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  • From: "Scott Pittman" <scott@permaculture.org>
  • To: "'permaculture'" <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] Musings III
  • Date: Tue, 21 Jan 2014 12:43:26 -0700

Musings III

This final chapter has been postponed over and over as I have made my way to
Costa Rica, taught a teacher training course, and now headed to Finca Amrta
to teach my 7th annual PDC. Cuba has faded somewhat from my mind over the
past weeks but the subject of my discussion remains clear and the urgency I
felt in Cuba is still with me.

This discussion was titled "Standards and Practices of Permaculture" and it
drew a large audience of participants.

My stimulus for this subject was an event that just prior to the IPC I saw
two courses advertised on the net that were 7 day PDC's. I was really
shocked since within the Permaculture Institute we have been discussing
increasing the PDC to 21 days just so we could adequately cover all the
material. I find it very difficult to present all the materials in the
curriculum and do the design exercises, some hands on, some pattern and
principal exercises and etc in the two week time frame of a standard PDC. I
talked to the teachers of this course and they insisted that they were going
to go ahead with the 7 day schedule.
]
I met one of the teachers in Cuba who is a Portuguese student named Helder
Valente and he has started a web site called New School Permaculture.
Helder insisted that their was a new wave of permaculturalists who were
changing the rules and one of those rule changes regarded the PDC.

The PDC is everyone's initiation into permaculture and I have always felt
particularly protective of that portal to permaculture. It is also the
course that many newcomers to permaculture seem to want to amend. I have
seen the course length shrink from three weeks to two weeks to 9 days to 7
days over the past 30 years. Content of the PDC is contained in the course
outline that I received from Bill Mollison when I took the course in 1985.
According to David Holmgrin the curriculum was "officially" established in
1984 at the IPC and at the same Mollison announced the establishment of a
Diploma program.

During the Cuba Workshop I was amazed to hear from a gentlemen in the
audience that he had received his PDC without any of the standard curriculum
but a course just on the "Invisible Structures" (social, financial, and
legal structures). No agriculture, forests, water, and etc. He was shocked
when I commented that he didn't receive a PDC but rather a very truncated
specialty course. Others in the audience were as shocked as I was.
We provide a copy of the Course Outline on our website www.permaculture.org
which most teachers that I respect adhere to in their PDC courses. The PDC
that we offer also includes a design exercise, hands on work, class
exercises, and a talent show. All of the elements were offered by Bill
Mollison in the courses he taught in the 90's when I was travelling and
co-teaching with him. I continue to teach in this format which I think
contains the radical pedagogy that Bill developed over years of teaching
experience.

I think that the idea that one can use "Permaculture - A Designer's Manual"
as the complete curriculum of a PDC is a definite downgrading of the
material originally contained in a PDC. I know that many of the newer
teachers follow "the book" chapter by chapter as the course outline but in
my mind it is an incomplete curriculum and doesn't do justice to the PDC
course material. Of course there has been additional material added to the
curriculum of 1984 ie global warming, energy decline, keyline, food forests,
and other critical subjects that have appeared in the intervening years.

I also still offer the course at cost for any certificate holder from
previous PDC's. This was a tradition followed by Bill Mollison in his
courses and it makes total sense to me that additional training under
different instructors creates better teachers and designers.
There have been challenges to this tradition which I think is a big mistake.
If one has room in the class and if the expenses of meals, and accommodation
are covered by those wanting to audit the course then I see no good reason
to not offer the course to previous graduates without tuition.

The Permaculture Institute has developed a Diploma program also available on
our website to further the education and development of permaculture
designers and teachers. Our criteria for teachers is that they first obtain
their diploma before becoming lead teachers in a PDC. We also ask that PC
designers obtain a diploma before advertising their design services. Many
teachers follow Bill's admonition to immediately go out and teach or design
once completing the PDC; time after time I have seen shoddy courses and
designs from woefully inexperienced teachers and designers. This may have
been a growth strategy when permaculture was just starting but it only
serves to degrade people's opinion of permaculture when they experience
amateur work. In spite of this there are still teachers who encourage their
students to fake professionalism after a two week experience. Bill
Mollison, Geoff Lawton, Vladislav Davidzon, and Helder Valente are
advocates of encouraging students to go out and teach immediately after
receiving a certificate and with this promise of an "instant" career have
successfully filled their classes.

Vladislav has recently initiated a "free" PDC online which he claims to have
over 70,000 students enrolled. If you want a certificate from this "free"
course you have to pony up an additional $300+ dollars. Soon we will be
awash in PDC graduates who are minimally qualified encouraging their
students to go out and teach. To me this is a serious degradation of
permaculture education and akin to a pyramid sales scheme.

