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Educational Benefits of Wilderness

Two female students with backpacks examine a plant.
Students learn about botany during an extended field trip in the Bob Marshall Wilderness.
Wilderness is a living classroom from which knowledge about ourselves and our world can be learned. Colleges, universities, and youth organizations use wilderness to teach ecosystem stewardship as well as science, literature, art, history, civics, and other subjects. Although wilderness is valuable as an instructional example for education that takes place outside of wilderness, it also provides a setting for experiental learning, including field trips, student research and development of recreation-related skills such as navigation, outdoor-living, scouting, tracking, and survival skills.

Personal Growth and Treatment Programs

Some institutions also use wilderness experiences to facilitate personal growth, therapy, and healing. Personal growth programs, like Outward Bound or WildLink, seek to empower and enlighten participants, while therapy and healing programs, sometimes called wilderness treatment programs, help participants, many of whom are not successful with traditional health services, overcome illness, substance abuse, problematic behaviors and psychological problems. Adolescents and young adults are the most frequent participants in these programs that use combinations of challenge, risk, reward, reflection, self-discovery, group and solo expeditions, and team-building and leadership exercises. A 1998 study found that 38 wilderness treatment programs served an estimated 12,000 clients and generated $143 million annually[1].

Learning a Land Ethic

The educational benefits of wilderness reach beyond achieving personal goals or receiving personal gains as a result of wilderness experiences, however. Students learn how their actions, behaviors and choices affect wilderness and learn values of humility and restraint. Understanding the relationship Americans have shared with wilderness in the past helps students explore our current relationship with wilderness and instills in young stewards an appreciation for land ethics.

References

  1. Russell, K., Hendee, J. C., & Phillips-Miller, D. (2000). How Wilderness Therapy Works: An Examination of the Wilderness Therapy Process to Treat Adolescents with Behaviour Problems and Addictions. In: McCool, S. F., Cole, D. N., Borrie, W. T., & O'Loughlin, J., comps. Wilderness Science in a Time of Change Conference, Vol. 3: Wilderness as a Place of Scientific Inquiry; May 23-27, 1999; Missoula, MT. RMRS-P-15-Vol-3. Ogden, UT: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station, pp. 207-217. Retrieved on August 3, 2009.