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Have you ever noticed that it really doesn’t feel like work to forage in a gorgeous forest, identify plants or animals while gardening in your own backyard, or listen to tour guides while you get to simply take in the ever-changing environment? Even reading educational signs throughout a national park or botanical garden feels nothing like sitting in a classroom full of stale air while waiting for your next extraneous scolding from your teacher for zoning out. I don’t mean to hate on classroom environments entirely, as there are obviously significant benefits to schooling as it has come to be done. Still, I do shamelessly feel the need to highlight the extreme differences in classroom versus outdoor environments, as well as the multitude of benefits that correspond with an education that is tied with full sensory immersion, physical involvement in a space, and ever-changing stimuli. Many studies have proven that significant outdoor time and nature immersion drastically improve attention spans, memory retention, mood, brain and body health, emotional regulation abilities, problem-solving skills, and intelligence into adulthood. Some people are already educating their children in these ways, with a higher emphasis on the natural element of learning. These schools include Forest School, Outdoor School, Wilderness Academies, Waldorf School, Farm School, EcoVillage School, Nature-Based Homeschooling, etc. While there are differing learning structures for these types of educational systems, they all have one thing in common — a closer relationship with nature.

At a time when most of the country, if not the world, is struggling with attentional issues due to increased expectations for instant gratification from things like phones and technological devices. 41% of Americans report using the internet almost constantly (62% of Americans aged 16-29), and we all know that the internet is designed to be a manipulative attentional trap. Not to mention individuals who are already neurodivergent and who have conditions such as ADD, ADHD, autism, etc. Immersive nature learning seems to be quite a promising solution. On top of attentional issues, glaring societal problems such as climate science denial, manipulative capitalist marketing and consumer behaviors that cause people to compulsively buy wasteful and toxic items, and anti-science, anti-truth rhetoric make nature-based education vital to the well-being of humanity. Sitting at a desk lacks a real-world component. Nature-based experiential learning, on the other hand, gives students (or ‘learners’) no choice but to confront and ponder the ‘unbelievable’ scientific realities of how the world actually works — and the intrinsic motivation is much easier to summon from these learners since the education has a tone of ‘play’ to it.

While this may seem intuitive, the data proving that experiential nature learning has significant benefits for students and learners are still very surprising and enlightening. For example, a study titled Children’s Attentional Processes in Outdoor and Indoor Environments: The Role of Physiological Self-Regulation found that elementary schoolers were “less distracted from negative emotional materials when presented with green outdoor background stimuli than with indoor classroom backgrounds,” that “when completing a typical attentional task, children showed greater selective and sustained attention in the outdoor green environment than in the indoor classroom environment,” and that “young students can therefore benefit from exposure to nature during a school day when performing tasks that require goal-driven, voluntary selective and sustained attention.” I would go so far as to say that most adults are probably in the exact same boat. Studies have also found that being exposed to natural environments improves working memory, cognitive flexibility, and attentional control, while exposure to urban environments is linked to attention deficits, and that children who lived in neighborhoods with more green space had a reduced risk of many psychiatric disorders later in life, including depression, mood disorders, schizophrenia, eating disorders, and substance use disorder. For those with the lowest levels of green space exposure during childhood, the risk of developing mental illness was 55% higher than for those who grew up with abundant green space. Furthermore, people who had spent at least two recreational hours in nature during the previous week reported significantly greater health and well-being. These are already some staggering statistics in my opinion, and the benefits are quite obvious. I highly encourage you to do further reading and research on this topic if you are interested, and I moreso encourage you to live by these principles in your daily life, community involvement, and politics.

This weekend, I got the chance to drive all the way up to Ashland, Wisconsin to visit my brother Jayden, who is graduating from the first college in the United States to fully integrate an environmental focus with its liberal arts curriculum, Northland College. He is a member of the last class to ever graduate from Northland (2025) due to funding problems, which, in my opinion, is an atrocious reflection of a lack of concern for the environment and genuine education for the sake of learning and making the world a better place in this country. And I witnessed the widespread heartbreak of the students and staff at their graduation ceremony, which featured an Ojibwe ceremonial song, impressive student singers, utterly inspirational speakers, and the graduation of all the students who chose to merge their education with a respect for nature. A bald eagle even flew over the ceremony. I wish nothing but the best for every single one of these students, because I know they will contribute to the improvement of the world for all of us instead of to its destruction.

The rest of our weekend was spent at a cabin in the deep woods of northern Wisconsin, a diverse and magical environment that gives one no choice but to acknowledge the power, diversity, and goodness of protected nature. The sheer quality of Jayden’s education has been stunningly apparent since he began attending Northland. On our family’s hours-long hikes, he not only accurately identifies hundreds of plants and animals, but he also articulately describes the science behind the phenomena we encounter in the backcountry, and he answers our convoluted and difficult questions with ease.

I am mostly a self-taught herbalist and student of the environment, although I have also taken numerous biology and science courses in high school and college; I have spent my entire life poring over books about plants, animals, mushrooms, ethics, and more (often while sitting outside), doing scientifically-controlled experiments on my own, and identifying plants and other organisms with my PictureThis and PictureMushroom app on runs, hikes, and other excursions into nature. However, as any true learner knows, there is always more to learn. The scientific conversations I had with my brother, and the things I learned about growth patterns, differentiating between local species, plant anatomy, etc. were absolutely riveting. While we were fortunate enough to have Jayden act as our tour guide or teacher in this environment that was familiar to him, my point is that real, high-quality learning can take many forms, and they don’t even always result in a clear, school-sanctioned credential that you can put on your resume (I’m talking to you, ‘bosses’, organization managers, and hiring staff — don’t let the really good ones slip away because you’re lazy). Northland was a school that obviously catalyzed its students intellectual, spiritual, physical, social, and emotional well-being in a way I have never seen with an undergraduate university — and no, I didn’t get my degree from there (I did go to Lawrence University, which is also a pioneer in critical thinking skills and very high-quality, holistic education in my opinion).

Making time for outdoor learning and experience is a lifestyle, and it’s one that is proven to make you statistically happier and more intelligent. This benefits not only you, but those around you as well. I hope that our society can take the role of nature in education more seriously, and that we can all recognize that a learning mindset is a continuous state of being and not just an “on or off” thing that happens when you enter the doors of a school. Now get outside and open your mind to the miraculous experiences and educational opportunities (maybe not in the way you’re used to hearing that phrase) you have waiting for you just outside your door!