permaculture

[Marsha Hanzi <hanzibra@svn.com.br>]

In respect to Permaculture in schools, I would like to warmly recommend
"Agroforests for Children" by Carolyn Nuttall where the implantation of
an agroforest by the children slowly transformed the whole curriculum
into an organic process where the children took the initiative and the
teacher just helped them find what they were wanting to learn.  It may
be a key  to how to transform linear fragmented teaching into something
more global and meaningful with a minimum of cost and upeheaval...  We
are translating this book into Portuguese and hope to offer it to all
schools here (Brazil) in the near future...

Marsha Hanzi
Instituto de Permacultura da Bahia
Brazil

John Schinnerer wrote:
> 
> Aloha,
> 
> Great questions!
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Paul and Sandra [SMTP:crows@tkc.att.ne.jp]
>         >...What are the tools of social and personal power that are learned
> not through the >curriculum, but through the actual social power structures
> of a typical grade school?
> 
>         Off the top of my head & experience:  passivity, uniformity,
> hierarchy; deference/obedience to arbitrary authority ('might makes right');
> suppression of emotionings, individuality, creativity; arbitrary
> regimentation (time, age, gender, space); separation of functional wholes
> into non-functional parts (to quote Gregory Bateson, "Break the patterns
> that connect the elements of learning and you necessarily destroy all
> quality.").  There's much more, of course, but that's enough for now...
> >
>         >...What does permaculture look like in education?  Has anyone seen
> models?  Has anyone >seen site analysis?  Has anyone seen designs?  I have
> seen a few examples of salad >dressing and installed one ongoing projects
> myself.  Are their outreach programs for >schools?  What about accessing
> teacher trainings?  What about permaculture club along >side the Junior
> Statesmen of America.  What an amazing microcosm for urban >permaculture, a
> much needed expansion of a movement which tends to neglect the broad >belly
> of the beast if favor of a personal rural get away.
> 
>         In a heady vein, I'm thinking along the lines of "what might
> 'education' look like if designed using permaculture principles?"  If I
> understand you correctly, part of your question is about that and part is
> about plugging permaculture ideas into existing 'education'?  This latter is
> certainly a good idea, but I wouldn't stop there or I might get stuck (see
> Bateson quote above).  I ponder "is it possible to 'grow' permaculture using
> non-permaculture?"  Getting permaculture "units" and "sound bites" into
> current forms of 'education' or 'media' does not alter those underlying
> patterns of disconnected "units" and "sound bites," for example.
> 
>         In a more practical vein - at Hilo High School in Hilo, Hawai'i,
> there is a mini-ag program where students do hands-on work, often with
> traditional Hawaiian staple crops and systems.  There is an "alternative
> school" a bit north of Hilo where the kids do even more of this sort of
> thing - they partly feed themselves on what they grow and as far as I know
> spend a lot more time hands-on, including integration of normally divided
> 'subjects'.  A teacher friend of mine whose 'subject' is math drags in all
> kinds of real-world connections to 'teach' math - his kids learn statistics
> using AIDS data, and scale and proportion and so on while designing
> outrigger canoe models that they actually build.  Another friend, a CSAP
> counselor, took a group of her kids to Kaho'olawe to work with the
> restoration efforts - which could and may already be benefiting from
> permaculture methods...and in all the above examples, there is a strong
> cultural thread for the participants in that the places, the plants and the
> methods and systems emerge or re-emerge from re-coalescing cultural roots.
> To me, anything that re-integrates what has been separated is valuable and
> 'permaculture-like' in its potential to shift the underlying culture.
> 
>         John Schinnerer