SENSITIVE ECOEDUCATION ?
Sensitive eco-education is a model of nature-based education designed to inspire children and adults to return to a simpler way of life aligned with nature, while ensuring the preservation and regeneration of resources for the future. It's a way of seeing, being and thinking that's based on the way nature works, and aims to heal, reconcile and re-enchant the bonds that unite us with nature and living things in all their forms.
The model thus aims at a healthy rehabilitation of the human being in the world and on Earth, in harmony with the various communities (social, plant and animal), which also means a rehabilitation of the child (and its fundamental needs) in the ecosystem.
All this is achieved by developing a deep connection to oneself, to others, to the Earth and to all its inhabitants* through something that may seem very simple: SENSITIVITY.
But why this current craze for "play and learn outdoors" pedagogies, which in these difficult times have found a perfect nest in which to experiment and develop? Because you have to be impressed by the speed with which this approach is multiplying in Quebec and elsewhere in the world. The bottom line is that children are not simply "better" when they play outdoors. It's true that the benefits of nature can be observed in many obvious ways: after a day in nature, children are clearly calmer, more attuned, sleep and eat better, are more creative, more empathetic and even their learning improves. But the positive effects go far beyond these observations.
We're living in a time of unprecedented climatic, political, economic and social challenges, when we're seeing a worrying and similar increase in our children's difficulties (stress, anxiety, difficulties with learning, attention, behavior, emotions, lack of willpower, autism, etc.). What if it's related?
What if the answer to the growing ills of our times, to the difficulties of our children, of society and of the climate, lay in that simple little word: sensitivity?
Without sensitivity, humans stop adapting to changes in their environment. They cease to create, to interact, to do their part in maintaining the balance of the whole.
Without sensitivity, neuronal connections don't develop, and ecosystems collapse. Sensitivity is the missing link that connects both neural and social development, and is only truly possible in deep and radical connection with nature and our senses.
We are in an extremely critical period of history where, for the first time, a single species is responsible for triggering a mass extinction that threatens itself, decimating more than 200 species a day. We have definitely lacked sensitivity, love and conscience somewhere.
The new Sensitive Ecoeducational Approach aims to improve understanding of human needs alongside those of nature, so that we can work TOGETHER to regenerate the systems in which we evolve individually and collectively.
Julie Filiatrault
