Why Sterile School Yards Are a Waste

WHEN YOU WERE A CHILD, WAS THERE A SPECIAL PLACE THAT EVOKED wonder, mystery, security? This question was posed by Gary Pennington, an education professor at the University of British Columbia, to two hundred people attending a conference in Vancouver entitled “Learning Grounds— School Naturalization.” After an interval of reflection, someone piped up with “a cherry tree,” starting a torrent of answers: “a ditch,” “a swamp,” “my grandpa’s garden,” “a sand dune,” and on it went. Many of those magical spots no longer exist.

It’s not cities, shopping plazas, or buildings that make Canada an extraordinary land, but the haunting beauty of the Arctic, the endless horizon of grass and sky of the Prairies, rugged mountains and ancient rain forests, and spectacular autumn leafscapes. These are what inspire our art, poetry, dance, and music and evoke the envy of people abroad, who think of Canadians as people of the outdoors.

But now that most of us live in cities, we have been distanced from nature and must make deliberate efforts to experience it. The Vancouver meeting was an attempt to find ways to bring nature into the lives of urban children by focusing on schools, where they spend a large part of their young lives.

When our children were in primary school, Tara and I would organize field trips to the beach when the tide was very low. It was the first time for many of the children to wander the beach, roll over rocks, or dip into tidepools, even though they live in a city whose beachfront is one of its proudest features. Often the children were afraid to put their hands in the water or touch an anemone or crab. But curiosity invariably overcomes reticence, and they were soon immersed in tidepools, reveling in their discoveries.

That’s why school yards are important. They can provide an opportunity to watch the seasons change, observe the succession of plants through the year, and witness the interdependence of insects and plants and birds and soil. Students can see interconnections between air, water, and soil and note the remarkable metamorphosis frogs and insects undergo. In school yards, children can actually grow vegetables and flowers and compost their lunch scraps to learn about the relationship between food and soil.

But school yards are seldom designed for the joy of play and discovery. Instead, they are planned out of fear—fear of litigation, fear of accidents, fear of lurking strangers. These concerns must be addressed, of course, but they should not be the primary determinant of how yards are conceived.

At the meeting, a parks board member told how clover in a school field had been removed because a teacher had complained that children might be stung by a honeybee flying into the classroom. But since honeybees die after stinging, they don’t pursue targets, and children can quickly learn to respect them and avoid interfering with their important work. My children’s school yard was covered over with coarse gravel that caused far more cuts and scrapes than there were stings when there was grass. The soil is now a toxic wasteland, saturated with chemicals that will retard plant growth for years.

An outdoor environment should be a place of delight and joy, a place of surprise and constant stimulation. What could be more enchanting than a pond filled with tadpoles and chirping frogs, trees with low branches to climb, flowering shrubs and edible fruit trees, and fields of wild plants to attract butterflies and beetles? It’s not necessary to sterilize school grounds to avoid allergies, stings, water accidents, and assaults by drunks or perverts.

School land is constantly being taken over for more parking, new portables, sheds for tools, and specialized playing fields. The remaining space should be one of those places children will remember later in life. Right now they are learning that nature is frightening, so we nuke weeds and insects with chemicals; that soil is “dirty,” so we cover it with asphalt or gravel; that wild things are tough and dangerous, so we prefer weak, dependent grass; and that children have little need for or few lessons to learn from nature.

Greening of school yards reflects a change in attitude that is vital in a new relationship with the rest of life on Earth. The Evergreen Foundation is one of the organizations attempting to green urban areas