There are several organizations internationally who are trying to develop
and establish permaculture standards and practices and my hope that that
through collaboration we can all develop a unified system that will allow us
to recognize each others programs and certifications. There is certainly a
lot to do and, in my mind, little time to do it!

"To change something build a new model that makes the existing model
obsolete" Buckminster Fuller

/* Written 11:18 PM Dec 22, 1994 by peg:hepburn in igc:susag.permacul */
THE PERMACULTURE MOVEMENT AND EDUCATION:
SEARCHING FOR WAYS FORWARD

BY DAVID HOLMGREN

DECEMBER 1993

The following article is being sent to a selection of
permaculture teachers, activitists and organizations.
Reproduction and circulation within the permaculture movement of
this article in full is invited.

Summer solstice 1993


Copying and circulation of this article (in full) is encouraged.
Feedback is invited, but since I am not running a campaign or
making specific proposals, detailed follow on from this article
may not happen due to other commitments.



David Holmgren.



THE PERMACULTURE MOVEMENT AND EDUCATION: SEARCHING FOR WAYS FORWARD

I would like to address a number of issues concerning permaculture
education, design and practice and how these relate to formal acceditation
systems in the wider society. Both Lea Harrison and Robin Francis have
addressed some of the problems and challenges facing the permaculture
movement in dealing with aspects of these issues. Rather than directly
responding to their proposals, I would like to expand on some of the ideas
relevant to the future organizational structure of the movement which I only
briefly touched on in "Development of the Permaculture Concept" (PIJ no. 44).
Hopefully these ideas will also be of more general interest to people
involved in permaculture at all levels.

In the process, as the co-originator of the permaculture concept,
I will cover some of the story of my involvement with the
permaculture movement, a subject which I am inclined to avoid,
but that may help others clarify their own involvement and
position on the issues which confront the movement.

There has been a lot of talk about permaculture as a discipline
(as in academic), a profession, trade, business and even as an
industry. I have great difficulty with these constructions of
permaculture for many reasons.

Radical origins

Permaculture arose from interaction between myself and Bill
Mollison in the mid 1970's. We were two (very different) social
radicals on the fringes of (different) education institutions at
the global fringes of western industrial society in Tasmania.

Bill Mollison as bushman turned senior tutor, in the Psychology
Dept. of the Tasmanian University, attracted large student
audiences to hear his radical and original (pre-permaculture)
ideas while outraging the academic establishment.

I was a student in the Environmental Design School, a
revolutionary "experiment" in tertiary education at the Tasmanian
College of Advanced Education. This design school ran for ten
years under the inspired leadership of Barry McNeil, a Hobart
architect and education theorist. Visiting and local
professionals accounted for a substantial part of the staff
budget. There was no fixed curriculum but a strong emphasis on
decision making processes and problem solving. Self assessment,
democratic organization and many other elements which radicals
within tertiary institution only dream about were reality within
the school.

Even within the intellectual freedom and stimulation of
Environmental Design I was on the fringes, with my all consuming
permaculture work and my student-mentor relationship with Bill
Mollison. My work was largely ignored within E.D. although Barry
McNeil has since acknowledged it was probably the most important
concept to emerge from the school. I never went on do the post
graduate degree which would have led to a professional
qualification (in Landscape Architecture) because of my disgust
with the design professions, my strong desire to build my
practical skills and practice what I preached.

For me, growing up in a family of radical political activists I
found ecological principles reinforced the political notion that
radical change is always a bottom up process. Marx suggested that
happened by an uprising of the oppressed masses. But in modern
industrial society, the environmental dilemma highlighted the
material addictions of the comfortable masses as the seed of
their (our) own destruction. The problem lay with ourselves
rather than simply with exploiting multi-nationals etc.

The old spiritual notion of changing the world by changing
oneself was a powerful idea for this atheist. This means starting
with the individual and the family or household within which we
live. In the outward extending ripples of change it becomes
easier for succeeding people to see the need for change from
consuming resources to conserving and creating permacultural
abundance.

In addition, I do not believe it is necessary for a majority to
undergo a radical change for a flip to occur in society. Chaos
theory and especially the concept of punctuated equilibrium,
confirmed by observation in all the natural sciences suggest
gradual evolution is the exception rather than the rule. In
society, long periods of stability dominated by tradition, law
and institutional forms are punctuated by rapid and apparently
chaotic change where individuals and and small groups create new
cultural forms1. These cycles occur on large time scales through
history. However they also repeat themselves within the lives of
individuals, communities and organizations not as as a series of
closed loops but as open ended and intertwined spirals.

