permaculture

[Pacific Edge Permaculture + Media <pacedge@magna.com.au>]

> From: <permed@nor.com.au>
> Reply-To: "permaculture" <permaculture@franklin.oit.unc.edu>
> Date: Fri, 13 Jul 01 08:36:53 -0000
> To: "permaculture" <permaculture@franklin.oit.unc.edu>
> Subject: Re: permaculture trademark alert


> To be a registered teacher with the institute you have to
> teach the entire designers manual, apparently it doesn't matter how badly
> you teach it, but if you send in a course outline containing all the
> contents of the designers manual you should be right.

It has been pointed out to me by qualified adult education teachers that
such a 'content  driven' curriculum is educationally unsound.

The modern approach is the 'competency based' curricula in which the
competencies (skills) necessary are identified first and the curricula then
drawn up to pass on those skills. Students demonstrate their knowledge of
the skills.

This, however, offers a needed challenge to permaculture teachers in
identifying the skills that a PDC should impart. And this in turn leads to
the question: a design course for what situation and circumstances?

I live in a large city, so my answer would be that any design course taught
here should be relevant to contemporary urban life in a global city...  and
that means something different to what appears in the Designer's Manual. Not
completely different, but with more time spent on some things, less time on
others and not teaching some of the book's contents while adding other
subject areas.

People living in rural areas and focusing on an agricultural livelihood
might want a curriculum relevant to what they do... which would be different
to what I see as relevant to the city. Those intending to working in aid in
developing countries would certainly need skills and compentencies presently
absent from the Designer's Manual.

I guess what I am saying is that we need not a single curriculum, but a
number of curricula. Then we could offer choice to intending students,
confident that they would all receive certain training (such as the
permaculture ethics and principles) in common but would have a course that
more closely met their needs.

I know there is merit in the Institute's notion of having a common
curriculum, but I continue to believe that a common core of subjects with a
range of other choices attached would get beyond the present rural focus of
the PDC curriculum.

...Russ Grayson