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In Noah's Children, Sara Stein introduces us to whittling
with wood and her project to learn how to carve pairs of
animals and people who will inhabit her biblical Noah's ark.
She uses this handiwork metaphorically to take us outdoors
to recall past childhood adventures and experiences with
animals. In this imaginative way, she tells us how childhood
freedom to connect with plants and animals in the wild can
buttress later competencies in childhood and adolescence
including creativity, joyfulness, altruism ("the hallmark of
motherhood") and relationships measured against consistent
moral standards. Stein focuses on how these subtle, sensory
perceptions of the outdoors emerge from 200,000 years of
biological ancestry (e.g., Australopithecus afarensis; the
symbolic mind; language) and related physical
predispositions (e.g., a child's early preference for the
color red; the desire to cuddle with soft, round, furry,
wide-eyed animals).
The author looks through the eyes of children (both boys and
girls), her reflections of childhood, and informed
observations from primate and fossil records to help us
understand how children play, explore, expand, build, and
rule their world like the Monstera genus vine near
Tortuguero. She emphasizes how children get parents to
respond to them, and how they reach out to parents to help
them understand needs for growth, place, connections, and
stability within bounded life spaces.
The author critiques some models of human development, but
goes on to carve out an argument against some current
child-rearing practices, formal schooling, and specific
technological changes that have had unwanted environmental,
developmental, and ultimately cultural consequences. Throughout Noah's Children she explains why we need to fill out our
understanding of the outdoors, wild animals, their
connections with and ecological impact on children,
especially for their physical, social, psychological
identities and formative moral development.
The author believes apparent disruptions within the
ecosystems have disturbed and alienated children which can
lead by adolescence to overt frustration, anger, and
distrust of adults as role models, mentors, and pathfinders.
Here she places the responsibility squarely on parents and
concerned adults to nurture, articulate and lay out clear
ecological, ethical, and authentic role pathways for
children -- paths which offer realistic incentives and
transcendent rewards for becoming more mature, responsible
adults.
This fascinating book brings enjoyment to read, nostalgia to
experience, a tear here, a chuckle and sobering fact there.
When all is said and done, the author presents a broader
look at nature in the wild as necessary to understanding
ultimately moral questions to consider for life in the 21st
century. What human rights AND animals rights should become
ethics to live by daily? What can we achieve and how can we
attain the level of consensus needed to follow these ideals,
if we rarely meet face-to-face to discuss our beliefs,
parenting, and management practices for the maintenance of
all species' lives? How can we reinforce children's
momentous experiences for learning outside the classroom yet
retain the openness, freedom, joy, energy, and desire to
participate in the ecology now and in the near future? This
book is recommended to any one wishing to learn, parent,
teach, care for and consider these questions. What are the
consequences, pro and con, for how we answer them?
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Noah's Children: Restoring the Ecology of Childhood by Sara Stein