We send our children to school for one reason: To learn. To make sure our children have good employment through what they learn at school and college. To make them understand all the worldly things that being at home cannot teach them. Schools are places where students glean knowledge that prepares them to face the real world – which makes it a very important life-lesson. Through books and teachers, students learn about various things and systems of the environment they live in. They learn discipline and obedience. However, there are certain shortcomings of schooling system that cannot be overcome unless students are removed from that environment of strictness…and that is one of the biggest challenges of education.
Education also includes character development, which somehow gets ignored during conventional schooling. While attributes like discipline, obedience and civic manners are religiously taught, traits like confidence, perseverance and versatility are largely overlooked. Nowadays, schools are adopting a vigorously studious regime, cutting down physical activity times to assist students aim at higher academical scores. The challenge of honing a student’s personality has taken the backseat.
The need of the hour is to understand that to achieve the basic objective of schooling – which is to learn – it is important to stimulate the mind and body both to participate equally in gleaning knowledge. Long hours of sitting on a bench trying to understand instructional information leads to lack of attention and drop in retention. The students need to engage themselves in what is being taught, and apply their mental capacity to derive solutions to the problems being presented. Through such active participation only can the efficiency of learning and knowledge retention in students increase.
To tackle this limitation of monotonous, instructional pedagogy, outdoor learning programs have been created. These programs aim to involve students both physically and mentally in activities outdoors, so that required stimulation can be achieved. Trained professionals design activities that push students into applying themselves thoroughly to the tasks at hand, and in the process learn to have confidence on themselves and each other. Outdoor learning programs help the students learn what conventional schooling cannot teach them. While schooling is important in its own right, students also need a sound character to be able to survive in this world.
“Learning through doing” is the best method that can be used to impart long-staying life-lessons – and that is exactly what outdoor learning programs for students do.