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Interpretation varied with age of target group |
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With food, wine, guns and a trumpet!
A study in handling old and young students in nature interpretation
August 28th, we are standing on a station near Stockholm, looking impatiently for man called Kalle, who is dressed as Linné. Kalle Lindenborg is a nature interpreter at Sollentuna Nature School and is going to visit one of the local schools, where he is going to teach them about Linné. He has about half an hour with each grade (two lines) and has to get through grades 1-6 at the school (about 300 students) before the end of the day.
We have been allowed to come and watch. The visit is really interesting, because it makes it possible to se an example of how an – essentially identical – presentation is handled at different levels. Which academic points are brought up? Which good stories are used to capture the students?
Much of the material is really the same. I.e. the story about Linnés choice of subject, where his father ends up saying that he should follow his heart and become a doctor, not a priest, as his parents originally felt he should, as it was a safe vocation. The story about how he played truant from school to take long walks in nature. How he felt, as a lecturer at university, that it was important that it was fun to learn. Where he had lectures out-of-doors, where the message to the students was, that they should collect all sorts of things that they wanted to look at. Not only plants, not only animals, an anti-focus – the opposite of what we often do with themed trips. And then a little about how only rich men like him wore wigs and that it was actually modern (then!).
The difference mainly shows through in the stories about parties, sex and love. In the 5-6th grade they are told the story about how Linné described a flower with eight stamens as a woman with eight men in her bed (giggle) and how reviled he was, in his own time, for comparisons like that. They are also told a story about Linnés party lectures out-of-doors, where food, wine, guns and trumpets were brought. Food, wine and trumpets for the party - and the guns, so they could shoot whichever birds, they saw and examine them. This goes straight to the mind of the boys! The little ones are told the adventure about how Linné met his wife and had to fight to marry her.
The story about how to become world famous in a world without email and mobile phones is too abstract for the little ones, so it is used from the third grade. The useful aspect of using plants e.g. for medicine does however, sit centrally with the 1st and 2nd grade.
Obviously other things than age-groups matter – e.g. it is very important how prepared the children are. The classes that were best prepared had most botany – the others had more stories about persons.
In general, if you want to tell stories and don’t have much time, dressing up is brilliant - especially if you chose your clothes with care and, as here, are wearing a wig, a metal bag for collecting plants, a plant press and have a few pressed flowers and a hundredkronernote with a picture of yourself (Linné, that is). It works- for all sizes. But the older they are, the less time you can spend in your role. Which doesn’t lessen the effect – the idea is equally good for the younger and older ones over this spread in age. |
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