Originally appears in the Winter 2008-2009 issue
Picture a field guide to mammals that includes a large intelligent primate, Homo sapiens sapiens, the human being. What sort of human would be depicted as a typical member of the species? What would be described as the human habitat? What is the range, diet and behavior of the species? Would humans be classified as an invasive species in some areas and a threatened one in others?
One can see the difficulty in trying to distill a complex species like ours into a few pages in a book. It is a challenge similar to the one countless educators face on a regular basis. As an educator at a science museum, I find myself in the position of trying to design meaningful lessons for an extremely varied human audience. My students can range in age from four to eighteen and encompass a wide range of ethnicities, cultural and socio-economic groups. Sometimes we don’t even speak the same language. For one entrusted with the task of teaching such a diverse bunch of learners about the natural world, the questions become “What method can I use to speak to all of them regardless of their origins and experiences?” and “How can I make what I teach about the natural world relevant?” The answers are relatively simple: bread and butter, fiber and fabric, huts and houses. Or to put it more elementally: food, clothing and shelter. The hypothetical field guide would surely mention that as diverse as we humans are, we are still one species with a common origin and have tendencies and behaviors characteristic of our kind. Food, clothing and shelter are fundamental, universal human needs and, as such, have meaning for all people regardless of background or situation.
Our forebears’ connection with nature was just a matter of course as they went about surviving as other living things do, procuring food and protecting their bodies from the elements. They made use of what nature provided in the places they lived to keep themselves alive. In doing so, our ancestors became knowledgeable about the resources afforded them by their environments because they depended on them for their very existence, as the living things of any habitat do. Our modern, industrialized lifestyle has caused us to lose this connection. While we still depend on what nature provides, it is a fact well-disguised from many modern humans. We have devised systems by which our most basic survival needs are met with very little physical or mental effort on our part. Water flows to us from faucets on demand. Heat and energy stream into our homes with the flip of a switch, allowing us to preserve and prepare our food, keep warm and light our darkness. We have stores filled with food that we don’t have to hunt or harvest, and unlimited amounts of building materials lay waiting for us in neat stacks at the hardware store. The textiles that we depend on to protect our vulnerable hides are ready-made by unknown others. Very few of us would be able to construct the things we regard as necessities, let alone find, identify and process the plants or animals from which they are made. Insulated as we are in these, our human systems, we remain largely unaware of the fact that humans are a part of and dependent on natural systems.
So how do we mend this disconnect for our students? The human systems that allow us to survive almost anywhere on Earth evolved, as we did, within the natural world. Those systems came to be out of necessity because once upon a time humans were just another large animal, albeit one lacking in most of the prerequisite physical adaptations for survival. We don’t have a workable coat of fur, aren’t very fast and don’t have claws or sharp teeth. What allowed our ancestors to thrive and expand across the globe was a complex brain coupled with manual dexterity. What we discovered and refined we passed onto others, building new knowledge onto old, bypassing the risk and effort of individuals having to discover for themselves. This teaching and learning saved time and energy, allowing us to adapt and move forward.
We modern humans are descendants of the fittest of our kind, the ones who imagined and created solutions to our physical shortcomings in the form of weapons, tools, clothing, shelters and the harnessing of the power of fire and animals. Those who were not curious and creative perished, taking their dull genes with them. While we no longer have to supply ourselves with most of our basic needs, making useful things still satisfies what I believe is a natural human impulse that we all share. Yes, I am saying that being creative is an adaptive behavior hard-wired into modern humans and, as such, we get pleasure from engaging in creating and constructing even if it is not necessary for survival. This impulse to create for survival, pleasure and meaning is humans’ natural heritage.
Tapping into humans’ natural heritage benefits the environmental educator in a number of ways. The topics of food, shelter and clothing have universal appeal, and are easily integrated into the curriculum. Human natural heritage activities have real-world relevancy, engage both mind and body, and help students develop an appreciation and understanding of the origins and properties of materials.
So what is a human natural heritage activity? It is any tradition related to the provision of food, clothing or shelter, from bread making to gardening. Our basic needs all originated in wild nature, and despite our degree of separation from our origin, what we eat, wear and build with can all be traced back to it. The vital objective of human natural heritage activities is therefore to take a tradition all the way back to its natural origin so that students can discover how their own lives are connected to the natural world. An obvious application is a project that uses wood. Students should be asked to think about this common, everyday building material. Some example questions are:
- Where does wood come from?
- What kind of tree is it? Where does it grow?
- What does it look like? Why use this type of tree?
- How did the tree become lumber?
- How did humans figure out to use trees to build?
- How would life be different without trees and their wood?
