school’s out

School’s Out: Lessons from a Forest Kindergarten

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Director, camera, editor:       Lisa Molomot

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In their new book, The App Generation, education professors Howard Gardner and Katie Davis argue that kids today are becoming more risk averse. “Rather than wanting to explore, to try things out by themselves, young people are always pushing to find out exactly what is wanted, when it is wanted, how it will be evaluated, what comes next and where we end up,” they said in a recent Q-and-A.

I don’t mean to romanticize it. And I’m not sure how much time my generation of parents spent wandering unfamiliar terrain either. But we should pause over Gardner and Davis’ underlying concern, about the implications of constantly channeling kids in a predetermined direction. This isn’t just about reliance on technology—it’s also a byproduct of the enormous anxiety parents feel about screwing up. The well-beaten path is easier to justify than the road to who knows where. The straighter and narrower, the better.