In 2013 and 2014, biology undergraduates at the University of Oxford were asked to name five species of birds, trees, mammals, butterflies and flowers found wild in the British Isles. That’s biology undergraduates. At Oxford University. Needing to identify only five species. No problem.
Except, of course, it was a big problem. Only 56 per cent of the students could name five species of birds, 54 per cent five species of mammals, 25 per cent five species of wildflowers, 24 per cent five species of trees, and 13 per cent five species of butterflies.
Something is clearly going badly wrong if science undergrads at one of the best universities in the world have such an impoverished knowledge of the natural history on their own doorstep.
Of course, Oxford academics aren’t the only people to have noticed the problem. In his influential book, Last Child in the Woods, Richard Louv reminisced about his childhood in the 1950s, writing that “I knew my woods and my fields; I knew every bend in the creek and dip in the beaten dirt paths. I wandered those woods even in my dreams. A kid today can likely tell you about the Amazon rain forest – but not about the last time he or she explored the woods in solitude, or lay in a field listening to the wind and watching the clouds move.”
It is now widely accepted that children are increasingly suffering from what Louv called Nature Deficit Disorder and what others have called the extinction of experience. This is bad for children and bad for the environment too because, as Sir David Attenborough has said, “no one will protect what they don’t care about, and no one will care about what they have never experienced.”
So what is the solution?
Step forward the new GCSE in Natural History, announced earlier this year with a great fanfare by Nadhim Zahawi, then education secretary, with vocal support from the Natural History Museum, the Zoological Society of London and many other organisations. “One of the most exciting things that has happened in education in the last 30 years” is how Sir Tim Smit, co-founder of the Eden Project, described it.
The introduction of a GCSE in Natural History is very much to be welcomed, but we should not overplay its significance. If environmental science has struggled to establish a foothold in schools, there is no particular reason why Natural History GCSE should fare any better. With the Key Stage 4 curriculum already overcrowded, it is unlikely that many students or schools will sign up for yet another GCSE.
So should we just throw up our hands and accept that our children are doomed to ecological ignorance?
Absolutely not. But we should acknowledge that the answer to our natural history woes lies only partially in the classroom. Andrew Gosler and Stephen Tilling, with whose work at Oxford I began, point out that when asked to name five species of birds, trees, mammals, butterflies and wildflowers, “students who reported teachers as a source of knowledge performed slightly worse than those who did not, but students who reported teachers as their principal source of [natural history knowledge] performed significantly worse.”
Much more significant than teachers was the influence of parents and grandparents. What really matters, Gosler and Tilling suggest, are adults who can spark an interest in the natural world and “continuing interventions” that ensure the spark doesn’t die out when the busyness of life sets in.
That has certainly been my experience. In my early twenties, I lived, taught and studied in the Lake District. Regular field trips in and around the National Park sparked a love of trees, plants and many other aspects of natural history. However, when I moved first to Oxford and then to London, my love of nature faded and all but disappeared. It was my children’s awe and wonder in the face of the world around them that later brought it back to life.
At that moment, I learned, as Rachel Carson had learned before me, that a child’s sense of wonder requires “the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement and mystery of the world we live in”. As a Catholic parent and educator, I recovered my own sense of wonder at God’s creation by enjoying it with my children.
In recent years I have thrown myself into nature journalling and subsequently set up a school nature journalling club. During this last year I have also been able to incorporate a certain amount of outdoor learning into our sixth-form enrichment programme. We look at the local geology. We go in search of and identify wildflowers. I try to spark an interest so that others can fan the flames.
If our children learn to love the natural world, and if we help them sustain that love throughout their secondary education, everything else will fall into place. They will want to preserve the world. They will sign up for the new GCSE in Natural History. You never know, they might even learn to identify five species of birds, trees, mammals, butterflies and wildflowers.
Roy Peachey is an author, a teacher at Woldingham School, and a home educator. His most recent book is A Little Book of British Saints (Isaiah Books, 2022).
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