Activities that produce a product or use materials that are familiar allow students to see the evolution of human heritage skills from prehistory to modern times. They can trace the connection from new to old, from known to unknown, from self to ancestor. The sheer distance of these activities from modern life frees the imagination to explore what life was like for the human species when survival depended upon imagination and innovation. While students are all familiar with a food like butter, they may not be familiar with its origins or the process of producing it. Like many modern humans, in all likelihood they have no knowledge of or appreciation for the skills and wisdom that our species has traditionally employed to survive.
Food: Making butter
As many educators know, one way to students’ minds is through their stomachs. Food activities are a surefire way to generate interest, but I believe only part of that interest is in the eating. The other part is in the making of food. Over my twenty-some years of using food-related activities in my teaching, I have watched kids eat or at least try almost anything if they have had a hand in making it themselves. I have seen them willingly and enthusiastically ingest buttermilk, lentils, buffalo meat, bread dough, pine needle tea, dog biscuits and mushrooms. In addition to motivating students, food-making activities can deepen their understanding by engaging mind and body, as well as what I believe to be a human evolutionary affinity for and attraction to making things.
The making of butter is one food activity that has remained a staple in my repertoire. The method never changes, only the application. It is as simple as pouring about 60 milliliters (4 tablespoons) of heavy cream into a small jar with a lid. Screw the lid on and let a pair of kids take turns shaking the jar until the fat coalesces from the cream, resulting in a yellowish butterball sitting in a small amount of watery buttermilk. Have them strain the buttermilk into another container, and then pass around crackers and butter knives and let them enjoy the fruits of their labor. I am always surprised at how many students want to try the buttermilk as well the butter, and even more surprised by how many really like it!
While the science class applications for this activity are many, one of my favorite uses of it was as part of a creative writing exercise for a science fiction writing class. I was having some trouble getting the 11- and 12-year-old students to understand what science fiction is. They felt that they could just make up the “science,” but this made their stories purely fiction, not science fiction. I had the students make the butter, and we discussed the history of butter and the fact that we have no idea who or where it was first made, only that it originated a very long time ago. This became their assignment, to write their version of how humans invented butter. They had to use what they had learned about the science of butter to write a fictional story. We then read our stories aloud and discussed why butter was a good, useful food for people through history. Some of the reasons that they came up with showed great insight: butter doesn’t spill, as milk does, so it travels better; butter tastes good and so adds flavor; butter keeps longer than milk without spoiling.
Clothing: Making felt
The domestication of animals was an innovation that assured human survival in some of the harshest climates in the world. There is some disagreement among experts about which was the first domestic animal, the dog and or the sheep. The sheep was certainly the first domesticated herd animal, vital in many regions for its meat, milk, pelt and wool. Felted wool was the first textile, dating back at least 8,000 years into human history. Making felt is easy, inexpensive and interesting for students of all ages. I have employed feltmaking to teach physics, chemistry, archeology and mammalogy. I have very young children wear a bit of wool in their shoe while we work on some other things. When it comes out later, heat, moisture and friction have transformed it into a piece of felt. Older students can easily make felt balls or sheets of felt in a plastic zip bag using some soap and water.
Materials:
To make zip-bag felt each student will need:
- a handful of wool fleece, also known as “roving” or “top.” The wool from Merino and Corridale sheep breeds are readily available and felt well.
- a plastic zip bag; the size depends on how big you want the felt to be, usually sandwich size. (Freezer bags are tougher and can be reused.)
- hot, cold and warm water
- liquid dish detergent
- towel
Procedure:
- In a sandwich-sized bag put 15 ml (1 tablespoon) of water and a few drops of detergent.
- Place the wool in the bag and push it into a corner. Lay the bag flat, press all the air out and then seal it.
- Using the fingers, work the soapy water into the wool until all the wool is wet. There should be no excess liquid in the bag; if there is, pour it out. If some of the wool is still dry, add a little more water.
- Put the bag on a flat surface and press down on the wool for about 5 minutes. Flip the bag over and repeat the process. This is called pre-felting.
- Take the wool out of the bag and squeeze out the water over the sink. Now press the wool firmly between your palms. Put a bit more soap on your hands to make them slippery and rub and press the wool (keeping it flat) so that it will shrink and felt up. Do this for about 5 minutes.
- After the felt has shrunk and become firm, rinse it in warm water to remove the soap.
- Put the felt piece in a container of hot water for a minute or so, and then into a container of cold water. Squeeze the water out, reshape the felt, blot it with the towel to remove excess water and then allow it to air dry.
Small pieces of felt can be turned into toys, decorations or other useful objects that the kids dream up. More complex projects using overlay and resist techniques can be taken on by middle and high school students to make garments such as mittens, scarves or slippers. A great resource for feltmaking is The Art of Feltmaking by Anne Einset Vickery.
Irrespective of what is being taught using feltmaking, it is important to teach about the animal that provides the wool and about the historical relationship between humans and sheep. I like to get students thinking about that relationship by asking questions like these:
- Why did humans decide that the sheep was a good animal for their needs?
