These two links criticize the movement with rather thin justifications, but you can decide how well they do.
Reason Magazine speaks up (or mocks?) about attempts to get urban kids outdoors.
New Mexican environmental groups suggest a novel way of fighting child obesity: Bus public school students to the under-visited state parks and generally force them outside. It's not clear what magical fat-fighting properties the state parks have, but it's indisputable that busing students around and training teachers to "integrate their lesson plans with existing outdoor educational opportunities like state parks" costs money.It is troublesome that this NM tax proposal may have made the term "No Child Left Inside" a political term, which imho would be a troublesome obstacle to getting kids reconnected to nature. Failed tax proposal aside, it is funny how Reason seems to take this apparently negative stand on solid ways of getting kids outside, especially when I know of a former leader of Reason who seems to have shown solid support in the past for the issue of reconnecting kids to nature.
I had to shake my head with some of what was said here, an "argument" that Reason editor above calls a deft debunk.
Just like the $1.5 million “Kids in the Woods” program proposed by the Forest Service last May, there is no credible evidence for a new “nature deficit disorder” children are claimed to suffer from, or that getting them outside and teaching them about the environment will eradicate childhood obesity or attention deficit disorder.Okey dokey, I think I missed the deft debunk.
