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“It is said that kids today can identify over 1,000 corporate logos, but most can’t even identify 10 trees that grow in their area.”
Deep and sonorous, Robert Bateman’s distinctive voice is roaring over the telephone line: “My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
After a few more lines of verse from the works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, the world-renowned wildlife painter and environmentalist starts to explain the value of memorization and rote learning; something he feels is undervalued in today’s classrooms.
“It really works and I think we should do this to make our kids civilized,” the 79-year-old says from his home on B.C.’s Saltspring Island. “These days, kids’ idea of the world is based on what they see on Facebook and what they read in People magazine. We’re breaking the chain of the great heritage of humanity.”
And he speaks from experience. Long before his art became prized, before being made an Officer of the Order of Canada, before his fame as a conservationist brought him international invitations to lecture, Robert Bateman was an educator.
His teaching career started in Ontario in 1955, with a focus on geography and art which often saw him taking his students into the field to draw and paint from life.
“Even though it was an art course,” he says. “I forced kids to learn their birds before I’d take them into the wild—and the bird songs, too. I would review and review and review, and then quiz them.”
When he taught art history Bateman lectured rather than asked his students to write essays or offer opinions.
“I think it’s useless to ask students what they think of Van Gogh’s use of colour. I’d lecture with slides and I’d make my lectures as interesting as possible. I’d make the stories full of sex and violence and other stuff teenagers have an affinity for.”
Apparently his approach worked. Years later Bateman received a postcard from one of his past students. The card read: “Dear Mr. Bateman, I am in Madrid. I’ve been to the Prado art gallery and I couldn’t agree with you more about the lower left corner of Frau Angelico’s Annunciation.”
This brand of rote learning forms one quarter of what Bateman calls his “revolutionary model for education.” Developed over the two decades that he taught high school, the model is inspired by Ivan Illich’s Deschooling Society; “get rid of the four walls concept both physically and psychologically,” and would have students spending at least half of their time out in the world.
One portion of that time would be spent in outdoor adventure activities—hiking, canoeing, camping—in groups of 10 to 20 led by one or two excellent role models. This, says Bateman, would help fulfill the human need to form gangs, bands, or troops.
“In outdoor education you not only learn about nature, you learn about yourself, your limits and your relationship with others,” he explains. “I’ve seen the transformation of a troublesome, anti-social youth into a cooperative, self-confident one within one week.”
The other portion of the “out in the world” time would provide the exact opposite sort of experience. In it Bateman says students would gain knowledge of the real world through being “an isolated kid in an adult world.”
“They don’t know what’s it’s like to work in an office. They may say they want to be a commercial artist but they have no idea that you have to start off doing all this boring stuff.”
To remedy that Bateman’s model would have students spending a quarter of their time as low-level helpers in offices, factories and similar environments, operating as apprentices and learning on the job.
“It would be a wake-up call for the kids. They would learn a bit of what it’s like to be grown up.”
The third quarter of Bateman’s model is based on what he calls a guru system. Students with a common area of interest would be paired with a guru, or expert, in that field of interest and through observation would learn whatever they could.
“Cultures have done this all through the ages and it’s a very very effective way of teaching and learning. You’re learning what you love.”
But it is the final quarter, learning by rote, which is the one Bateman says is dearest to his heart. It is through rote learning, he says, that our children remain in touch with their natural and human heritage.
“Our schools got contaminated by the Me generation way of thinking,” he says, explaining that asking students to give opinions promotes self-indulgence, which in turn leads to entitlement. Instead, Bateman says students should be lectured and given facts, on which they are quizzed.
He believes very strongly that by changing the way we educate our children we strengthen our chances of saving our world.
“It is said that kids today can identify over 1,000 corporate logos but most can’t even identify 10 trees that grow in their area. Kids know way more about the Amazon rainforest than they know about the plight of the woodlot at the end of the street and I think that’s shameful.”
He quotes Senagalese poet Baba Dioum who wrote, “In the end we will conserve only what we love. We will love only what we understand. We will understand only what we are taught,” and adds that kids should to be taught to fall in love with the creatures that live around them.
To that end, and because he just can’t stop himself from teaching, Bateman launched his “Get to Know” program a decade ago. Aimed at children, adults and educators, the program is designed to get kids outdoors, help them to reconnect with nature and inspire them to become actively involved in preserving our world’s well-being. Though his life has been spent immersed in nature, and his travels have taken him from the rainforests of the Congo to the Antarctic, Bateman insists that his most memorable experiences came as a young student of nature. Bateman says, “None of these spectacular experiences has been any more enchanting than the nature I discovered as a young boy in the ravine below our backyard.”