Why Going Outside Matters
Prior to 2013, the notion that Ridgeview’s students should have experiences outdoors as part of their curriculum would have been regarded as preposterous. When I began at Ridgeview as a teacher in 2007, the school was tightly focused on delivering a rigorous and traditional curriculum at a time when parents felt that district education had failed their children. Ridgeview succeeded in enrolling students because they offered them a “classical education for modern times” while not undermining parental values and authority. Setting aside whether that curriculum was traditional or classical, the educational market, locally and nationally, has changed dramatically over the last twenty-five years.
Education, in general, has always been an ideological battleground. Whether it has been offered in service to the state or a religion, the battle to shape young minds in ways favorably inclined to an idea or outcome has generally been the point of education for a thousand years or more. Offering an education that respects the individual as an end when that individual is a minor is a complicated business.
What has remained true of Ridgeview over its twenty-five years is that it answered this challenge by cultivating the capacity for thought. That sounds simplistic, but teaching a person how to think is rather different from teaching them what to think. Additionally, as Aristotle highlighted, and Mortimer Adler articulated at considerable length, a person is not a mere thinking machine. If this is true, a worthwhile education ministers to the whole person rather than just his mind. In this view of the person, the individual tasked with the student’s welfare must recognize that his physical, mental, intellectual, social, and even spiritual development are interrelated. If we neglect one capacity, we will suffer for it in other aspects of our development. This should be of great concern to us for two reasons. First, we are talking about our children—the lives they have now and the lives they will live out after we are gone. Second, because in our present age, we are witnessing a decline in attention, an explosive growth in mental disorders, an intellectual decline, a decline in civic participation, poorer health, and less happiness. If enriching corporations by having our students obediently sit for lengthy tests in exchange for public funds were going to work, it would have worked. We would by now be reveling in a utopic success. Instead, it has proven to be a poor strategy.
We are born a human being, but we become human. There is an abundance that can and should be learned about being a human being and the world within which humans exist. The reason we employ a classical curriculum is because it is the best sieve for sorting out what is timeless and essential—indeed, what is eternal. There are lessons every person must learn, and it would be folly to assume that our technology or our place in the timeline exempts us from needing to learn these lessons. Similar to what Wittgenstein said of language; namely, that “the limits of my language mean the limits of my world,” the reality for us is that the limits of our knowledge define the extents, both in depth and breadth, of our experiences. The deeper and wider the knowledge, the fuller our experiences in this limited life can be. This invokes a much broader understanding of what an education does than the utilitarian one of college admissions and vocational training—this is an education for life, not merely paying for credentials or earning an income. The reason, incidentally, that it is not traditional, even though we do some traditional things, is that this word is usually a byword for the attempt to program the political ends of youth. Such an objective is at odds with treating the individual as an end and teaching him how to think for himself.
In ministering to the whole person, and providing him the latitude and information to choose his own ends, exposure to nature is as essential to an education as his having acquired the ability to read or to converse.
Children learn about nature in books, in the videos and pictures their teachers show them, in lectures they hear and take notes on, but too few children in America experience it firsthand. That empirical experience is essential. Furthermore, too few children ever come to know the curiosity and wonder that inspired those who did learn about it to bother studying it themselves. Without wonder, awe, and curiosity, or an appreciation for Beauty, we risk exacerbating the apathy too ever present in our youth. I encourage parents to read Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv; but even more, I encourage parents to get outside with their children. Do the thing. Do not over structure it or study it or contemplate it. Do it. Do not underestimate the value of play. Watch your children on one of the elementary trips—whether they are throwing rocks in the river, digging in the dirt, climbing a tree, or watching a squirrel. Meditate for a moment on what they are doing, the seasons of life, and on its finiteness.
We are beyond fortunate to live where we live. We can complain about the ever-expanding numeracy of laws and the ever-shrinking scope of freedom, but our proximity to natural beauty cannot be overstated. We can form up indolent people who go from their homes to their cars to their offices and back again, or we can form up people who avail themselves of where and when they live and are better for it. We choose the latter. It is not purely about recreation, and this enthusiasm for the outdoors is not inconsistent with a classical education. To say that we pursue Truth, Beauty, and Goodness should not relegate us to the library and the museum. It would be foolish to pursue these ends and ignore the bounty of what surrounds us. Moreover, if we want some part of this experience to be available to future generations, responsible stewardship of our natural resources is essential. They are not for some policy wonk to guard from us; that they are common implies that they are a collective responsibility. Those who have not experienced them are unlikely to become good stewards of them.
