Backpack school

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The name backpack school goes back to the Braunschweig biology didactic and environmental educator Gerhard Trommer (1993–2005 professor for didactics of biology, Goethe University Frankfurt / M.) And was developed in 1983 as a concept for nature and environmental education in large nature reserves . The backpack school is an outdoor school that largely dispenses with technical media and facilities. However, the students are equipped with backpacks .

history

The backpack school is for the first time as a concrete project of a job creation measure with the participation of the nature park officer in the Harz National Park (Wolf Eberhardt Barth), the Heimvolkshochschule Goslar (Udo Heß) and through didactic and methodical support (Gerhard Trommer) under the name "Backpack School Harz Nature Park" for five Backpack school trainer and a secretary have been realized. The Harz Nature Park Backpacking School tested its concept in tourism offers for hiking groups, for school groups in youth hostels and school camps, and in children's and youth camps . The seat of the Harz Nature Park backpacking school was the city of Goslar.

The Harz Nature Park backpacking school was required to finance itself from income and fundraising after the end of the job creation scheme. But that was too much for the project. No viable follow-up financing could be found, so the Harz Nature Park backpacking school ended its activities in 1987.

Offshoot of the backpack school idea

In 1988 the Westerwald Brewery from Hachenburg / Westerwald developed the idea further under the guidance of Gerhard Trommer on the occasion of the 100th birthday (1988) of the Westerwald Association . The brewery employee responsible for the project was Jochen Monjau. The Westerwald backpack school project still exists at the Westerwaldverein under the direction of Hermann J. Eulberg from Hachenburg.

Ideal basis

The idea and concept, however, continue to have an impact today. Today there are numerous, independently existing facilities for nature and environmental education that operate under the name backpack school.

The backpack school drew impulses from outdoor education and the interpretation of nature in US national parks and supplemented these with local nature and environmental educational concepts of nature experience and nature education. It combines original, individual outdoor experience with group dynamic processes and the communication of ecological insights. The focus is on simply being on the move on hikes and walks, creative instructions for attentiveness and for the perception of given phenomena and experience potentials in the concrete landscape and are accompanied by improvisations and exercises. The following four levels of education are linked:

  • Experience nature and landscape with all your senses,
  • Observe and examine nature,
  • exchange ideas about individual perceptions and interpretations of nature and landscape in the group,
  • Understand nature and landscape and act in an environmentally conscious manner.

The experiences of the backpack school are conveyed and passed on through case descriptions of exercise sequences in concrete situations.

Individual evidence

  1. Westerwälder Backpack School ( memento of the original from December 2, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.westerwaldverein.de

literature

  • The backpack school. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. October 22, 1987.
  • W. Janßen, G. Trommer (Ed.): Naturerleben. (= Teaching biology. H. 137). 1988, ISBN 3-617-03137-7 .
  • G. Trommer: The backpack school - interpretive perception of nature. In: G. Selle (Ed.): Experiment Aesthetic Education: Current Examples for Action and Understanding. rororo, Reinbek 1990, ISBN 3-499-55506-9 , pp. 67-76.
  • G. Trommer (ed.), Susanne Kretschmar, Willm Prasse: Perceiving nature with the backpack school. Westermann, Braunschweig 1991, ISBN 3-14-162005-9 .
  • G. Trommer: Wilderness - the educational challenge. German Studienverlag, Weinheim 1992, ISBN 3-89271-352-9 .
  • G. Trommer: Pretty wild! oekom, Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-86581-295-7 .