Outdoor learning - forests as educational infrastructure

I recently wondered about the use of forests as educational spaces. When I was in school, the WWF with its attractive panda logo was quite popular. One of their innovations at that time had been a project called the Nature Clubs of India which used a federated model of clubs in schools and zonal centers branches. The branch in Bangalore was run by just a few persons. It included M. K. Srinath who made visits to schools with a few bags of snakes and gave talks on them to school-children. Another person was K. A. Bhojashetty, a remarkable gentleman who had recently retired after having served in the first batch of Indian Forest Service from Independent India. A friend and colleague of his, S. Subbarayalu, who also passed away recently mentioned how he was noted for his regal manners and nicknamed as "Bhojaraja". Bhojashetty passed away recently at the age of 99 (and S. Subbarayalu in June 2023). One of the WWF education officers was my friend S. Karthikeyan who continues to be a involved in outdoors education to this day. I was introduced as early teen into this very intense and lasting experience of what then appeared like "true wilderness" in the wilds of Bandipur. The Bandipur reserve had two dormitories set up for batches of students to stay and our four-day experience was guided by several volunteers. That model of education, with infrastructure support from the forest department, probably went extinct shortly after and it seems like a terrible pity that it did. The Nature Clubs of India experiment was perhaps, in hindsight, an exceptionally successful exercise which produced a number of outdoor educators who are still active. It probably deserves a detailed study if ever someone is interested in the history of outdoor education in India.

K.A. Bhojashetty and others, 2014

I was wondering about the thought process behind construction of the dormitories in Bandipur, clearly someone was more enlightened in the immediate-post-independence period and had decided that education was a key activity for the forest department. Surprisingly there seems to have been little written or known about the people behind this now dead philosophy. The accommodation in most forests in Karnataka today would appear to be today used primarily by party-goers producing noise and garbage and having political connections.

 

As I looked at some other material, I was surprised by the how widely these concepts have been adopted  -  Naturbørnehavens in Denmark, I was recently pointed to similar outdoors natural history education exercises in the former Soviet Union led by a remarkable man named P. A. Manteuffel ("uncle petya" to the youth). And then I found that the Germans had ideas like Waldkindergartens. The US effort seems to have had people like Harold C. Bryant (check this book).

 

Today, forest departments in India are actively involved in keeping away most people out of their land holdings or provide stay options for an older and wealthier audience. In any case there is no official policy that declares forests as learning spaces or actively encourages its use. Perhaps only to be expected.

Some of the most successful and influential zoology, botany, and ecology teachers in Indian universities have made use of outdoor excursions as part of their teaching method.

 

See also this article on forest schools. I recently wrote also on a related theme in a teaching magazine - Teacher Plus.