Rachel Carson and Humane Education

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"A child's world is fresh and new and beautiful, full of wonder and excitement," wrote Rachel Carson.

By Bernard Unti

"This book is for Roger," was the intended dedication for the book that Rachel Carson wanted to write after she completed "Silent Spring." Time ran out on the ailing author, tragically, and just as her death left young Roger Christie without the great aunt who had adopted him as her son, so too did it deprive the world of a fuller exposition of the values conveyed in Carson's memorable essay, "The Sense of Wonder."

A deeply personal essay, "The Sense of Wonder" reflected Carson's desire to instill in young and old alike an abiding feeling for nature, as opposed to mere knowledge of natural lore. Carson's aim in writing the piece, which first appeared in the Woman's Home Companion [PDF] in July 1956, was to persuade adults to spend more time in exploring nature with children.

"A child's world," Carson wrote, "is fresh and new and beautiful, full of wonder and excitement. It is our misfortune that for most of us, that clear-eyed vision, that true instinct for what is beautiful and awe-inspiring, is dimmed and even lost before we reach adulthood."  Within every child, Carson hoped to encourage "a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life, as an unfailing antidote against the boredom and disenchantments of later years, the sterile preoccupation with things that are artificial, the alienation from the sources of our strength."

For Carson, an emotional connection with animals and nature was of primary importance, and an essential precursor to scientific and practical knowledge. "Once the emotions have been aroused," she wrote, "a sense of the beautiful, the excitement of the new and unknown, a feeling of sympathy, pity, admiration or love—then we wish for knowledge about the object of our emotional response. Once found, it has lasting meaning."

Accepting the Albert Schweitzer Award in 1962, Carson spoke of the importance of such encounters with nature and animals. "To many of us, the truest understanding of Reverence for Life comes, as it did to [Schweitzer], from some personal experience, perhaps the sudden, unexpected sight of a wild creature, perhaps some experience with a pet. Whatever it may be, it is something that takes us out of ourselves, that makes us aware of other life."

In 1963, disturbed by reports of cruelty to animals in secondary school science fairs, Carson agreed to write a preface to the Animal Welfare Institute's "Humane Biology Projects." The result was a striking, eloquent, and timeless declaration of humane and ecological sensitivity:

"I like to define biology as the history of the earth and all its life—past, present and future. To understand biology is to understand that all life is linked to the earth from which it came; it is to understand the stream of life, flowing out of the dim past into the uncertain future, is in reality a unified force, though composed of an infinite number and variety of separate lives. The essence of life is lived in freedom. Any concept of biology is not only sterile and profitless, it is distorted and untrue if it puts its primary focus on unnatural conditions rather than on those vast forces not of man's making, that share and channel the nature and direction of life.

"To the extent that it is ever necessary to put certain questions to nature by placing unnatural restraints upon living creatures or by subjecting them to unnatural conditions or to changes in their bodily structure, this is a task for the mature scientist. It is essential that the beginning student should first become acquainted with the true meaning of his subject through observing the lives of creatures in their true relation to each other and to their environment. To begin by asking him to observe artificial conditions is to create in his mind distorted conceptions and to thwart the development of his natural emotional response to the mysteries of the life stream of which he is a part. Only as a child's awareness and reverence for the wholeness of life are developed can his humanity to his own kind reach its full development."

In a sense, all of Carson's writing, from her early books to "Silent Spring," were attempts at humane education, focusing on the broad general public whose interest in nature she sought to cultivate by presenting the science behind her subjects in an engaging literary style.

"The Sense of Wonder" anticipated contemporary calls for place-based education in environmental studies, an educational trend that would surely have heartened Carson, and one that has powerful implications for the inculcation of humane values in the young.

Bernard Unti, senior policy adviser and special assistant to the president, received his doctorate in U.S. history in 2002 from American University. His book, "Protecting All Animals: A Fifty-Year History of The Humane Society of the United States," is available from Humane Society Press.