Special Needs
The combination of freedom and responsibility has been particularly beneficial to children who suffer from lack of confidence or whose behaviour is challenging. With high adult:child ratios, children can safely experience activities that are often prohibited, such as climbing trees or lighting fires. The programme allows children to grow in confidence and independence and extend their abilities.
Some children do not perform well in classrooms. They may come from a non-academic family background, may have a short attention span, or may just not be comfortable with the organisation of a teacher standing in front of a group of pupils. Boys in general, prefer to be outside, and learn better in this way.
In a major study in the USA, students with behavioural problems in "Environment as an Integrating Context for Learning" (EIC) programmes caused fewer discipline problems than their traditionally-educated peers. Similarly, Forest schools have been found to help children with additional support needs, including Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and autistic children.
Forest school leaders are trained in activities suitable for children with such behavioural disorders, for example a simplified hide-and-seek game or searching for somewhat natural-looking objects. After an Outward Bound course for young people with autistic-spectrum disorders, substantial improvements were observed. For example one student asked to attend school full-time, where previously he refused any more than one lesson a week. Another exhibited less extreme ADHD and all were able to manage with fewer verbal prompts than beforehand. Cedar Song Nature School runs "Sensory Integration Nature Camps" specifically for autistic children "to combat nature deficit disorder".
Read more about this topic: Forest Schools
Famous quotes containing the word special:
“History repeats itself, but the special call of an art which has passed away is never reproduced. It is as utterly gone out of the world as the song of a destroyed wild bird.”
—Joseph Conrad (1857–1924)
“In this century the writer has carried on a conversation with madness. We might almost say of the twentieth-century writer that he aspires to madness. Some have made it, of course, and they hold special places in our regard. To a writer, madness is a final distillation of self, a final editing down. It’s the drowning out of false voices.”
—Don Delillo (b. 1926)