We can see many examples of the fragility and collapse of
established systems and whole societies with the Soviet Union
being the most dramatic. Perhaps an even more pertinent example
might be the faith that binds the financial value systems of
global industrial society.

The whole global economic edifice which is rapidly consuming the
planet and its people is in fact a very fragile monster,
dependant of the faith and complicity of relatively small
populations of middle class people in affluent countries and most
particularly the continued faith of that parochial clan of
McClewn's global village, the money and commodity market people.
Ronald Reagan (as the most powerful man on earth) after the '87
stock market crash, said with unconscious truth, that the system
would not collapse so long as people continued to have faith. Has
there even been an emperor, king or president to admit to his
people that they had the power to bring the whole system down? My
point here is not to dwell too much on apocalyptic scenarios but
to refute the concept that is necessary to get "every man and his
dog" to change before society will change.

One of the problems of personal and societal change is that the
old patterns die hard and as we reach for the solution we keep
re-inventing the problem in a new form. This is quite natural and
can be observed in nature where deeply embedded proven systems
keep reasserting themselves (Nature is conservative).

In the early promotion of permaculture the tools of mass media
were effectively used to spread the word quickly and widely but
the efficiency of these tools at producing effective change is
very low. So often, fertile social ground was (and still is)
plowed, seeds sowed, but only a few germinated; some producing a
bitter harvest. Frequently, as enthusiasm wanes in one locality,
city, region or country, new ground is plowed in a shifting
cultivation. This may be a particularly dismal image (which is
hardly the whole picture) but my point is that modern mass media
can be very effectively used to stimulate people beyond the
capacity of a movement to follow up with the painstaking local,
personal efforts needed to assist and facilitate productive
action. We are in fact dealing with very dangerous tools in mass
media which carry with them many of the inherent destructive
characteristics of the defunct paridigms. Jerry Mander2 has
outlined the problems inherent in television. To some extent
these problems even apply to books.

The use of mass media including books has been a major factor in
the spread of the permaculture concept and although I would be
the last to say these approaches should be totally rejected, they
must be acknowledged as classic top down methods of change, the
same tools used by governments and corporations to mould society.
To believe these are value free tools which can be easily used
for good or ill is very naive.

The Biodynamic movement began from very small beginnings in this
country, largely under the leadership of Alex Podolinsky. It has
been remarkably effective in changing land use on large areas of
farm land and building the numbers of competent home food
gardeners in this country. This was done initially by avoiding
all mass media and working directly in small self-help groups. It
was only with an established network of solid practitioners that
Podolinsky finally agreed to let ABC Countrywide do the program
on BD which produced more inquiries from farmers than any other
issue.

The permaculture movement has a lot to learn in this regard. On
the other hand the BD movement has some similarities with
Permaculture, perhaps the most striking being the role of the
charismatic genius of its leader. Elsewhere3 I have referred to
Yeomans, Podolinsky and Mollison as men with much in common in
leading the fight against the agricultural establishment. The
role of these men in bringing about change is a complex and a
very pertinent subject to the future of the permaculture
movement but is not something I wish to enlarge on here.

Personal credibility

Much of the focus for promotion of permaculture has been around
the idea that we can grow much of our own food where we live and
that this is one of the the most powerful actions we can take in
bringing about societial change. There is nothing wrong with this
simple idea and large numbers of people have been influenced and
assisted by permaculture in doing this. Although in any
sustainable society we can "design", it is not necessary for
everyone to grow their own fresh food, it is undisputed (in
permaculture) that we need an explosion of competent food
gardeners in this country. Why is it then that the majority of
people who have recaste their work and careers around
permaculture do not grow food either as a living or even for
themselves and their families to any significant degree? Largely
because they are too busy organizing, designing and teaching and
selling.

The way we earn our living is obviously a major part of
practising permaculture and in the current economic climate few
of us have the resources and skills necessary to make a living
producing food in a sustainable manner. The realization of this
fact should engender sympathy and respect for farmers. Instead we
are just as likely to hear arrogant prejudice about farmers
destroying the land from permaculturalists as from other food
consumers. I believe many permaculturalists don't produce their
own food because they have tried, found it difficult and not
particularly exciting. This is especially true for the
generations raised on the instant gratification of television and
modern education.

