After 18 years focused on metro regions, the Citistates Group has launched a first-ever-in-America experiment: a newspaper series focused on shared strategic issues across a multi-state region.
The New England Futures Project, co-sponsored with a newly-formed New England Partnership of leading civic organizations, will be launched the weekend of October 1-2 with release of the first of six major articles, made available on a monthly basis to all interested New England newspapers and broadcasters. Over 50 newspapers across the six-state region have signed up to receive the series.
THE NEW ENGLAND FUTURES PROJECT – Topic draft, September 2005
Series Title: New England: New Century, New Game
October release: – Six teams — or one? Is New England fated to be an old, cold, blue corner of a red-hot America, too divided (Red Sox-versus-Yankees territory, north versus south) to compete nationally and globally in a perilous 21st century? Or can it bring its enormous human and intellectual talents to bear, six states working collectively to forge joint strategies and a distinctive New England brand for the times?
November: Take the offense on energy. The days of easy-come oil and gas are fast-disappearing. Imagine a coordinated New England-wide strategy to push hard on energy conservation, develop bio-fuels, wind farms, build new “green” buildings and retrofit old ones. Add up the initiatives, link them across six states, and New England could assure its security and keep more dollars at home rather than paying Texans or Saudis. And, it could increase air quality, bolster local agriculture with energy crops, and produce a new wave of jobs for both skilled white collar scientists and blue collar workers.
December: Growth gamble. New England’s losing ground: its population is aging rapidly; its loss of 20-to-34 year olds was twice the U.S. average in the ‘90s. Towns fearful of higher property taxes resist families with school-age kids; some demographers see “slow economic suicide.” Sprawl imperils the region’s world-signature countryside; housing costs soar; local government inefficiency inflates costs. Possible solutions: more family-friendly policies, big pushes for affordable housing, protecting open countryside and channeling development toward old working class cities, state-offered carrots and sticks to cut local government costs.
January: Play a smarter education card. New England, America’s Athens, faces fierce university competition, from Chapel Hill to Bangalore. Tuitions are soaring, attendance is static, public universities undernourished. Why not imagine all New England as one great campus, with a radical new way for students (local or across the world) to tailor their own New England education, in classroom or on-line? And to educate everyone, merge high school and community college efforts to curb dropouts; determine to make knowledge workers of immigrants.
February: Connect to compete. To compete, New England needs border-to-border broadband — soon. And to score, it needs earliest-possible attention to glaring deficiencies in the regional transportation system — roads, rail, air, water and interconnections. A first agenda: Can the six governors galvanize a coalition to save and rebuild the rail connections for the Northeast corridor and all of New England?
March: Health — Consumer as captain. New England prizes the economic jewel of its great teaching hospitals and laboratories. But high tech medicine alone isn’t delivering healthy lives: error rates, system waste, numbers of uninsured people are far too high. Rx: consumers armed with information to share health decisions with their doctors; computer-based scorecards showing which health providers provide best results; heightened focus on public health and healthy lifestyles
Yeah, right . . . set the kids free on their bikes. That’ll be the day I lose memory of why we have Amber Alerts and when I forget that there are sexual predators roaming the streets — some, as it was reported last week by Texas attorney general, under the influence of Medicaid-funded Viagra!
While writers Pierce and Louv tout the advantages of the so-called free-range kids, I doubt if they are thinking of the current, post-9-11 social climate where vigilance is essential for survival.
Neal said it himself that he was thinking way back in the 1940s when biking alone — or with a group of friends — was cool.
Nowadays, you’re suspected of negligence if you let your child out of your sight.
I’ll tell you what I did do when my great-niece visited last weekend. She and I walked to the supermarket. She let me know in no uncertain terms that w-a-l-k is a four-letter word! But it gave us time to smell the honeysuckle — and a skunk. We even gazed at Venus and marveled at its sparkle at such great distance from Earth!
Come on Richard and Neal, get real! The modis operandi for good parenting is to act as if there are predators around the corner. It’s also called risk management.
My two-cents worth . . .
Cheers,
Craig
I understand that fear, and have felt it as a parent. But consider the facts. The number of abductions by strangers has been falling for years, and most abductors are by family members. U.S. children are safer now than they have been at any time since 1975, and violent victimization of children has dropped by more than 38 percent, according to the 2005 Duke University Child Well Being Index. What has increased is round-the-clock news coverage of a few tragedies; such coverage is conditioning families to live in a state of fear.
