — the development of deep thinking, concentration, logical reasoning, comprehension, and peaceful disposition.  And those things are indispensable for the development of culture, democracy, civility, healthy relationships, right worship, and almost everything else worthwhile in human society.

In the piece I was working on when all this happened, Chesterton observes that “in a school to-day the baby has to submit to a system that is younger than himself. The flopping infant of four actually has more experience, and has weathered the world longer, than the dogma to which he is made to submit.” I once heard Chesterton’s great modern advocate, Dale Ahlquist, state it similarly: a first-grader today will have his entire educational paradigm replaced, possibly twice, before he graduates from high school. Accordingly, Mr. Ahlquist has founded a (thriving) network of small, classical schools, named, unsurprisingly, after Chesterton.  Many other such schools are popping up as well, often bursting at the seams. These options are well worth considering and supporting. Meanwhile, some of the more forward- (i.e. backward-) thinking mainstream school systems, having tried intensive tech immersion, are increasingly coming to terms with its deleterious effects on learning and socialization. The large parochial school network in this part of the state has just banned smart phones, a significant and encouraging development. (I am told an immediate effect following such a change is the sudden increase in volume in the cafeteria at lunch time.) Home-based education can also be a brilliant solution, a natural means of retaining and teaching the timeless.

Transmitting truth in a manner that actually works can, of course, be tiring at times. It requires diligence, discipline, and hard work from both teachers and pupils.  But it is good, and it is beautiful, and it is necessary — and it is well within our power and purview.  If, as Chesterton states, education “is only truth in a state of transmission,” then there is little benefit in continuously reinventing the means of transmission, and less benefit in continuously reinventing the meaning of truth.

So I guess I should go round up my own kids and bring them down here to study the trees and the water and all these birds for a (good long) while. Feel free to join us; there’s plenty of room.

Sincerely,