How can we help children experience plants differently before we teach them that they are insignificant?
This heavy question is rooted in the sobering reality that adults teach children how to think about plants and how to treat them.
In Where did you go? The forest. What did you see? Nothing., Lynda H. Schneekloth discusses how adults send conflicting messages about plants to children and how the dominant message to children is that vegetation can be categorized as “nothing” (Schneekloth, 1989). Examples of conflicting messages adults send to children are “vegetables are good for you, eat them…we need to build something here, bulldoze the trees” (Schneekloth, 1989).
How did vegetation become so invisible?
Schneekloth (1989) presents three factors contributing to the unfortunate status of plants in our society. She explains that plants make up too much of the background. Because there are so many plants, they have suffered the fate of any element, when in abundance, that forms a background. Because they are the background, plants make what is different appear to be more important (Schneekloth, 1989).
Also contributing to the problem of visibility is how people experience plants in their real lives compared to what we know about them at the scientific level. Regardless of how we’ve come to know plants scientifically, in our real lives plants exist only to serve us (Schneekloth, 1989). This reality contributes directly to the the third issue making plants invisible and this issue is, it’s all about us.
Because we have come to know plants so well through research, Schneekloth (1989) says this has created a feeling of superiority that prevents us from seeing the extent to which we are dependent upon plants. She explains that our ability to make plants grow and appear in ways that suit us has created a “false sense of security” (Schneekloth, 1989) and has left us feeling in control of our world.
With plants existing only in the background and with our anthropormorphic view of the world, how are plants perceived by humans?
Schneekloth investigated this by asking two groups of people (environmental educators and grad students studying architecture) to draw a picture of “an experience, place or activity” (Schneekloth, 1989) that was key to their forming a relationship with nature. The details of her study can be reviewed in her paper. The big takeaway from her investigation is this — when people drew their nature experience, they placed humans in a scene with vegetation; when they talked about their experience, the actions taken by humans was the focus. Schneekloth (1989) observed that drawing gave plants a presence, while language rendered plants invisible. She observed that in a drawing, plants are “something” (Schneekloth, 1989) because they are given form.
There is much more to learn from Schneekloth in her article about the value of vegetation. Look for the journal Children’s Environments Quarterly at your local college library.
So let’s get back to that big question…
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How can we help children experience plants differently before we teach them that they are insignificant?
Share your thoughts in the comment box below.
Literature Cited
Schneekloth, Lynda H. 1989. Where did you go? The forest. What did you see? Nothing. Children’s Environments Quarterly. 6(1):14-17
Related
Children’s books cited by Schneekloth that give plants a foreground presence:
- The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery, translated by Richard Howard (2000)
- The Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkein (1965)
- A Wind in the Door by Madelaine L’Engle (1973)
ArtPlantae Today 
Depending on the age of the child, we connect the children to growing food plants and/or flowers. In the late fall we look for amaryllis bulbs for the kids to grow and observe. We also talk about the connections between pollinators and plants being a vital part of the food we eat. When they develop a relationship of care for a plant, they start to look at them differently.
Me thinketh it is one’s background that give the back ground on how a child and eventually adults think about plants. LIke I grew up with an agricultural back ground so we protected the plants except for the weeds – so I have ended up being a botanical artist. Also, your parents play a big role in how you relate to plants – I had a father who loved them and knew the names of all he saw – which was an eye opener to me and has stuck with me.
Good point, Rita. I grew up with bonsai, orchids, plums, apricots and lots of plants in the yard. Plus a very large stump to a very large eucalyptus tree that had to be cut down. It was something to climb, although in reality it was only a couple of steps up. But it was something to sit on and it made you really dirty.
I am a plant physiologist turned educator and, as such, I have a number of opinions on this: 1) most teachers do not have a full understanding of plants and how they work and so when they teach about plants, they gloss over them; we need to provide classroom teachers with some interesting ideas for how to teach kids about plants- most easily- have them grow things! It is cheap and easy 2) I agree with Rita. I was outside always; our students should be too- tasking students with finding and labeling plants is the best way to get them to ‘see’ them. Our learning needs to appeal to all the senses- the study mentioned above is interesting because if you ask a child what they hear outside or smell outside- plants! 3) We cant live without plants- I think that needs to be hammered home. No way around it. Oxygen, Food, Shelter… 4) Plants are cool- we need to share those things with students- Venus Fly traps, Resurrection plants 5) Catch them young- I used to go in to the local kindergarten and do the experiment with potato seedlings and light- the fact that they are phototropic, so they will grow through mazes, etc. Hm. Now that I look at it- I guess it all goes back to 1 & 2. Thanks for bringing up the topic.
Thank you, Cate, for sharing your experiences and for your comments. Much appreciated.
Where I work we’ve had the problem of how to get children to see plants better too.
I drew some leaf outlines as line drawings on cards and then stood in a meadow with a class of schoolchildren, handed them each a card, and then asked them to find a plant with the same shaped leaf. (I should add here that there was a path through the meadow and they weren’t allowed to leave the path). When they thought they had found it they had to put their hand up and ask me to check whether they were correct. They loved it because it was like a treasure hunt and they got lots of praise when they got it right. I loved it because I drew some leaves twice the size to make it a bit more difficult and when they complained I was able to say (smugly) that I only said to look for the same shape, I didn’t say the same size and anyway I never said it would be easy (I always say this whilst laughing and they are always happy about it (once they’ve rolled their eyes) and set out determined to find the plant).
We didn’t bother with plant names for that exercise unless the child asked; the idea was just to get them to notice leaf shapes in a fun way.
I also so agree with Cate about teachers knowing very little about plants. In the UK this is improving a bit now because there is lots of advice and grants for schools to have vegetable plots and growing food has become a fashionable thing to do. Some schools now employ people (part time) to work with the children just on growing food in the school grounds.
Thanks, Martin. Now that sounds like a fun activity!
Im a marine zoologist by training but spent a lot of time in tropical rainforests and karst forests getting kids (and elementary teachers) to think plants are amazing and cool. I agree with the proposals for more in school gardens (and more generally more interacting with living plants both in and outside the classroom). But fundamentally the challenge is how do we make the plants biggest ecological and evolutionary contributions understandable to kids, when we are talking about largely invisible processes (photosynthesis, respiration, transpiration, etc). The most important and basic aspects of these processes – that gas exchanges and the carbon fixation pieces, just don’t sink in. I’ve found that characterizing the gas parts in a funny (yet ecologically correct way) goes a long way in correcting common misconceptions and making it very cool to kids. My favorite one is to describe O2 as “plant poop” and discuss the entire process of accumulation of o2 in our atmosphere as “crap accumulating” on a massive scale, more crap than any living organism has ever released, forever altering the chemical composition of the atmosphere and allowing for the evolution of multicellular animals. Likewise we breath “plant poop” every time we breath. And the 02 helps us burn sugars more efficiently, etc.etc. Thinking of the o2 in photosynthesis as plant poop (you can use the terms excrement or waste or byproduct later, but poop or crap works best as it forces the kids to think of gases in a very different way and these are words they are familiar with and rarely used) dramatically alters the gut understanding of our relationship to plants – and makes photosynthesis (and plants) it funny and memorable to kids.
That’s brilliant! It makes me want to teach photosynthesis just so I can legitimately say “crap accumulating on a massive scale” with a straight face and mean it. I’m now thinking about how I can shoe-horn it into some botanical art teaching….
Thank you for sharing!