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A review by rjvrtiska
Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv
4.0
Review by an American living in Sweden: I say this since Swedish studies and Swedish society are so heavily referenced in the book. This makes sense because children and nature are handled so differently in the 2 cultures.
Here’s one quick example: In 2014 and 2015 we spent the Fall term in Sweden and the Spring term in the US with our young children. My son was in 1st and 2nd grades. His Swedish school, in a tiny village surrounded by farmland, had 8 rules. One of them was “we don’t throw snowballs at people.” His American school, in suburban sprawl outside Pittsburgh, had 7 pages of rules. These included things like: The grove of trees is off limits - no climbing the trees, students must stay on the blacktop when there’s snow on the ground, and a dress code rule banning pants with holes in them.
In the Swedish school, my 6-7 year old son ran around during recess (almost half of his 5 hour day) in a small forest area, on boulders, and happily shredded his pant legs regularly with all his classmates. Every Friday they spent the entire day in a larger forest area in all weathers.
In the American school he had 20 minutes of recess (during a 7 hour day) on a paved court or wood-chipped playground. If it rained or the temperature was below freezing, they played board games quietly at their desks.
Sweden isn’t an outdoor utopia. The emphasis on getting kids out of the classroom and into nature competes with the Swedish school system’s recent goal of making Swedish students the most digitally literate in the world. Putting ipads into the hands of 6 year olds every school day, and requiring preschools to expose children to screens regularly from 1 year old flies directly in the face of the primacy of their outdoor attachment education. This happened before the Covid pandemic forced other nations to similarly equip their students.
While my children are exposed to nature exponentially more in Sweden than they would have been in the US, I feel like screens were also forced into our family life sooner and more frequently than I was ready for. I fear this is the last generation of Swedes to choose forest bathing (skogsbad - one of my favorite Swedish concepts) over screen surfing, unless the imbalance is addressed.
Here’s one quick example: In 2014 and 2015 we spent the Fall term in Sweden and the Spring term in the US with our young children. My son was in 1st and 2nd grades. His Swedish school, in a tiny village surrounded by farmland, had 8 rules. One of them was “we don’t throw snowballs at people.” His American school, in suburban sprawl outside Pittsburgh, had 7 pages of rules. These included things like: The grove of trees is off limits - no climbing the trees, students must stay on the blacktop when there’s snow on the ground, and a dress code rule banning pants with holes in them.
In the Swedish school, my 6-7 year old son ran around during recess (almost half of his 5 hour day) in a small forest area, on boulders, and happily shredded his pant legs regularly with all his classmates. Every Friday they spent the entire day in a larger forest area in all weathers.
In the American school he had 20 minutes of recess (during a 7 hour day) on a paved court or wood-chipped playground. If it rained or the temperature was below freezing, they played board games quietly at their desks.
Sweden isn’t an outdoor utopia. The emphasis on getting kids out of the classroom and into nature competes with the Swedish school system’s recent goal of making Swedish students the most digitally literate in the world. Putting ipads into the hands of 6 year olds every school day, and requiring preschools to expose children to screens regularly from 1 year old flies directly in the face of the primacy of their outdoor attachment education. This happened before the Covid pandemic forced other nations to similarly equip their students.
While my children are exposed to nature exponentially more in Sweden than they would have been in the US, I feel like screens were also forced into our family life sooner and more frequently than I was ready for. I fear this is the last generation of Swedes to choose forest bathing (skogsbad - one of my favorite Swedish concepts) over screen surfing, unless the imbalance is addressed.