Knowledge is a strange and slippery thing. According to a survey commissioned by the charity Rainforest Rescue, 80% of respondents knew that "trees are responsible for removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere"; however more than half of them did not know that paper was made from trees. And barely 10% could identify holly, knew that conkers came from horse chestnuts or, apparently, had not even heard of oak trees.
This feels to me like a back to front sort of knowledge. I accept that in many ways it is probably more important to understand why it is so dangerous to destroy Amazonian forests than it is to be able to distinguish between an elder and an alder. But it is sad that these two scales of knowing appear to have lost all connection with each other.
It is odd, too, because in most areas of life we believe that we learn things initially not in abstract and from experts but experientially – that we move from the small, the immediate, the tangible outwards to the large, the distant and the conceptual. Even physics is taught like this in primary school now – small children begin by weighing and measuring and looking at real things that are ordinary and near to hand: quarks and relativity come later.
Only ecology seems to be taught top-down. Schools have abandoned the nature table – the "look-closely-and-see-what-you-can-see" approach – in favour of huge (and usually frightening) global perspectives in which the natural world is perceived as fragile, delicate and endangered by human beings. And it is all very far away.
This year Scottish children have probably learned more about the mating habits of giant pandas than about those of the spiders in their own kitchens. Nature is over there, somewhere else – and ultimately if "nature" becomes Chinese pandas and Brazilian trees it becomes nothing to do with us: not our fault, not our problem and, saddest of all, not our joy or indeed our heritage. (Shakespeare mentions about 40 different trees, and then there are all the fairy stories, poems, songs and paintings.)
Some might feel that since fewer and fewer people live in the country – less than 20% of the population of the UK (pdf) – this is knowledge we can happily let go of; trees can be a "good thing" and much loved without a raft of technical information memorised and using up space in our over-occupied brains. Although trees on the street where you live increase the value of your property, it does not seem to matter what species of tree they are. There are some with flowers in the spring and some have prettier colours in the autumn and some stay green all year through. Is that not enough information to be going on with?
It probably is in reality, but how sad. Especially with trees – there are lots of natural delights you have to live without in cities, but trees are not one of them. Trees are all around you – and not difficult to learn about. At the simplest level one sees more and enjoys what one sees more, the more you know about what you are seeing. At the weekend, walking in an ancient wood, I doubt I would even have seen the hazel catkins lurking under the twigs if I had not known they were there to be looked for, never mind if I had not known this was hazel tree. Not only were they pretty but they were also promising – the week of my first frosts also brought me the first sign that there would be spring. That is hands-on practical knowledge well worth having.