We live in Brooklyn

Exploring Place-Based Education in Schools.

I met a vivacious Science teacher this weekend. She is a biological anthropologist, and thus roots her curriculum in the all-pervasive notions of ecology. Tisa is an inspired and passionate science educator at the Green School in Long Island City. You can read more about her impassioned teaching style at her blog. She described to me how she uses recycled, locally made salsa jars from the Brooklyn Salsa Company as pen holders in the classroom. These recycled wares actually kick off further conversation with her students about such movements as local food, organic, and direct trade - which can also all be integrated into a science lesson. What better way to start talking about place than with food? Understanding the local, which is real to the students - is a prime way to go on into discussing the global.

Ecology comes from the Greek words : οἶκος, meaning "house" or "living relations"
and -λογία, the study of.
It is the scientific study of the relation of living organisms to each other and their surroundings.

Understanding ecology is at the core of understanding life. So what a better place to start than with place-based learning? Most school text books do not employ the study of place, or go on to paint a picture of the land when teaching history. But, the land where the war was fought has everything to do with what happened there. Ecology teaches us that nothing can be so neatly compartmentalized, that locale has everything to do with everything. We look to place as a relic of the past and an indicator of the future. What does the area look like? What is the health of the soil? How old are the trees? What kind of trees are they?

Times square used to be a beaver pond. What was the course of events that transformed it into one of the busiest, electricity-powered places of the 21st century?

National Geographic compares Manhattan in 1609, before Henry Hudson with Today.

“The goal of the Mannahatta Project has never been to return Manhattan to its primeval state. The goal of the project is discover something new about a place we all know so well, whether we live in New York or see it on television, and, through that discovery, to alter our way of life. New York does not lack for dystopian visions of the future…. But what is the vision of the future that works? Might it lie in Mannahatta, the green heart of New York, and with a new start to history, a few hours before Hudson arrived that sunny afternoon four hundred years ago?”

You don't need to venture far to offer students a picture of place. Even in some areas of Brooklyn, where there are few trees - any shrub or tree hosts an abundance of life. If students have the opportunity to work with the soil in their neighborhoods they may access a story layered beneath what, at the onset, looked just like 'dirt.' Students will feel a greater sense of ownership to their learning if it involves their own turf - a story that they can access with their senses. Everything, however far-fetched or global in nature, can be traced back to basic ecological insight. Even global fashion trends and business transactions are affected by place. All you have to do is look! And you probably won't find it in [text] books, unless it is literature, poetry or art written by people about places. And those are some of the best ways of uncovering history, through the wide-ranging voices of the people themselves. Not just white men, about white men, which tends to be our text-book tendency.

Dewey sees the need to integrate geography, history and nature study, for human events unravel in particular times and places. He writes:

"When the history of work, when the conditions of using the soil, forest, mine, of domesticating and cultivating grains and animals, of manufacture and distribution, are left out of account, history tends to become merely literary - a systematized romance of mythical humanity living upon itself instead of upon the earth."

You don't have to go far to break down notions of 'mythical humanity,' just look up from the American History Text, shift the gaze toward one another and outside.

La Belle Sauvage

Rousseau's notion of the Noble Savage views the natural as the ethical base of man. He believed that schooling should begin with the soil, not in the clouds.

In Rousseau's discourse on Education, or Emile, he describes the development and individual tuition of a fictitious boy/young man in line with the principles of 'natural education.' The treatise is comprised of five books, and a sixth on Sophie, the female scholar. Each book describes the appropriate way to educate the boy according to life stages. The second phase, ages 2-12 is the 'age of nature,' in which the child receives only 'negative education,' no moral instruction, and no verbal learning. He believed the mind should be left undisturbed until all its faculties have developed. One of the lessons in the second book involves tending to a garden plot in order to understand notions of property, and cultivation. It is a lesson in culture.

The tutor is merely an witness to the child's discovery of its natural habits.

The cultivation of a garden has continued to be a departure for learning in progressive education. Dewey believed gardening, the hands-on, democratic approach teaches responsibility and recognition of the individual's place in society. Dating back to Aristotle, tekne or the intelligence of agriculture was an essential skill for understanding necessity, ergo life and death. Understanding the interconnected nature of plant growth and nourishment also teaches about sustenance, dependence, money, exchange, use and responsibility. Therefore, it is also a place-based way of teaching about globalization. Increasingly in the 21st century we are recognizing the importance of understanding the growth of our foodstuffs; learning about food is learning about life.

Gardens create a dynamic learning environment for not only teaching, but involving students with their locale, creating awareness about the natural environment and food. It is an essential feature of 21st century education.

Unschooling

Image from Cyfernet.org

"What children need is not new and better curricula but access to more and more of the real world; plenty of time and space to think over their experiences, and to use fantasy and play to make meaning out of them; and advice, road maps, guidebooks, to make it easier for them to get where they want to go (not where we think they ought to go), and to find out what they want to find out."

~John Holt~ Teach Your Own

As the world is rapidly changing and schools lag behind, many parents are taking their children's education into their own hands. This morning in the New York Times Parenting blog, Chandra Hoffman describes her choice to home school her eight year old son this year. Her personal decision mostly comes down to her want to actually connect with her beaming, bright and cheeky son, rather than constantly falling into the role of nagging parent. Other parents feel strongly that the school, as an institution, has a damaging effect on children. And frankly, most schools are not preparing students for the world they live in. I believe that much of this has to do with the exacerbated American trend of our last two presidencies, standardized testing.

The emphasis on testing, overcrowded classrooms and poor results makes it difficult for teachers to bring life to their curricula - they are too busy trying to 'pass the test' themselves. The most tragic proof that we are not getting it right in schools is this;

"When student's are asked today to finish the question, school is ________, the word they most often use is boring. (Suarez-Orozco, Learning in the Global Era: International Perspectives on the New Millenium)"

This is because we are still using methods of educating that represent the factories of the industrial age - They even resemble factories and most employ rote methods of teaching and learning. But memorization of fact becomes obsolete very quickly in our era. If we want students to thrive, to pass the test, they need to be engaged with the world as they know it - the world as it is today.

The great progressive educator, John Dewey said, 'Education is life.' He is the modern father of experiential education; He believed that student's need to be empowered in their individual learning experience as well as active participants, preparing them to become effective members of a democratic society. Dewey argued that a one way, authoritarian style of teaching will not give students the preparation they need. It will require direct 'educational experiences that enable them to become valued, equal and responsible members of society.'


I argue that this requires more contact with the world, the invitation to use their hands, to do it themselves, and to develop artistry in communication with fellow human beings. Does this require 'Unschooling'? No, I don't think so. But, there is increasing evidence that mentor-style relationships are an important resource for the amelioration of learning in today's world.