Schools in more than 100 countries will take children out of their classrooms today and into the great outdoors for Outdoor Classroom Day.
More than 18,000 schools, including more than 1,400 in the UK, are expected to participate in the initiative, which is designed to encourage pupils to explore and learn from the natural world.
Teachers and schools are encouraged to be creative in using the day not only to enhance pupils’ learning experience, but also to foster a connection to nature in an era when young people are spending more and more of their time indoors.
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A survey carried out by the day’s organisers found that 65% of primary schools globally give pupils less than one hour of playtime a day, despite 97% of teachers agreeing that outdoor playtime during the school day is critical for children to reach their full potential.
Outdoor lesson plans may involve “using natural objects like twigs and stones to do sums, building a den to encourage teamwork, or going on a bug hunt to stimulate curiosity”, says National Geographic.
The movement for outdoor learning is the brainchild of environmental educator Anna Portch, who started the project in 2012 as Empty Classroom Day.
Originally attracting the attention of just a handful of schools in London, by 2016 the concept had spread to 15 countries. With backing from multinational consumer goods giant Unilever, as part of their Dirty Is Good campaign, the initiative went global as Outdoor Classroom Day.
In 2017, more than two million pupils in upwards of 100 countries took part, in schools everywhere from New Zealand to Kenya to Brazil to Saudi Arabia.
The day coincides with numerous reports suggesting that people in the UK, particularly the younger generations, are less engaged with their physical surroundings than ever.
A survey of parents carried out by environmental charity Keep Britain Tidy found that a quarter of British children have never swum in the sea in their home country, “while almost one in five have never set foot on a UK beach”, The Daily Telegraph reports.
In fact, people across the developed world, both young and old, are living the vast majority of their lives indoors. A 2014 World Health Organisation report found that Europeans spend around 90% of their time behind closed doors.
Besides the well-documented health risks of a sedentary lifestyle, spending more of our lives indoors has other noxious effects, says HuffPost, with studies showing that “air inside buildings can be up to five times more polluted than the air outdoors, even in large cities”.
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