Climbing mountains is challenging. Mountain biking is challenging. Skinning up a steep slope to go backcountry skiing is challenging. Walking miles and miles across undulating terrain to find points on a map with only a compass is challenging. Setting up camp in four feet of snow in sub-zero temperatures is challenging. Being outdoors can be hard work. Becoming and remaining in good enough physical shape to enjoy the outdoors is hard work. Hard work is a good thing: it builds resilience, confidence, and teaches a person concrete lessons about himself. He learns when he will want to quit, and more importantly, when he will.
We have said we do hard things at Ridgeview. Sometimes the hard thing is finishing Moby Dick or Paradise Lost or Brothers Karamazov, sometimes it is grappling with a mathematical concept or memorizing verb conjugations in another language. Sometimes it is spending the night in a snow cave at negative eighteen, or overcoming your fear of heights on a multipitch climb, or pushing past your claustrophobia and spending five hours in a cave, or suffering through the falls and wrecks inevitable in learning how to ski. Smooth seas never made a skilled sailor. Hard times make us who we are—not our comforts and conveniences. Our activities outdoors are as much a tool for teaching these lessons as is the classroom, the chalkboard, or the seminar table.
There is a difference between being strong and being tough. We know that every human life will be fraught with dangers and challenges. A holistic education involves providing young people with the skills to not only surmount these challenges, but to grow as a result of them. Running around a track, lifting up and putting down heavy objects—becoming gym strong has a place, but it does not make a person tough. Going on despite the blisters, the split finger tips, the aching joints, the burning lungs at elevation—pushing beyond the discomfort, perhaps even the injuries, this is the home of tough. When we praise grit, we are praising the perseverance to push past this in order to achieve. Hike, climb, paddle, swim, run, pedal, push, pull, move, but keep going. Come to understand the difference, as Mrs. Carvalho says, between being “uncomfortable” and being “hurt.” Overcome the too-cool-to-try apathy plaguing youth, and show some backbone, determination, and resolve. Buffeted by a bevy of environmental circumstances, the outdoors conditions and tests young people to be physically and mentally tough in ways the traditional classroom cannot.
Recently, on an outdoor trip, the manager of a venue we were using commented that, “I looked at your website and I’ve spoken with some of your students here. I wish this school had existed for me and my children. I’ve never heard of anyone else doing what you’re doing, and your kids looked me in the eye, shook my hand, and told me thank you. They are nothing like the other children we see.” This, unlike the alternative, is, in so many respects, working—if we allow it to. Allowing it to mean that we accept that school is an activity rather than a place. It means learning occurs in different kinds of environments. It might occur in a classroom, on an athletic field, in a swimming pool, on a mountain lake, or deep in the snow or long into the night. Education is only constrained by the limits we place upon it, and if those constraints are narrower than the human experience, we will have constricted the fullness of our children’s experience and ill-prepared them for the rigors of life.
When complimented and praised for what Ridgeview has become, I have often said that we, parents, board members, administrators, and faculty, have tried to create the kind of school we wished had been available to us. To give better to the next generation than was given to the prior one is a noble thing. It was the reason parents congregated and went to the trouble of founding Ridgeview in the first place. What we do with this inheritance matters tremendously. That we build up students with an attention span capable of listening to one another, politely and civilly engaging with one another, is crucial to their intellectual and social development, but moreover, crucial in sustaining a worthwhile society. That we ensure that they have opportunities to develop their physical and mental health, and then sustain this healthfulness in enjoyable ways throughout the remainder of their lives is among the most humane things we can do for a person. That we give them intellectual breadth and depth, that we help them to build an inner citadel as Marcus Aurelius and Viktor Frankl wrote about, is to bequeath to them a lifelong gift and security, to say nothing of making them more interesting dinner companions. To give them the tools to achieve lasting happiness and virtue should be the real aim of education, and it is Ridgeview’s aim.
We do have a choice though. We can just fold. We can abdicate to the experts who’ve produced such poor results and see our children wither—physically, mentally, intellectually, socially, and spiritually. We should not want this, but millions of parents find it easier than slogging through the messiness of creating worthwhile men and women capable of leading interesting and worthwhile lives. Our version is difficult. It is hard work. But as we say, at Ridgeview we do hard things.
D. Anderson
Headmaster