When 'Mrs Jones' buys Thai tuna or Californian oranges just
because they are cheap, I find it hard to be outraged if she is
only claiming to be following short term financial self interest.
However I am disappointed, to say the least, when those in the
forefront of permaculture promotion privately suggest its cheaper
or easier to buy good quality food, ignoring the huge compromises
which even organic growers make with sustainablity principles to
survive commercially. Proverbs about throwing stones and glass
houses come to mind. My natural inclination is to turn my
disappointment back on myself and consider the ethical
contradictions in my own behaviour. Despite its bad reputation by
association with the Chinese cultural revolution, I believe self
criticism is essential so long as it is balanced by affirmation
and recognition of self worth.

Permaculture is not a profession

We can take a permaculture approach in any (reasonable) job or
profession but to jump to the conclusion that permaculture IS a
job, career or profession is false. There is nothing wrong with
people using permaculture design as a short hand way of saying
they are garden or farm designers who use permaculture principles
in their work. But when people suggest we need to make
permaculture a design profession which can sit alongside other
design professions and so achieve credibility in the wider
society they are making several mistakes:

1. the search for credibility by belonging to some group is
illusory in today's society where we see the progressive
breakdown of all forms of established credibility. New secure
structures of credibility cannot be established in this social
environment.

2. to effectively operate the organizational structures
necessary to make a profession able to function at a national
level requires finan- cial and other resources which drains off
limited activist and pract- itioner resources. This has been a
recurring mistake in the permaculture movement where structures
appropriate to large organizations are used in the hope that
growth of the movement will generate the resources necessary to
support these systems. Permaculture principles suggest we should
network and organize at the smallest most local level for each
particular function and only move to larger levels when the local
ones are effective and generating surplus resources adequate to
support these inherently more expensive but less essential
systems.

3. permaculture is only one of thousands of groups from
nurses through to sellers of travel packages seeking the hallowed
status of being a profession. When the mob is running in one
direction, quietly walk off in the opposite is my motto, which I
learnt from my parents, but was clarified for me by Bill
Mollison.

4. there is a problem of logic when we define permaculture
as a separate design profession because it implies there is a
particular set of skills or competencies distinct from other
professionals. In fact as Bill Mollison said in Grave Danger of
Falling Food, "permaculture always did lie between the
disciplines." It is a wholistic system which can integrate and
recaste the work of the existing design professions. If it is to
become its own profession then it foregoes the valid concern with
what all design professionals do. And as more and more
sustainable approaches are taken up by trades and professions any
separate permaculture profession would be left with a baggage of
idiosyncratic ideas which didn't quite work.

A generalist permaculture designer may be a good person to advise
on general aspects of house siting and design but an architect or
a builder with a permaculture perspective is the person to help
with the details. If someone is setting up a commercial orchard,
a generalist permaculture designer such as myself may be able to
help a little but what is really needed is a competent tree crop
horticulturalist with a permaculture perspective. These people
will continue to call themselves architects, builders and
horticulturalists. They have the training, accreditation and
industry networks which provide most of the benefits (and
problems) which some people hope to set up for permaculture. We
should use these systems, parasitically if necessary, working
around the restrictions they may involve.

However, there is clearly an important role for the independent
permaculture generalist to fill in the gaps in established
systems, self taught and informally apprenticed, constantly
innovating and experimenting with their own systems and passing
on the hard won lessons, gaining credibility by the results of
their work.

This is a tough role, and a professional structure will not help
those who are not up to it do anything more than paper over their
inadequacies. This brings me to the issue of permaculture
education.

Permaculture Education

The "72hr" permaculture design course has been the basis of
permaculture education since the first courses run by Bill
Mollison at Stanley in the early 1980's. From the very beginning
I was critical of many of the assumptions behind the PDC.
Despite, and maybe partly because of, those criticisms the PDC
has evolved into an effective method for extending the ideas
which I believe the movement should focus on consolidating rather
than venturing into the minefield of TAFE or any other
accrediation. But while acknowledging the positives it may be
useful to outline my original criticisms.

For me, coming from the radical, process-based education of
Environmental Design the concept of a fixed curriculum of subject
material which was based on the particular (admittedly very
broad) knowledge of Bill Mollison was a mistake. It has led to
permaculture teachers with little knowledge of key- line, for
example, teaching a group of mostly ex-urban small property
holders in the wrong climate zone about broadacre irrigation for
pastoral farming.

The early courses by Bill Mollison appeared to rely on his
encyclopedic knowledge, incredible story telling skills and
challenging charismatic ability to hold the attention of a group
of students through a series of lectures with few educational
aids or relief. Other teachers attempted to do the same with less
than satisfactory results. Some consider that I have an
encyclopedic grasp of technical issues and "gift of the gab" but
I still will not teach more than 50% of a course and I make
extensive use of slides, charts, provided notes and other
materials. I also tend to work with teachers who use more
interactive and participatory teaching methods than I do.

