Ask an average schoolchild what they learned in school that day and they'll probably respond with, "nothing." String together 12 or more years of those days and I wonder what our school systems are doing to the natural curiosity and capacity of the human brain.
Bring a group of students into the forest, however, armed with bird and plant books as well as binoculars, and you have a riveted crowd. Identifying trees by noting their bark, height, size and leaves is a memorable experience. Somehow being in nature changes how we learn.
Maybe it's that we can see, smell and touch the object of the lesson. Maybe the air clears our minds. Maybe it's collectively being stumped by trying to identify something and working together to figure it out.
Whatever it is, after a week of slow forest walks, even this science-uninterested person can identify hebes, wheki ferns and kawakawa. And that's worth something.