Paul Dayton asked me to post this:
Dear Colleagues, I have enjoyed reading your laments about the loss
of field courses and of course have strong opinions about this
because it really is also the loss of respect for nature herself. We
can't really understand nature without experiencing it and students
can't experience it hiding behind computers in cloistered ivory
towers. Harry Greene and I have written about this:
The importance of Natural Sciences to Conservation, 2003. American
Naturalist (162) and Organisms in Nature as a central focus in
biology 2005, TREE (20)
and Ian Billick and Mary Price have a wonderful book: The Ecology
of Place I urge you to buy and read it.
But the most important challenge I offer those of you who care enough
to comment is to offer a field course yourself. Try it; it takes a
little time but even if you don't know that much, your students will
help teach it for you and soon you will be considered a legendary
naturalist. Don't just complain, offer a field course yourself. It
will evolve and you will learn a lot and have a lot of fun as
well. Finally, ESA has a Natural History Section in need of your
support and enthusiasm as it I think Nature is disappearing within
ESA just as it did in the Amer. Soc. of Naturalists. Once students
lose track of nature and become professors with no understanding or
experience themselves, it is hard to recover the sense of wonder
nature can induce in our science.
Paul Dayton <[email protected]>
