CHAPTER 10: The BOOGEY MAN Syndrom

Alright so I am reading THIS book for class, and it is absolutely amazing. It is about how the children of this generation are deprived of nature. It talks about why nature is vital for our health in multiple ways, it goes into detail how we keep them from it and then further explains how/why we justify it. I have to present chapter 10 to my class today by breaking it down into 3 major points and relate/compare it to my life after the summation. I loved this chapter and found it extremely repulsive at the same time. The statistics and information is alarming. I am not a head over heels for stats kinda gal, but one of the professors he quotes from wrote a book called Damn Lies and Statistics, which somehow made me feel like he cared a little more to shed some factual light on a subject. 

Anywho if you ever have the chance to read this book, at least this chapter! It is only about 7 pages long, but let me assure you it is a juicy one. You could read it whole standing in Barnes and Noble people. Here is a piece of my paper I couldn't help but share with you.

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“The greatest danger is sitting in front of the TV, not being outside in the woods. Despite the unreasonable fear of everything outdoors is bad or harmful. That is an absolutist thinking which is not only delusional, but also dangerous.” Much of western society thinks that way though, look at western medicine. There is a pill for everything; there is nothing we can’t fix over the counter (excluding incurable diseases) I am just talking about the common attitude of our society. If the outdoors were to be looked at that way then we would all live in bubbles.  By teaching our children that it is ‘bad’ instead of teaching how to avoid poison oak by teaching them how to identify it, or teaching them what poisonous snakes look like, or how to read signs on the road that say private property, we are setting them up for a painfully fearful life. When in fact it could be a very adventurous well informed life where these skills could be applied instead of left dormant, if they are shared at all. This may be an absolutist way of thinking when I say mistakes in the outdoors are rare. However in my experience the only people to be really hurt outdoors didn’t know any better because they were uneducated. Yes I sympathize with those that fall over waterfalls and are blown off the top of half dome, but I know if they had been realistically informed they probably would not have put themselves at that great a risk to begin with. Another example would be the father from Pennsylvania on page 125 that tells his children to beware of EVERYTHING. That the world is full of crazy, psycho people and that bad exists in everyone. This is an extreme absolutist!

Another strong point he makes is the overall generalized fear created by the media. He starts out by making it crystal clear how potent fear is, and how it is one of the biggest factors that prevent parents from allowing their kids the freedom to play outside. He states that “excessive fear can transform a person and modify behavior permanently; it can change the very structure of the brain.” We all know how palpable young children’s brains are. We are studying to be early childhood educators. Instilling this kind of fear in children can and will cognitively, physically, and psychologically affect them in the long run. They will lose their sense of community, creative/imaginative play, forts will cease to exist, lemon aide stands would dwindle due to the lack of people outside to sell to, and the ability to discern between true danger and beauty would go as well. The stranger danger case was most daunting to me, “The number of children gunned down by a stranger since 1950 has doubled every year”. The fact that this statistic couldn’t possibly be true because if you follow that doubling pattern the supposed number of gunned down children would double the estimated world population by year 1978 should speak for itself! But no, because we show case bad stories on the news, and watch movies centered on psychopathic child killers, people are still afraid to let their children get to know their neighbors. Wouldn’t common sense say make friends, that way there are less strangers out there to kid nap your kids?!

Finally a third point made in this chapter was that people are making nature out to be the bad guy, the boogey man. Not just strangers, or crazy people with guns. The media has exaggerated the few deaths that have occurred in natural parks. When in reality crime rate within parks have been going down since 1990. The murder in Yosemite was done by a human; not a bear, not a tree, not nature. . .