What If? The Story Of Outward Bound - Dr. John Huie UUCSV

Outward Bound inspires and encourages folks to take on the seemingly impossible, awakens the service ethic, and connects young people and adults to the earth which sustains us in life. The founder of Outward Bound, Kurt Hahn wrote 80 years ago: “Five social diseases surround the young, even in early childhood. There is the decline in fitness, due to modern methods of locomotion; the decline in initiative, due to the widespread disease of spectatoritis; the decline in care and skill, due to the weakened tradition of craftsmanship; the decline in self-discipline, due to the ever-present availability of tranquilizers and stimulants; and the decline of compassion, which William Temple called ‘spiritual death.’ I regard it as the foremost task of education to insure the survival of these qualities: an enterprising curiosity, an indefatigable spirit, tenacity in pursuit, readiness for sensible self-denial, and, above all, compassion."

For 18 years Dr. John Huie served as Director of the NC Outward Bound School, now headquartered in Swannanoa. He initiated the Environmental Leadership Center of Warren Wilson College in 1995 and laid the foundation for Muddy Sneakers in 2006, an environmental program for fifth grade public school students now spreading across the state. John has served as teacher, coach, headmaster and professor of education in Tennessee, Minnesota, Texas, and Ontario. He has served for the last decade as an Educational Consultant and Life Coach helping families nationwide in crisis with struggling teenagers and young adults. He holds degrees from Davidson and Emory. His Ph.D. is from the University of California, Santa Barbara. John and his wife, Jaan Ferree, live in Asheville and are parents of six children.