Richard Louv | |
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Born | 1949 (age 74–75) |
Occupation(s) | Author, journalist |
Notable work | Last Child in the Woods |
Awards | Honorable John C. Pritzlaff Conservation Award (2020) [1] |
Richard Louv (born 1949) is an American non-fiction author and journalist. He is best known for his seventh book, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder (first published in 2005 by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill), which investigates the relationship of children and the natural world in current and historical contexts. [2] Louv created the term "nature-deficit disorder" to describe possible negative consequences to individual health and the social fabric as children move indoors and away from physical contact with the natural world – particularly unstructured, solitary experience. [3] Louv cites research pointing to attention disorders, obesity, a dampening of creativity and depression as problems associated with a nature-deficient childhood. He amassed information on the subject from practitioners of many disciplines to make his case and is commonly credited with helping to inspire an international movement to reintroduce children to nature.
Louv was a columnist for The San Diego Union-Tribune newspaper between 1984 and 2007, its last column titled "The Future’s Edge." His essays discuss the division of nature and humanity. [4] He has been a columnist and member of the editorial advisory board for Parents magazine and a Ford Foundation Leadership for a Changing World [5] award program adviser. He also was an adviser for the National Scientific Council on the Developing Child. [6] He currently is honorary co-chair of The National Forum on Children and Nature The National Forum on Children and Nature | The Conservation Fund, which is co-chaired by four state governors, a visiting scholar at Clemson University, and chairman and co-founder of the Children & Nature Network, [7] a non-profit organization.
In 2008, the National Audubon Society awarded Louv its highest honor, the Audubon Medal. [8] He was the 2007 recipient of Clemson University's Cox Award for "sustained achievement in public service.". [9] In 2008, he received the Paul K. Petzoldt Award from the Wilderness Education Association. [10] The U.S. Department of the Interior, and associations such as the Sierra Club, The Trust for Public Land, and The Nature Conservancy, have cited Louv's book.
Thomas Eugene Lovejoy III was an American ecologist who was President of the Amazon Biodiversity Center, a Senior Fellow at the United Nations Foundation and a university professor in the Environmental Science and Policy department at George Mason University. Lovejoy was the World Bank's chief biodiversity advisor and the lead specialist for environment for Latin America and the Caribbean as well as senior advisor to the president of the United Nations Foundation. In 2008, he also was the first Biodiversity Chair of the H. John Heinz III Center for Science, Economics and the Environment to 2013. Previously he served as president of the Heinz Center since May 2002. Lovejoy introduced the term biological diversity to the scientific community in 1980. He was a past chair of the Scientific Technical Advisory Panel (STAP) for the Global Environment Facility (GEF), the multibillion-dollar funding mechanism for developing countries in support of their obligations under international environmental conventions.
Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by executive dysfunction occasioning symptoms of inattention, hyperactivity, impulsivity and emotional dysregulation that are excessive and pervasive, impairing in multiple contexts, and developmentally-inappropriate.
Donald Culross Peattie was an American botanist, naturalist and author. He was described by Joseph Wood Krutch as "perhaps the most widely read of all contemporary American nature writers" during his heyday. His brother, Roderick Peattie (1891–1955), was a geographer and a noted author in his own right. Some have said that Peattie's views on race may be considered regressive, but that expressions of these views are "mercifully brief and hardly malicious".
Robert McLellan Bateman is a Canadian naturalist and painter, born in Toronto, Ontario.
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Forest school is an outdoor education delivery model in which students visit natural spaces to learn personal, social and technical skills. It has been defined as "an inspirational process that offers children, young people and adults regular opportunities to achieve and develop confidence through hands-on learning in a woodland environment". Forest school is both a pedagogy and a physical entity, with the use often being interchanged. The plural "schools" is often used when referring to a number of groups or sessions.
Russell Alan BarkleyFAPA is a retired American clinical neuropsychologist who was a clinical professor of psychiatry at the VCU Medical Center until 2022 and president of Division 12 of the American Psychological Association (APA) and of the International Society for Research in Child and Adolescent Psychopathology. Involved in research since 1973 and a licensed psychologist since 1977, he is an expert on attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and has devoted much of his scientific career to studying ADHD and related fields like childhood defiance. He proposed the renaming of sluggish cognitive tempo (SCT) to cognitive disengagement syndrome (CDS).
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Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder is a 2005 book by author Richard Louv that documents decreased exposure of children to nature in American society and how this "nature-deficit disorder" harms children and society. The author also suggests solutions to the problems he describes. A revised and expanded edition was published in 2008.
Joseph Biederman was an American academic psychiatrist. He was Chief of the Clinical and Research Programs in Pediatric Psychopharmacology and Adult ADHD at the Massachusetts General Hospital and a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.
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The reasonable person model (RPM) is a psychological framework which argues that people are at their best when their informational needs are met. Positing that unreasonableness is not a human trait, but rather the result of environment, the RPM attempts to define the environments/actions that foster reasonableness, defining three key areas that assist with this: model building, being effective, and meaningful action.
Blanche Evans Dean was an American naturalist, conservationist and schoolteacher.
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