Are there any private all-boys[1] schools that embrace this side of childhood? Look at tiger cubs and what not: they play, they bounce around, they fight, they figure out the world around them through investigation and exploration.
I spent so much of my time outside as a kid, but I also spent a lot of time inside on the computer. Both were amazing worlds where your imagination could run wild; especially in the early days of computers and the internet... being a part of a "wild west" frontier at the age of 10 was a special privilege.
My point is that learning and running around in the mud are both very valuable and can be balanced to create well-rounded people who have confidence with technology and the outdoors.
Has any institution figured out how to balance these two in a formal curriculum? Spend half the day exploring the woods and classifying wildflowers, the other half back inside working with math formulae and reading lessons.
Some might say there's not enough time in the day to spend half of it outside, but I disagree. The kids will be more efficient in their inside learning time if they've spent half the day learning outside.
[1] I'm not saying that girls wouldn't appreciate the same type of learning. I suspect that in an environment that harvests the physical energy (horseplay, outdoors activities) of boys to improve learning, even in a positive and productive manner, might alienate some young girls who might feel uncomfortable, so perhaps it's better to separate the genders in this sort of environment?
The Montessori approach has some similarities to what you propose, and is probably about as close as you can get in current American education. Not outdoors or all-boys, but otherwise it's structured largely as you propose, with time divided between direct instruction in academic subjects and free-form exploration. Kids are free to roam the classroom and pick up whatever educational materials catch their curiosity: maps, books, geometric and mathematical materials, puzzles, and lots of other good stuff.
I attended a Montessori preschool and kindergarten, in the early 1980s. I'd wholeheartedly recommend it. (There's no formal definition or central authority, so schools and approaches will vary, but mine was excellent.) The open environment of creativity really helped my early intellectual development. I was reading everything, had most of the countries on the globe memorized, and knew squares and cubes up to 10 all by about age five, all thanks to the ready accessibility of all that stuff according to my own interests rather than being forced and tested all the time.
Yeah, the more I read about this stuff as well as our excellent public education system, the more I realize I will strongly consider putting my son into Montessori schools.
LOL I read that the first time as a Cub Scouts reference and agreed completely.
You might be surprised just how much of your "thought experiment" vaguely resembles the many Cub Scout pack meetings I've attended, other than the pack meetings only being about 2 hours every other week rather than 8 hours every weekday.
Like most organizations, the Scouts get many things right and a couple things wrong, and it improves the level of discourse to stay on track. So bringing up their very peculiar unamerican ideas about religion or sex is not terribly relevant to the discussion of "educating boys", which is kind of the point of the controversy about them, but I digress...
On the other hand, from what I've seen of my daughters girl scout troop meetings, its mostly craft time and snack/gossip time.
There's a heck of a big difference between the two scout orgs beyond one group's parents sell cookies (just tellin' it like it is...).
I've heard good things about Adventure Scouts from people who did it growing up. It's co-ed and from what I've heard, they focus on outdoor exploration and survival skills. I wish I'd been able to do something like that as a kid. I'm definitely looking into it if I ever have kids of my own : )
The weirdest part of the whole thing, is scouting originally started as "us boys wanna play pretend Army Special Forces, and whenever kids have fun, the adults descend on them with rules and regulations to eliminate as much fun as possible" much like little league, school, etc, and roughly a century of intense topic drift later, scouting has turned into boys programming arduinos and girl's parents selling cookies. Not that any of it is wrong, I'm just astounded at the scale of the topic drift.
I never fail to be amused at the whole "back to basics" people WRT scouting, they don't know enough history to realize they might "win" the sex and religion thing, but going "back to basics" means no more pinewood derby, no more blue and gold dinner, none of the modern stuff, just extreme hardcore camping and a bit of marksmanship, pretty much.
I went to elementary and high school in rural Minnesota and I only remember having to sit down about 2-3 hours a day. We did a lot of outdoor science-y stuff like your classify the wildflowers example, sports, PE, art class, orchestra and band, two recesses per day, etc. In high school, we had electives like small engine repair, CAD and in one course could even build an entire house. That said, the actual "academic" courses like math and history were heinously boring and poorly taught and felt like they lasted 8 hours each.
I don't know about schools, but the kindergarten that I went to was a "nature"-kindergarten, where we were out in the forest 80% of the day, no matter if it rained or snowed.
I must have catched a whole forest of insects, and investigated them.
It is very popular in Denmark, and I love the forest and the outdoor because of it, especially the different seasons and their impact on nature.
That sounds amazing. Google suggests "Waldkindergarten", at least as a name for the general category. Is that correct? Maybe just in Germany?
Edit: that wikipedia article is maybe the worst thing ever. Learning to be comfortable in a natural environment, more free-form play, these are good things in an of themselves. I don't understand why people need to fall back on crackpot theories to justify a program like this.
In Denmark it is named "Skovbørnehave" which translates to "Forest kindergarten".
I am actually a bit surprised that it worked, because we ran around without much supervision, but we knew exactly where we were allowed to be, and when we were too far away from the group.
Thank you, reading these comments and the OP makes me cringe with the sexism. I'd like some fundamental science proving possessing a Y chromosome and the male hormone tract in utero makes you behave so radically different socially at such an immature age.
My experiences with children in general (note, I'm in no way professional here) is that the domestication of girls is tremendously cultural from birth and up in how radically different people will treat a female child from a male one, even if they are physically indistinguishable (except the inherent physical differences) until they are 8 or older.
As a male who didn't have trouble in school and realized early on that just faking obedience and getting the grades would best enable me for long term success and didn't have some innate testosterone powered need to beat things up or break stuff I did not see some fundamental split between having a second X or a Y chromosome and your behavioral profile. People are different. There are boys and girls that will want to investigate and explore, just like there are boys and girls that like to memorize and convey information formulaically. Different people are different. Factory compulsory public education in prison like settings suits a very limited personality profile.
A friend reported that The German School outside Washington, DC, (private, predominately but not exclusively male) has the kids in some of the lowest grades spend most of their time running around. Now, I don't remember whether this applied as high up as 1st grade.
I spent so much of my time outside as a kid, but I also spent a lot of time inside on the computer. Both were amazing worlds where your imagination could run wild; especially in the early days of computers and the internet... being a part of a "wild west" frontier at the age of 10 was a special privilege.
My point is that learning and running around in the mud are both very valuable and can be balanced to create well-rounded people who have confidence with technology and the outdoors.
Has any institution figured out how to balance these two in a formal curriculum? Spend half the day exploring the woods and classifying wildflowers, the other half back inside working with math formulae and reading lessons.
Some might say there's not enough time in the day to spend half of it outside, but I disagree. The kids will be more efficient in their inside learning time if they've spent half the day learning outside.
[1] I'm not saying that girls wouldn't appreciate the same type of learning. I suspect that in an environment that harvests the physical energy (horseplay, outdoors activities) of boys to improve learning, even in a positive and productive manner, might alienate some young girls who might feel uncomfortable, so perhaps it's better to separate the genders in this sort of environment?