NATURAL LEARNING

When I went to school in what must seem like antediluvian times to many, natural history was always on the agenda, either in formal science lessons (when I was eight my school was one of the first to teach science formally and by the time I was thirteen, my next school had a sophisticated lab for atomic science which was very unusual in those days) or through trips, field studies and educative field programmes. Computers and the internet were unheard of, of course, but I vividly remember hands-on lessons in the lab and even being taken out to study the night sky. In later years, though, as an erstwhile science and land-use lecturer, I came to realise from teaching my students that very few of them had had the advantages I had had: they did not know even basic botany let alone the names of most birds and animals – yet they were there to read for a degree in ecology or countryside planning.

Things have improved as natural history has entered the mainstream, thanks to giants in communicating the topic like Sir David Attenborough, Gerald Durrell, Stephen Jay Gould, David Bellamy and many others. But, and it’s a big one, in my view there has been a serious lack of natural history education at schools in recent decades. This is illustrated by the absence of knowledge seen in many adults, through no fault of their own, about the plants, animals, and habitats around them. Even now, amongst children and teenagers, relatively few can name many of even our common wild plants and animals, and scientific names are a complete mystery to them.

I think, and it is a thought that keeps me from too much depression, that we are seeing a sea change. The mooted introduction of a GCSE in Natural History can help to put things right and there is at last a new urgency following the revelations about the terrible losses of wildlife all over the planet, and species extinction. It is a pity it has taken so long and I hope it is not too late. It is up to each and every one of us to illuminate the minds of our friends and our youngsters with the passion, fascination and sheer wonder that the natural world around us holds – a natural world we now know to be so very fragile and vital to our own species’ survival. 

 © Betts Ecology