ABSTRACT
What kind of environmental education will young ecological citizens need? The children in the New Zealand study are amongst a global cohort born during the launch of the world’s largest internet search engine, Google, in 1998. Their world is characterised by growing contradictions. On the one hand, for many of these children their horizons are constantly expanding, facilitated by internet communication, new social media and international travel.1 Yet, at the same time, many children in English-speaking democracies are losing independent, unsupervised access to valued local places.2 For many children, their physical and temporal freedoms to roam or to ‘waste’ time are under threat in highlyurbanised, digital, monitored and commercialised spaces.3 These children are variously described as a gated, chauffeured, ‘bubble-wrapped’ or hot-housed generation.4 Media alarm is sounded about children growing up without access to wild or risky play, at risk of a ‘nature deficit disorder’, deprived of access to the outdoors or effectively living as ‘pampered prisoners’ under the anxious surveillance of ‘helicopter parents’ who hover in the background, ever fearful of traffic or strangers and anxious to ensure their children’s leisure time is used productively to develop skills they will need to ‘succeed’ in a competitive, global marketplace.5
