Watching Ravens, Contemplating Clouds, and Picking Dandelions IS Education

National Park Service

Ravens are found pretty much everywhere.

Their "success" has to do with their intelligence and adaptability, especially their capacity for working with other species.

Like humans, they are omnivores, although most of their diet is meat. They have been known to hunt smaller animals. They are also notorious nest raiders, making off with both eggs and hatchlings. But their preference is scavenging. If you live in an urban area, you see them around open dumpsters. The ravens in Seattle are well-known for frequenting parks on sunny days which is why you never leave a picnic lunch unattended.

In more recent times, ravens are thought to be nefarious pests. Their flocks are called "unkindnesses" in some places. But throughout most of history, humans have admired ravens. They feature I many mythologies as tricksters and emissaries of the gods. Their presence during a hunt was considered to be a good omen in many indigenous cultures.  

And that's not mere superstition. Ravens commonly hang out around hunters, especially wolves and humans, but also bears, big cats, and other predators. Of course, they're after the spoils, but they are more active than that. They're known for calling out (caw-caw) while "pointing" (wing dips) to indicate where choice prey is hiding. When predators are successful, ravens feast alongside them.

This is an example of one of the most beautiful aspects of nature: symbiotic relationships. Bluestreak cleaner wrasse is a small fish that sets up "cleaning stations" on coral reefs where larger fish queue up for cleaning. Oxpeckers in Africa eat the ticks and other parasites from the skin of large mammals. Antbirds follow columns of army ants in tropical forests feeding on the prey that escapes them. Historian Yuval Noah Harari, in his book Sapiens, makes the case that humans and wheat are in a symbiotic relationship in which the wheat provides us with food, while we, through mass farming, have made it one of the most populous grass species on the planet. In fact, he wonders who domesticated whom.

If you start thinking in this way, it's easy to see symbiosis throughout nature, at every level, involving every living thing. Hence a web of nature based on the principle of you-scratch-my-back-and-I'll-scratch-yours. It's cooperation and mutual benefit. Without the mutual benefit, if one side takes without giving, it becomes parasitism in which either the parasite destroys the host or the host destroys the parasite.

We rightfully worry about what all those screens are doing to this generation of children. I worry about what it's doing to all of us. In the US, Gen Z and younger adults spend, on average, less than five hours a week outdoors, with many avoiding the open sky altogether. Adults aren't much better. We're quickly losing our connection to the natural world, and with it our essential symbiotic relationships. When these ties are broken we suffer physically, emotionally, and psychologically, not just as individuals, but as a species.

Screens are not the disease, but rather the symptom. The real culprit is a society that is hostile to children spending time outdoors at all, let alone in natural spaces. Our schools are largely indoor projects. Inmates in high security prisons get more time outdoors than the average American school child. Our cities, neighborhoods, parks, and playgrounds all require adult supervision, which means that most children cannot choose to be outdoors, but rather must wait for their adults to be both willing and able. The adults can't handle the "begging," so we give them screens.

Increasingly, our role in nature is shifting from that of symbiosis to parasitism. Of course, we aren't capable of destroying the world, so that means the world will have to destroy us. It's a matter of urgency and survival that we return to nature as a species and the place to start is to ditch the screens and open the doors of our preschools. As a matter of public policy, our preschoolers should be spending at least half of their school days outdoors, preferable in actual nature, but at least playgrounds that are gardens, where the stuff of nature (trees, rocks, water) replace standard-issue manufactured equipment. It must be understood that watching ravens, contemplating clouds and picking dandelions is education for the survival of our species.

Children who are hooked on nature instead of screens will "demand" their elementary schools do the same. And from there, who knows what will happen.

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Books have a way of transforming us unlike any other media out there. Be it fiction or non-fiction, a books has the power to fully immerse us into a world in way that makes us come out the other side a changed -- and better -- person. I've put together this list of 16 books that have done that for me. They are intentionally not early childhood books, although each one has, in one way or another, profoundly transformed my work with young children. Maybe you'll find a few new ones here that will do the same for you. To download the list, click here.

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