The third and greatest problem with the original PDC's was the
explicit notion that the two week intensive residential course
was a training program for design consultants who would operate
as anarchistic generalists in the way I mentioned before. I and
many others found this a ridiculous proposition and said so
(diplomatically) at the first convergence in 1984. To my (and
other's) amazement Bill Mollison immediately outlined a structure
of two years practical work following the certificate which was
necessary to complete, with documentation submitted to the
Institute for approval to obtain the diploma and become a
graduate member of the Institute. Further he suggested that work
could be in one or more areas including architecture, site
development, media etc. This passed into history as a decision of
the convergence 4 and represented a substantial improvement in
the situation. I was issued with an honorary diploma which I
graciously accepted but continued to pursue my own path
consulting and doing some teaching via lectures, seminars and
workshops, many of them without the label permaculture.

In fact, the laissez faire system initiated by Mollison has not
resulted in huge numbers of charlatans doing incompetent design
for unsuspecting clients. Although many enthusiasts rushed off
from PDC's to consult, most ethically selected themselves out
because they recognised they didn't have the skills, or proceeded
with an on-going self training process where they were notionally
in business but really they were subsidizing their own training
with very low charges, the dole or other income.

This accounts for the limited number of people earning any sort
of a living as consultants who do not also have other design
training and accrediation. When I set up Holmgren Design Services
in 1983, I had already been going through this process myself
(unconsciously) virtually since 1976. I have never had an income
(since College) which was not permaculture related but 92/93 was
the first year that I have paid tax. The constraints of
practicing what you preach, on-going self training and research
and the limits of the market place didn't allow the generation of
incomes much above the poverty line which I find more than
adequate to live on.

Existing Institute accreditation of graduates

The system for issuing of diplomas has never really worked in
Australia for a number of reasons:

1. Failure of teachers to give to students consistent
information about the requirement for "professional" use of
permaculture, and a lack of commitment to the system.

2. Few apprenticeship opportunities for trainees.

3. Poor bioregional networking between teachers and
virtually no opportunities for peer review or working together.
Vries Gravestein's organization of a design exercise for
participants at the 1990 convergence was the best effort I know
of in this regard.

4. Perceived low value of the diploma in obtaining work
compared with institutional qualifications.

Rapid Growth of Permaculture Teaching

There was a rapid expansion of the movement and PDC's in the late
1980's on the back of the a new wave of environmental
consciousness, the tv. release of In Grave Danger of Falling Food
and publication of The Designers Manual. (The publication of
Permaculture One and Two coincided with a previous wave.)

In Victoria numbers of PDC's remained low until 1992.
Increasingly I was approached by teachers and others soliciting
more active involvement. In 1991 I co-taught my first design
course with Hugh Gravestein and Andrew Sheridan on the Far South
Coast of NSW, and in the following year a second with Colin
Endean and Ric Allen in Adelaide and a third with Lea Harrison at
Kangaroo Valley in NSW. After this I felt in a position to design
my own courses which built on the substantial experience gained
in ten years of PDC's but incorporated some of my own material
which I saw as central to permaculture as well as addressing the
problems outlined above.

Elsewhere, especially overseas, experienced and knowledgable
teachers were also developing the course content and methods into
quite divergent directions but perhaps without the intellectual
confidence and freedom which I feel in dealing with the subject.

Over those ten years it was clear that two things had happened.
Some of the inspired brilliance of Mollison's original teachings
has become lost in translation and reduced to sets of
prescriptions and fixed examples. On the other hand teachers had
become more experienced in teaching methods and accessed more
materials while people with established design, horticulture and
other skills were becoming teachers. The laissez-faire system
challenged serious permaculture teachers to work out their own
explanations of permaculture rather than simply relying on Bill
Mollison for all the answers.

The trouble with the improvements in PDC's is the knowledge and
experience of course participants is improving even faster. One
of the great strengths of the PDC has been the open entry
requirements and the mix of persons from school leavers to
practicing professionals, from farmers to grandmothers who come
together for two weeks to learn from the teachers and each other.

However the lack of follow-on structured learning situations for
permaculture has led to some teachers developing advanced design
courses which mostly appear to be either teacher or consultant
training focused, or specialist courses (eg architecture,
horticulture, village design etc) with very little advance in the
depth of treatment of general principles, issues and methods.

