Back to School, Back to the Land

This week as our youth are going back to school, our farmers are busily attending to their last yielding crops, preparing the squash and pumpkins.  The anticipation for September is ubiquitous; felt in the urgency of the migrating birds moving south, the kids who have already separated from summer and the beginning of fashion week's global tour. And the leaves are marked in colour with the appearance of fall.

As I helped Farmer Steve at his farm in the Catskills today, I thought about all those youth, suddenly sitting in hard chairs in their classrooms.  The tomatoes were dripping off the vine and we were trying to keep up with them, plucking out the perfect ones by the gentle handful.  We filled buckets and leaned over our legs, reaching forward and down. 'This is a primal position' Steve told me, 'it just feels so good... as though you are operating from an ancient place of humanity.' In the morning light the grass was still dewy and our motions were matched with conversation and then silence as we each moved down the rows.

Overcome by rich smells of soil, ripening tomatoes and rotten ones I thought about the ways that students are able to use their senses in the classroom.  Our hands and nose, ears and eyes are such valuable tools for deep learning.

“Deep learning is learning that takes root in our apparatus of understanding, in the embedded meanings that define us and that we use to define the world.”  

What better way for something to become relevant,  than if it is experienced first hand and with all the senses.

I think this is one of the defining characteristics of 21st century education.  And it's not a new idea; Jean-Jaques Rousseau wrote about it in his 1762 treaty 'On Education' or 'Emile.'  His ideas were radical at the time, but now his belief in 'natural education' could be essential for the technology driven next generation.  He believed in embodied knowledge.  Rousseau believed in bringing the student to life.  He wrote, 'to live is not to breath, it is to Act! to make use of our senses, our facilities (42).'

Having the skills to cultivate land has long been considered one of the virtues of the wise.  It has the capacity to teach us crafts both technical and conceptual.  We are made to understand seasons, inter-relativity, responsibility, ownership, exchange, morality.  We are meant to know and recognize our relation to other living things and their flourishing.  So as we're pulling carrots out of the ground and shaking the moist soil back to the earth, I'm thinking about the senses of our next generation.  I'm remembering how freedom as a child is learning and that nature provides the greatest playground.  I want our youth to understand that the boundless connectivity of the World Wide Web is also visible in the natural world.  So how can we get more youth onto farms and into the woods?  I know that my own capacity to pay attention is increased by the feeling of sun on my neck, clean air and expanse.  Why is it so easy to diagnose ADHD, but rarely a finding of 'nature deficit disorder (NDD)?'

Richard Louv coined the term NDD in his book 'Last Child in the Woods,' which brings together new studies indicating that direct exposure to nature is essential for a child's healthy physical and emotional development. Our beloved American naturalist Thoreau said it;

"Here is this vast, savage, howling mother of ours, Nature lying all around, with such beauty, such affection for her children, as the leopard; and yet we are so early weaned from her breast to society; to that culture which is exlusively an interaction of man on man."

Many educated Boomers, X and Y-generations are making their own return to subsistance or community farming.  I know countless farmers with countless degrees who have given up high paying jobs in order to cultivate land.  What is this shift?  And how can we get youth on board?  As we move beyond outdated modes of educating, let us remember how freedom in youth and connection to  'place' are at the core of deep learning.  In a world of constant flux and accelerating information we could all use more connection to the soil.  It's those moments of loosing time to nature's harmony that we begin to come back to ourselves.  And in our flourishing, we are learned.

Photos and text by Rebecca Thom, 2012

Greet Me

 Man on sixth Avenue, NYC by Rebecca Thom

I live in New York City where legend warns that people are hard and don't look at each other in the street.  Although you can find this phenomenon in certain regions and blocks of the city, for the most part, I've never been somewhere with more eye contact.  Though greetings are usually kept for those special moments of madness in the subway when someone does something shocking or unforgivable and you just have to look at your neighbor and have a word, many are ready to exchange and are just waiting for the opportunity.  It's true that more and more we are living in a world of digital communication, where people find themselves enraptured by their cell phones, email, tweets and instagrams (I have been loving witness people taking photos of the little things they notice, this app actually seems to make people more present).  Yet, I am a firm believer in the old school tradition of greetings.  Having lived in Africa I am actually quite fanatic about them.  Should you find yourself in an elevator with me, I will probably talk to you.  There is an old African proverb that says;  

Haraka Haraka Haina Baraka
Hurry Hurry has no blessings.

In many countries throughout the world you would be considered impolite for not greeting the person you pass in the street.  You are there together, so why not?  It is those moments in between rushing around the city, or getting to the gym that make up your life.  There are human equivalents of angels everywhere, you just have to look up and say hello - You never know what you might find in the other person.  And yes, sometimes people will look at you as though you're mad, but most of the time you will be greeted back and somehow, between all the technological interchange, you will feel more human.

Babu. Kasulu, Tanzania, 2010 by Rebecca Thom

Note: For the streets of Tanzania there are varied ways of addressing that pay respect to age, gender and class.  For example, an elder is to be greeted with 'Shikamoo' which literally means, 'I take your feet' to this, the elder or respected individual responds, 'Marahaba' which means, 'I thankfully accept your respect.'  Even the chosen intonation denotes a quality of submission; often making the 'Shikamoo' resound in an emphatic, 'Shhh' falling off into an almost silent 'kamo'  The use of accentuation is sometimes even paired with body motions.  A child greeting an elder, for instance, may dip one knee and downturn the gaze in order to further illustrate their respect.  This particular greeting goes straight to the heart of understanding Swahili culture.