As I describe in “Last Child in the Woods,” society is sending an unintended message to children: nature is the past, electronics are the future; and the bogeyman lives in the woods. This script is delivered in schools, families, even organizations devoted to the outdoors, and codified into the legal and regulatory structures of many of our communities – effectively banning much of the kind of play that we enjoyed as children. And there is a price to pay for this, in mental, physical and spiritual health.
Ironically, at the very moment when more children than ever before are unplugged from nature, science is finally demonstrating just how important direct contact with the outdoors is to healthy human development. Some of the most intriguing research has been inspired by Harvard University scientist and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Edward O. Wilson’s “biophilia” hypothesis. Wilson defines biophilia as “the urge to affiliate with other forms of life.” He and his colleagues argue that humans have an innate affinity for the natural world, probably a biologically based need integral to our development as individuals. In short, we need experience in nature more than we know.
Most of the new evidence that connects nature to well-being has focused on adults, but during the past decade, scientists have begun to study the impact of nearby nature on child development. For example, environmental psychologists reported in 2003 that that nature in or around the home, or simply a room with a view of a natural landscape, helped protect the psychological well-being of the children. Researchers have also found that children with disabilities gain enhanced body image and positive behavior changes through direct interaction with nature. Studies of outdoor-education programs geared toward troubled youth — especially those diagnosed with mental-health problems — show a clear therapeutic value.
Researchers at the Human-Environment Research Laboratory at the University of Illinois, have discovered that children as young as five showed a significant reduction in the symptoms of Attention-Deficit Disorder when they engaged with nature. Could nature therapy could be a new option for ADD treatment?
In 2002, the California-based State Education and Environmental Roundtable, a national effort to study environment-based education, released a study of schools that use outdoor classrooms and other methods of direct-experience learning; these programs produced student gains in social studies, science, language arts and math; improved standardized test scores and grade-point averages; and enhanced skills in problem-solving, critical thinking and decision-making. On June 6, the American Institutes for Research in Palo Alto, Ca., released similar findings in such programs: reduced discipline and behavior problems; positive gains in conflict resolution; and a deeper understanding of science concepts. In addition, anecdotal evidence suggests that time in natural surroundings stimulates children’s creativity.
People and policy makers who care about children and the future of the environment need to know about such research, but for the most part, they do not. Some school districts are increasing the use of outdoor classrooms, but many more districts are shortening or eliminating recess, and even building schools without playgrounds. Nationally, we see dramatic increases in childhood obesity, attention difficulties and depression. When these issues are discussed at the conference table or the kitchen table, direct childhood experience in nature is seldom mentioned.
But the situation is not hopeless. Across the country, I have met people who are planting the seeds for a nature-child reunion. I am not suggesting that we bring back the free-range childhood of the 1950s. Those days are over. But, we can create safe zones for solitary nature exploration; we can weave nature experiences into our classrooms, and nature therapy into our health-care system; we can create new programs to introduce the young to the outdoors, and expand current ones, such as Portland’s Nature University, sponsored by the Metro Regional Parks and Greenspaces Department. We can also support the green urbanism movement — more active in Oregon than in most states — which rejects the traditional distinction between what is urban and what is natural.
Richard, how do you feel about Scouting as a controlled way to get kids back into nature?
Fred Goodwin
San Antonio, TX
Good question. Scouting can do great things here. Part of a chapter in “Last Child in the Woods” is about Scouting. There are three problems with Scouting (other than the controversy about sexuality). One is the loss of some Scout camps; another is litigious restraints (Girl Scouts are not allowed to climb trees at camp anymore); and third, and most important, Scouts have tried to be everything for everyone. I make the case in the book that Scouting should narrow its focus closer to nature experience; if only from a marketing standpoint, this could be a strong niche, because such experience is now so rare for kids, and many parents do want their kids to have a chance for that.
Richard: thanx for those comments.
I have your book, but I haven’t gotten to your discussion of Scouting. My own childhood experiences track what you’ve written about, and as a parent, I’m guilty of keeping my kids on a short leash.
But we are involved in Scouting, and I try to push them out the door during the summer.
So hopefully they will develop that same sense of wonder that we felt as kids.
Thanx again for writing your book.