It was suggested to me (by Ric Allen and others) that the
material I was teaching was more appropriate to an advanced
design course but I have decided against that move because it
automatically restricts courses to people who have completed a
PDC. Instead I have worked at improving my teaching methods to
make the material more digestible. I have also aimed at getting
more experienced practitioners in a range of fields into courses
so they are in a position to immediately apply the permaculture
framework to their own work, a far faster way getting effective
and competent action than advanced courses.

At the same time I don't want to set up courses for professionals
which can so easily bypass the personal and domestic change at
the heart of permaculture. A mix of people, including younger
ones with little experience but the energy and enthusiasm of
youth, and older sometimes not highly educated people with
experience, act as a foil and balance to the high powered
professionals wrapped up in their work. In this way the PDC has
the potential to span the spectrum of education from school to
post graduate and experience from the kitchen sink to the back
paddock.

Much of the value in the PDC comes from the generally residential
format which gives the opportunity to design a course environment
which will challenge and influence people's personal living and
(most importantly) eating habits so central to permaculture.
Cynics would describe it as "brain-washing" and certainly many
course participants find the experience very personally
challenging. If you put 20 fairly environmentally and socially
aware, but very different, adults together in a new and isolated
environment they will generate some interesting interactions
themselves. Consequently I have a strong commitment to the
residential format, although I recognise the difficulties for
many people in allocating two weeks to the course.

Teaching institution adoption of permaculture

In recent years permaculture has been increasingly incorporated
in vocational training and other institutional education in a
number of ways. Some institutions have provided venues,
organization and sometimes funding for PDC's (generally non-
residential). Permaculture teachers have developed units within
existing (generally horticulture) courses and many teachers in
institutions have incorporated elements of permaculture. At the
post graduate tertiary level I have written material for an
external studies Graduate Diploma in Sustainable Agriculture
through Orange Agricultural College NSW.

These developments are substantial opportunities of the movement
while at the same time threaten to emasculate the radical and
independent nature of permaculture teaching. To some extent these
developments are inevitable but they can be managed for better or
worse.

Some explanation of the approach I took with Orange may help
other permaculture teachers deal with these situations and even
contribute to the movement making a co-ordinated approach to the
prospect/problem.

In the Orange course I did not have to deal with "who would teach
the material" because it was an external studies course. The
college did agree that liaison with students and marking would be
by a graduate of the Permaculture Institute, in this case myself.
The course included a strong process and human change focus as
well as contract learning assessment which allows students to
design their own course to a fair degree.

The biggest conflict was having to accept permaculture being one
of three modules within the Alternative Agriculture unit along
with Organics and Biodynamics. In reluctantly accepting this, the
introduction to the material included a critique of the course
structure and underlying politics pointing out that permaculture
was in fact a wholistic conceptual framework within which
sustainable agriculture could be constructed. I went on to point
out this module was complementary to and more specialised than a
PDC not a post graduate substitute for the PDC. I suggest
organics and biodynamics could be thought of sustainable
production systems within a permaculture framework and made
linkages to other units but also invited the students to use the
permaculture perspective in analysing and critiqing the course as
a whole. In this way I hoped to provide the more perceptive and
radical students with the tools to challenge the assumptions
behind the course (including p/culture).

I believe this approach of a radical unit within a course can be
used as a test for whether the institutions are serious about
wanting to include permaculture in their courses. It also can
alert people that permaculture is much more than the particular
field which they are studying. We need to remember that most
people approach permaculture via a particular field of interest.
For students of horticulture it is natural that they will
initially see permaculture as a radical form of horticulture
which over time can change into a conceptual framework through
which they can organize and develop their horticultural vocation
and their personal life.

Recently, Troy, a student on a six month TAFE horticultural
training program, stayed at Hepburn Permaculture Gardens for work
experience. He was a keen worker, diligent student and obviously
an uncomfortable radical within a fairly conservative course with
conservative students. At the end of the course the whole group
did a tour of Hepburn Permaculture Gardens as an extra-curricular
activity. I believe the work experience and tour opened the eyes
of the students (and teacher) to what "mad" Troy was on about and
allowed Troy a way to express his values and knowledge while
battling it out in the system.

PDC and Movement Accreditation

I want to return to consideration of our own structures because
following permaculture principles I think we need to get our own
house in order before we can in any way deal with control of how
permaculture is incorporated into mainstream education.

I have indicated that much has been achieved through the laissez-
faire approach to permaculture education but there is a need to
make some of the systems and structures we already have work
better.

