Wonder
Influences are always more complex than we represent them. Baden-Powell, Hahn and
their contemporaries, for example, are widely referred to as militaristic and moralistic as
a way of illustrating some of the influences on outdoor education during the first half of
the twentieth century. These influences are variously thought of as good or bad things.
Military camaraderie is thought to have been a big influence on the youth work value of
associative life now under threat as some would claim from the ascendancy of the
individual and self-reliance, another value often thought to have come into youth work
from military experiences.
Hahn’s moral declines of youth and the working class are also proffered as major
influences on outdoor education. Those from radical perspectives suggest they are
increasingly irrelevant in a pluralist and post-modern world. Others of a more
conservative disposition claim that the needs of our culture recur in cycles and that the
moral declines that energised the social reformers one hundred years ago are increasingly
relevant again today.
One thing is certain, these influences on social reform movements and youth work were
widely influential in the early days of outdoor education, something that was at odds with
the anarchic and escapist values of adventure and recreation though not, perhaps, the post
colonial concept of the expedition also widely used as a source of inspiration in early
models of OE.
Another influence of the time, not so far considered for its influence on outdoor
education, might highlight an aspect of congruence between the wider culture of the day
and the recreational world. It is also a theme that strikes a personal chord in both my
early experiences of outdoor adventure and in the values that underpin my outdoor
leadership practice.
Wonder
A play I listened to recently made a connection between Kenneth Grahame and Theodore
Roosevelt (Teddy and Toad by Jerome Vincent; BBC Radio 4, 3/12/04). Grahame was
portrayed as desperate having lost his passion for writing children’s books and
bemoaning the loss of innocence in the modern adult world. Roosevelt was shown as an
ebullient and playful man still full of the wonder of life and enthusiastically approaching
each day as a surprise. Both men were also portrayed as fathers telling bedtime stories to
their boys. Grahame was creating the first outline of ‘The Wind in the Willows’ for his
rebellious son. Roosevelt was reading Grahame’s earlier work to his dutiful but cheeky
child. Both preferred the time with their respective sons that with their adult roles, The
Bank of England and the president of the USA respectively.
There is a historical link between the two men. Grahame did send copies of his books to
Roosevelt on request and, once persuaded to publish ‘The Wind in the Willows’, it was a
manuscript sent simultaneously to Roosevelt and Roosevelt’s own publisher, Scribner,
that led to the book being published in the USA where it first achieved recognition.
The playwrite surmises that the interest both men had in nature was in some way
connected with their enthusiasm for some of the qualities of childhood persisting into the
adult world. Roosevelt, after an encounter with John Muir, enacted the national parks
legislation in the USA and was thus responsible for protecting vast areas of American
wilderness, claimed that it was essential so that everyone could experience wonder and
learn to value surprise in every day. His eulogy was religious likening the forest to the
cathedral.
Graham, like many authors of the time, reflected a sense of lost innocence in his writing.
Carroll and Alice, Barrie and Peter Pan captured the repressed child trying desperately to
stay a child. Milne and Winnie the Pooh and Grahame both used nature as a place in
which to recapture the innocence of childhood. All mourned the loss of childhood values
in the adult world of the day. Lewis and Tolkein continued this tradition of childhood
values and nature as a source of higher moral ground.
All these authors were regarded for writing books that held meaning for both the child
and the adult reader. All were, and are, popular with both generations leading to
widespread acclaim and large sales.
(Recreation and the inner child)
(Rouseau)
Hahn and the inner child
The link with outdoor education goes further than the common field of nature as a venue
for our exploits. Hahn, commenting on what had been learned at Salem, wrote:
‘The second contribution of Salem deserves the name of a discovery: namely that
the so-called deformity of puberty should not be regarded as a decree of fate. You
can avoid those loutish years, that dim and irritable period when even movements
become sluggish and awkward, you can preserve a child’s strength, the
undefeatable spirit, the joy of movement, the power of compassion, the eager
curiosity – all those treasures of childhood, on one condition: that you kindle on
the threshold of puberty and subsequently sustain the so-called non-poisonous
passions – the zest of building, the craving for adventure, the joy of exploration,
the love of music, painting or writing, the devotion to a skill demanding patience
and care. You can in fact satisfy the primitive longing for mastery, call it the
begetting or creative instinct if you like, and thereby forestall the sexual impulses
from monopolising an adolescent’s emotional life and from seeking insidious
satisfaction.’
Hahn, bemoaning the loss of innocence, seeks to carry the values of childhood forward
across the threshold of puberty at the same time as subverting the emerging ‘begetting
instinct’ to creative energies and thus avoiding the worst of Victorian sins, masturbation.