- How did humans discover that felt could be made from wool?
- How would life have been different for humans without sheep?
- How do modern humans use sheep?
Shelter: Making bricks and thatch
While we have engaged students in building real shelters, I have found that constraints of time, space, materials and logistics can become problematic. We have had better luck with building tabletop-sized models. In a class that focused on the ancient Turkish city of Catalhoyuk, the students learned all about the houses unearthed there, how they were constructed and what they were built from. They learned about the marshy plain that the city was built on, which provided the people with mud for bricks and marsh grass for thatching. Students then constructed their own houses, including the mud bricks and thatched roofs they were made of. They finished their houses with authentic details such as plastered walls, under-floor burial chambers, rooftop entrances and other artifacts and features found at the dig site. In the end, we put all the houses together to make a replica of one oldest cities in the world, where humans lived and worked together as a society in a time when most of humanity was still in small nomadic tribes. An activity such as this allows kids to explore another time and place and connect with the ancestry of humanity by imagining themselves to be citizens of a long ago world. In the process, they come to appreciate the skills and knowledge that ancient peoples possessed.
Of course, the most authentic way for kids to experience ancient building techniques is to have them gather their own raw materials from their outdoor surroundings and prepare the building materials themselves. To make thatch for roofing, tall grasses can be picked green in bundles, then folded in half and tied with string or even with twist ties. The loose end of the bundle can be trimmed evenly with scissors. This is done in many types of thatch construction to aid in water drainage. Each bundle serves as a shingle, which is layered with other bundle-shingles on the roof. On a pitched roof, the looped end of the thatch bundle is held in place by a hook or a peg and overlapped by other bundles.
Mud bricks can be shaped and cut by hand or molded in an ice cube tray, removed, and then set in the sun outdoors or in a sunny window for at least a week to dry. Students can experiment by adding grass clippings as wattle (perhaps the trimmings from the thatch) to strengthen the bricks. When constructing with the bricks, mud can be used for mortar and, if appropriate to the project, the walls can be plastered with a thinned mud mortar.
If outdoor harvest isn’t feasible, bricks can be made of clay or clay-based cat litter reconstituted with water. Unraveled twine, raffia, straw or other fiber can function as thatch. Even if students are going to make their models out of shoeboxes, it is valuable for them to have the experience of making a few mud bricks and bundles of thatch, or whatever building materials are used, so they understand what went into making ancient people’s structures.
Another way to downsize the scale of building material projects is to make vessels. In classes where our focus is native trees or early inhabitants of Minnesota, we have made simple birch bark or pine needle baskets. If students cannot collect their own materials outside or go out to see the plant growing wild, some recognizable part of the plant or tree should be brought into the classroom for students to see and handle. When the project is completed, students should be asked to think about the following questions:
- Why would early people have needed such things?
- How many different ways do you think they used them?
- How did they come up with the idea to make them?
- Why did they choose the materials that they did?
To add a bit more cultural perspective, I read or tell Ojibwa stories about how humans learned from plants and animals. Indigenous lore is a very important part of human natural heritage.
Environmental educators need no convincing about the importance of connecting humans to the natural world, but often ignored in teaching is the evolutionary component. Human natural heritage activities focus students’ attention on the human animal, using food, clothing and shelter as the mechanism. This mechanism serves not only to connect us to natural environments but to foster an appreciation of who we are as a species. Somewhere between the opposing perceptions of ourselves as the entitled dominator and the guilt-ridden protector/destroyer of the Earth is the creative, intelligent, communal hominid.
It is my belief that students should be taught about their history as natural creatures just as they are taught about dragonflies and dolphins. They should be guided to discover how our species managed to survive by using our powers of imagination, ingenuity and intellect. A vital part of our natural history is “making things,” and each time students are given the opportunity to relive discoveries made by ancient ancestors, to feel that sense of satisfaction and accomplishment, they experience the kinship of creative problem solvers and take their place in a long line of dexterous thinkers who imagine, discover and create to survive. This is how I believe humans form strong attachments to natural places, other living things and each other.
Resources
Durtschi, Al. “Making Butter,” <http://waltonfeed.com/old/butter.html>. Stories and photos of butter-making methods and equipment used in the past.
NASA. “A House Made of Brick,” in NasaExplores, <www.nasaexplores.com>. Activities and background on the strength of composite building materials such as mud and waddle.
University of Arizona/GLOBE. “From Mud Pies to Bricks,” <www.hwr.arizona.edu/globe/globe3/mud2bricks.html>. Activities and background on the properties of soils as it relates to its suitability as a building material.
Vickrey, Anne Einset. The Art of Feltmaking. Watson-Guptill, 1997.
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Kendra Hunding teaches at the Science Museum of Minnesota and Michael Frome Academy in Woodbury, Minnesota.