We need to improve the quality of course to do justice to the
quality and experience of course participants. On going training
workshops in teaching methods are one way but these should be for
people with demonstrable skill and knowledge with natural systems
who need help in communicating their knowledge. As we draw more
people into teaching permaculture who already have teaching
skills, what is more important is more informal residential
programs, work experience and apprenticeships under experienced
practitioners so that teachers are talking about things they do
understand. In this regard I believe the WWOOFing network has
been one of the most successful ways at providing people with
more day-to-day experience of living and working in more
sustainable ways. We need to look at how we might build on and
support that network rather than replicating it.

We need better documentation of good working systems, a job which
innovative practitioners frequently neither have the time nor
skills to do. Trainee teachers could use their documentation
skills (plans, photographs, notes etc) to record these projects
during WWOOFing or other work experience visits to develop their
own portfolios of teaching materials. Practitioners should always
have the opportunity to vet materials and be provided with copies
for their own use and retain copyright control over the use of
their work.

Copying of notes, slides and other materials from teachers should
only occur through an apprenticeship process where the trainee
has a very good grasp of the subject.

Teachers should avoid taking offers to teach courses outside
their bioregional experience unless there are very good
complementary local resources and expertise involved. This may
slow the expansion of the movement but ensure that more of the
sown seeds germinate. Teaching permaculture to a higher standard
requires a rooted connection to local venues, resources and
practitioners which makes globally mobile teaching an extremely
difficult job which will never produce the quality of courses
possible once a network of local expertise and resources is
established.

Recently, my own criteria for agreeing to teach a course in
Israel included that it would be in similar bioregion (not arid
where I have limited expertise), that I would be co-teaching with
permaculture activists with some teaching experience, knowledge
of my approach and long term commitment to the region and time
(weeks) to familiarize with the local situation, people and
resources. I don't want to criticise the valuable pioneering work
which many Australian teachers have done overseas and do not wish
to address the complex issue of permaculture education as
overseas aid. I am simply pointing out the criteria I have used
as I venture into a new area of practice.

We do need a national body as a central register of graduates
and some general guidelines like those set up following the '84
convergence. I would like to see the implication that the PDC as
being a training system for consultant designers or teachers
completely removed. (I do not use the Institute certificates
because they refer to "Permaculture Design Consultants Course").
I would also like to see the categories revised and preferably
reduced in number.

I think it is essential that the details of any peer review and
regulation of persons admitted as graduates (and therefore
independent teachers) be done at the bioregional level. If there
is not the networking and resources at this level then any
attempt to do so at a national level is likely to fail. We should
accept that different bioregional networks may apply the rules
differently but that can reflect real differences in needs and
capacities to regulate. (This already happens at an
international level).

There has been much angst about the proliferation of courses, cut
throat competition and poor standards. A severe analysis could
liken permaculture education to a form of pyramid selling where
the main economic outcome of courses is more courses. These
issues have certainly troubled me but we need to keep several
things in mind:

1. Natural systems undergoing rapid growth based on
available energy tend to be characterised by a lot of
competition, crude systems and poor development of symbiotic or
networked structures. As available resources restrict growth,
selection pressures result in a culling of poorer systems and
models while development of co-operation and networks increase.
With permaculture courses at the moment it is very much a case of
buyer beware and to a fair degree you get what you pay for.

2. On the issue of cost, I think we need to get away from
the idea that courses should be run at rock bottom prices so
everyone can have access to courses. My considerations on cost
include:

Firstly, in our society, for better or worse, the vast
majority of people do not value what they do not pay
for. Improving the quality of courses is pointless if
participants come along because someone else paid for it or the
course represented a cheap holiday. Commercially driven
residential courses in other fields comparable with our $800
Hepburn Design course (limited to 20 people) would cost $2000.

Cross subsidisation is a better way to provide access
for lower income persons (we provide 4 places at $600) while
government or business funded participation is a two edged sword
which should be handled carefully. For subsidised participants we
vet people and require up front payment of deposits by the
individual and would restrict numbers of funded participants.

I think that the private enterprise context of
permaculture education has been one of its strengths and we
should avoid the traps of the social welfare mentality that it is
everybody's right to be able to do a PDC without sacrifices.
Learning by doing, WWOOFing, subsidised introductory courses and
institutional courses which will progressively include
permaculture material are open to everyone, and increasingly
training programs specifically set up for disadvantaged groups
can include permaculture material.

