I watch my little sisters and cousins spend all their free time on the internet, and I cringe, I feel like throwing them outside!

Instead they prefer sitting indoors facing a computer screen, using instant messenger and forming an abstract online identity with Myspace or Facebook. U.S. News & World Report has estimated that youth graduating from schools today have one-third fewer face-to-face conversations than their parents did.

I contend that with the internet as their prevalent “social” activity, and without outdoor play as an activity, youth turn to recreational drugs and alcohol, not knowing how to socialize face-to-face or entertain themselves outside of isolating technology. I just cannot believe that this welding of human and computer will be a sustainable way of life for humanity. We are not robots; we are social creatures who suffer when isolated.

There are schools in America and worldwide recognizing our culture’s over obsession with technology, and how this can be detrimental to the social and personal development of children. These schools are becoming “unplugged”: eliminating or lessening computer dependence in elementary schools. They are refocusing their education on local resources, and the richest resource for firsthand experience: nature. Unplugged schools compensate for the lost face-to-face time in our culture, by both enriching children with nature and bringing in community members as mentors and guests.

For some examples, Lewis and Clark Elementary School in Missoula, Montana, has a “schoolyard habitat”, where the school turned a large section of the playground into a habitat filled with native trees and plants, a rock and butterfly garden. The children of the school are involved in the process, from the original design to studying the history and culture of their region, to designing and helping to build the benches and pathways.

In Europe there is a fast-growing educational movement called forest kindergartens: multi-age, year-round outdoor classrooms which encourage children to foster their imaginations while forming a love and knowledge of nature. The National Wildlife Federation is calling for The Green Hour, a national campaign urging parents to encourage their children to spend at least an hour a day in nature. This is available to all parents and schools, since it is definitely not expensive to plant some seeds, or take in a park or the woods.

This is the No Child Left Inside movement: valuing the outdoors, as oppose to Bush’s No Child Left Behind which values test-taking over anything else. Schools across the nation are tearing up their blacktop and planting interactive children’s gardens in its place. This is a new wave of place-based education and experience, using the local community to enrich schools, both through the community and the natural resources, working to counteract our culture’s infatuation with technology and instead increasing awareness of our communities and the earth we rely on for life. Now I’m going to get myself outside!