In classrooms inside a school building with high walls and cement spaces, young people are surrounded, and their education is limited to indoor activities. They rarely go on educational school trips, such as visiting museums, libraries, or public parks, green spaces, and other places equipped to contain student children.
Research and studies have shown that growing children in nature, and learning in schools surrounded by green spaces, raises their level of intelligence, and makes them more able to absorb and acquire social skills, compared to schoolchildren in cities.
To demonstrate the advantages of this type of education, one can consider how primary school students at Qatar Academy – Al Wakra, one of the Qatar Foundation schools, became fascinated with growing fruits and vegetables just because they participated in a virtual dialogue with a local farm expert who told them about how to grow them, according to an article published on the official website. for Qatar Foundation.
What if schools in Qatar applied the concept of allocating weekly hours for educational trips outside the school walls, to parks, museums and other public places that enrich their knowledge and broaden their perceptions, which reflects positively on the level of their educational attainment?
And speaking of the benefits of learning in nature or among green spaces, studying applied sciences in the open air, and visiting places such as museums, studies and research conducted by specialists in Barcelona on students indicated many advantages, including:
- Develops creativity and helps students to solve obstacles.
It enhances the cognitive abilities of students.
Improves academic performance. In 2005, the American Institute for Research showed that students who studied outdoors and were exposed to experimental, nature-based science improved their scores on science tests by 27 percent.
- Reduces symptoms of attention deficit disorder for those aged five years and over.
- Increased physical activity. Schools that are in the middle of nature or close to it and teach some or most of the lessons in nature, their students are more active and more creative.
- Improves nutrition, as children in nature become more likely to eat vegetables and fruits, and their knowledge of nutrition and nutritious foods increases, and their healthy eating habits are likely to continue throughout their lives.
Improves eyesight. In a 2011 study, the American Academy of Ophthalmology linked spending more time outdoors with lower rates of myopia.
- Improves social relations, as children who spend more time outdoors are smarter, more able to get along with others, and happier as a result of playing outside closed doors in an unorganized manner.
Whatever the temperature, children in Scandinavia spend their day running in the woods or building huts, and some even take naps in outdoor spaces, as outdoor activities are often the main element in school education for young people in northern Europe, according to the agency. "A.F.B".
Lisa Bystrom, a children’s educator, said: "We use pieces of wood to show them that any element in nature can be used to learn mathematics".
Bystrom added: "At school, they would sit at their desks with paper and pen, but we think they can receive information here in a more interesting way.".
Civil life, urban development, and our development plans and projects are witnessing remarkable attention. Should we turn the compass a little bit and pay attention to building the human being and investing in him by developing his capabilities and capabilities by providing a non-traditional educational environment?
This does not, in any way, undermine the role of the formal educational system, but rather works to benefit from all the different learning spaces and assets within any society to support formal learning and motivate students.
