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:
“We cannot set aside an hour for discussion with our children and hope that it will be a time of deep encounter. The special moments of intimacy are more likely to happen while baking a cake together, or playing hide and seek, or just sitting in the waiting room of the orthodontist.”
—Neil Kurshan (20th century)
“We agree fully that the mother and unborn child demand special consideration. But so does the soldier and the man maimed in industry. Industrial conditions that are suitable for a stalwart, young, unmarried woman are certainly not equally suitable to the pregnant woman or the mother of young children. Yet “welfare” laws apply to all women alike. Such blanket legislation is as absurd as fixing industrial conditions for men on a basis of their all being wounded soldiers would be.”
—National Woman’s Party, quoted in Everyone Was Brave. As, ch. 8, by William L. O’Neill (1969)