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

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.