3. I think it is important that experienced teachers do get
some remuneration comensurate with the enormous effort in
presenting a well organized and taught course. However, I think
there are also substantial dangers in establishing a career
structure for teachers which rewards teachers for just teaching.
Having to do other things to stay sane, earn income, maintain
humility, connection to the earth and continually learn are
essential. "Professional teachers" who do not garden or in other
ways face the enlightening and frustrating realities of living
and working with nature are in grave danger of re-inventing all
the problems we seek to overturn.

Barry McNeill said that no one should teach design in an
institution for more that 7 years without going back to
professional practice. In permaculture we need to be much
stricter in our guidelines if we are to retain the integrated
perspective which the wider society is constantly subverting with
its rewards for specialisation and chopping our lives up into
separate compartments.

Permaculture Academy

The announcement of the creation of a Permaculture Academy by
Bill Mollison5 earlier this year has further complicated an
already unclear situation regarding permaculture movement
accreditation. Although many of the intentions behind the academy
are commendable and in fact reflect some of the perspectives
discussed above, I see grave problems with a new structure when
the foundation on which it is based (the PDC and Institute
accrediation of graduates) is so much in need of consolidation.

Unless students are already in close working contact with
supervisors, it is very hard to assess the real practical value
of any work and there will be the tendency to fall back into the
academic mould totally dependent on documentation within a
particular discipline. Surely we should be trying to achieve
effective interdisciplinary assessment of the permaculture
trainees for becoming graduates of the Institute before setting
up higher level assessment processes requiring greater skill and
commitment.

Clearly, the academy will not provide any resources to assist
struggling practitioners and researchers. The main value which
will accrue is an academic qualification which may provide some
credibility within mainstream systems for worthy permacultural
practitioners. However we need to consider the status, or lack
of, confered by being a graduate of the Institute before we
escalate the stakes with investing effort into higher academic
structures.

A mature sustainable community or society can easily deal with
its most capable members having the responsiblity and privilege
to specialize but for us in the vortex of the paridigm shifts we
need to work a lot harder at developing the wholistic, generalist
base from which specialization is possible. After all we are
talking about overcoming a four hundred year cultural heritage of
increasing specialisation to the point of collective and
individual schizophrenia. Study of natural and human systems
teach us that the types of changes needed come about through a
radical reintegration at the bottom within the life of each
individual, not through some moderation of excesses back to some
supposed balance.

Relativism and dogma

Through my constant reference to the need for a radical approach,
it is essential that this not be interpreted as an adherence to a
set of rigid principles which very quickly become dogma. To the
degree to which permaculture might be seen as a "faith" it is a
highly relativistic one, there being few if any absolutes.
Everything is context dependent.

For example, some might say that use of herbicides is
unacceptable in any situation and regard such rules as reflecting
a radical approach. I see the one off use of a herbicide
(depending on which one) for the establishment of direct seeded
or planted trees in their thousands essential to the
stabilisation of broad acre cropping and pastoral lands and is
very different from annual spraying of roadsides by councils or
annual spraying under orchard trees. Energy analysis and other
forms of accounting suggest a great difference between these two.

Where we are uncertain about when and how to compromise on a
particular rule or principle we should test the rule ourselves to
see if we can achieve the ideal and carefully suggest criteria
others might consider in making their own decisions.

There is a paradox behind many of the ideas and challenges
presented in this article. I have been suggesting that
permaculturalists need to go further in applying permaculture
principles and be more aware of how we fall back on conventional
more deeply embedded learning. This old learning makes us
suceptible to the subtle reward systems within society. It is
these rewards which result in the solutions being recast as new
forms of old problems.
.pa
On the other hand we should never forget that in nature things
are relative and context dependent so we have to forego the
certainty of a neat set of absolute rules. My greatest fears
about the movement are the development of dogma and sacred cows.
Some might say I am obsessed by attacking sacred cows (no offence
to my Hare friends) especially those born of my own work.

We walk on a knife edge between the seduction of a defunct
cultural heritage and the stifling bonds of dogma and even
fascism. Constant self critical appraisal and the grounding of
working with nature are the only ways I know to maintain the
internal balance.


David Holmgren
Hepburn, Victoria, December 1993.


References

1. Thompson, W.I. In Jnl. of the New Alchemy Institute Stephen
Green Press (can anyone supply date - it's an early one?)

2. Mander, J. Four Arguments For The Elimination of Television
Quill 1977.

3. Holmgren, D. Creating A History Of The Search For Sustainable
Landuse In Australia, unpublished paper 1993

4. Permaculture Institute News in Permaculture Journal no. 19,
Feb. '85.

5. The Creation of a Permaculture Academy in Permaculture
International Journal no. 47, June '93.

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