author Richard Louv, “School isn’t supposed to be a polite form of incarceration, but a portal to the wider world” (Louv 226). With this in mind, let us embrace the schoolyard as a land “richly simmered in promise” (Pyle 306) and restore to children their exquisite intimacy with nature: their inheritance, their right.
Ethos
Ultimately, the cognitive, psychological, physiological, and social benefits of natural school grounds are priceless.
important
natural schoolyard design can heal nature deficit disorder by restoring free outdoor play to children’s lives in the developed world.
conclusion
range of places to climb, tunnel, frolic, and sit. Natural elements function as play “equipment”: children can sit on stumps, jump over logs, swing on trees, roll down grassy mounds, and climb on boulders.
Pathos
Studies demonstrate that greener areas foster higher levels of creative play than barren spaces
Logos
A 2001 study by Taylor, Kuo, and Sullivan indicates that green play settings decrease the severity of symptoms in children with ADD. They also combat inactivity in children by diversifying the “play repertoire” and providing for a wider range of physical activity than traditional playgrounds.In the war against childhood obesity, health advocates must add the natural schoolyard to their arsenal.
Logos
he argues, we rob children of the opportunity to develop natural literacy and intimacy through the spontaneous, intuitive experiences with nature that these grounds facilitate.
WHY IT MATTERS
2006 questionnaire-based study of a greening initiative in Toronto found that the naturalization of the school grounds indeed effected a decrease in aggressive actions and disciplinary problems and a corresponding increase in civility and cooperation (Dyment 28). The greened schoolyard offers benefits beyond physical and mental health; it shapes the character and quality of children’s play interactions
LOGOSSSS
nalysis of urban schoolyard landcover in Baltimore, Boston, and Detroit affirms quantitatively what many already know: urban schoolyards are sterile environments with inadequate tree canopy and low biodiversity, dominated by synthetic landcovers such as tarmac, asphalt, and turf grass (S
Logos
cological psychology, or the study of the relationship between individuals and their environment. The concept of affordances, a fundamental of ecological psychology, sheds light on the relationship between children and their geography.
Logos
architect Louise Chawla in her article “Learning to Love the Natural World Enough to Protect It” (see fig. 1). Through encounters with the environment, children progress in cycles of increasing competence and environmental knowledge (Chawla 69)
Ethos
istressing health repercussions, from obesity and attention disorders to depression and decreased cognitive functioning
Pathos
In 2008 journalist Richard Louv articulated the causes and consequences of children’s alienation from nature, dubbing it “nature deficit disorder.”
Ethos
hildren today have substantially less access to nature, less free range, and less time for independent play than previous generations had.
Pathos
When a relationship ends but love remains, it can be both frustrating and embarrassing.
Dessa, a well-known rapper, singer and writer from Minneapolis, knows the feeling well. She'd spent years trying to get over an ex-boyfriend, but she was still stuck on him.
"You're not only suffering," she says, "you're just sort of ridiculous. Discipline and dedication are my strong suits — it really bothered me that, no matter how much effort I tried to expend in trying to solve this problem, I was stuck."
Your Besotted Brain: A Neuroscience Love Song SHOTS - HEALTH NEWS Your Besotted Brain: A Neuroscience Love Song But things changed when Dessa turned to the frontiers of neuroscience for help. She came across a TED Talk by Helen Fisher, a biological anthropologist and visiting research associate at Rutgers University. Using a type of brain scan called functional MRI, or fMRI, Fisher had looked into the brains of love-struck people and noticed that certain parts of their brains were unusually active.
"That you could objectively measure and observe 'love' — that had never occurred to me before," Dessa says.
She wondered: If science could map the sources of love in her brain, could it somehow make that love go away?
The question led her to a controversial therapy technique called neurofeedback.
The idea is simple: If you want to learn to lower your heart rate, it helps to be able to hear your pulse. And if you want to change patterns of brain activity, it might be helpful to be able to see what your brain is up to.
One flavor of neurofeedback therapy uses a technology called electroencephalography (EEG). A cap full of electrical leads picks up brain waves and translates them into visual or audio cues — like shifting colors on a screen or a series of dings.
The idea is that people can use this feedback to retrain those brain waves, changing underlying patterns in the process — turning down unwanted brain activity or turning up regions that are too quiet.
Clinicians have used neurofeedback to try and treat all kinds of mental health issues: anxiety, depression, autism, and ADHD. And they say they've seen some positive results. Patients say they feel better.
The growing popularity of EEG-neurofeedback has been met with skepticism. Some scientists say the power of this therapy may stem from the placebo effect. (They also point out that a lot of neurofeedback research is done by people who have a financial stake in the industry.)
But more rigorous research from the past couple of years supports the idea that, at least in some cases, neurofeedback can be used to train the brain. Most of this research uses fMRI brain scans — not EEG — to peek inside the skull.
Dessa Separates Head From Heart, With A Little Help From Science MUSIC INTERVIEWS Dessa Separates Head From Heart, With A Little Help From Science In one study, participants learned to turn up a brain region linked to motivation and focus. In another, patients with depression were able to alleviate some of their symptoms. But scientists doing this research say there's a lot of work to be done before it can be applied clinically.
Could neurofeedback provide a balm for broken hearts? No research has been done in this area. But that didn't stop Dessa from trying a sort of experiment on herself: nine EEG-neurofeedback sessions aimed at helping her brain escape the rut of romantic obsession.
She says she felt different when she was done.
"Before, I felt that I was really under the thumb of a fixation and a compulsion," she says. "And now it feels like those feelings have been scaled down."
Now, maybe the neurofeedback had worked as practitioners suggest it does. Or maybe, alternatively, Dessa got the therapy she wanted in other ways — by talking through her experiment, by writing about it, by composing songs for her new album.
Or maybe, her neurofeedback sessions helped her via the placebo effect. They suggested that her emotions are grounded in a physical organ — one that she might be able to influence. Maybe simply believing that she wasn't helpless helped her change her mind and heal her heartbreak.
Whatever the reason, Dessa is happy to begin to move on and to start a new chapter with her music.
"I've written a bunch of sad rap bangers — I'd like to write other kinds of songs," she says.