Last night I was at the inauguration lecture of Pete Higgins to the position of Professor of Outdoor Education at Edinburgh University. Apparently the first such appointment in Europe. His talk was entitled ‘Why Indoors?’ His lecture ranged across what had inspired him to be so passionate about the outdoors, the pedagogy of experiential/outdoors learning and ended on an impassioned plea as to why we should be continuing to push outdoor learnig on its benefits to health, citizenship and inquiry skills.
Ok … so he was preaching to the converted, but he did summarise well the ways that teachers (etatl) should be using ACfE as a vehicle to advance (or at least stop the retreat!) of outdoor learning within schools. I hope I share Pete’s enthusiasm for what outdoors can bring to the learning experience … sadly though, as early as I am into the teaching profession, already at times I find it hard to remain optimistic that the outdoors really are seen as a priority in practice or legislation of mainstream education. But then if your ideal professorial title was to be ‘Professor of Picnics’ then you have to live life as an optimistic kind of guy …
