permaculture

[Robyn Francis <erda@nor.com.au>]

On 26/7/07 10:40 AM, "Toby Hemenway" <toby@patternliteracy.com> wrote:

> The original certificates
> from Mollison say, in some cases, that the holder "has successfully
> completed a permaculture design course" and other certificates from him
> say "is a permaculture design trainee." Somehow in later iterations by
> other teachers, usually a few generations removed from Bill, people got
> the idea that a PDC made you a professional, certified designer.
> Seventy-two hours is the equivalent of two college classes but with no
> homework, which is not enough to make anyone a designer. Bill has been
> very firm about this, and most of the old-school teachers feel the same
> way. I believe it's generally thought that getting a diploma from the
> Permaculture Institute after two years of study under a mentor is what
> is required to call yourself a certified designer (right, Scott or Robyn
> or any of you long-time Pc teachers?).

Correct Tobi,
The course qualifies one only as a trainee designer and it is generally
deemed that at least 2 years work is a minimal requirement to call oneself a
designer. I'm not sure what the current Pc Institute diploma requirements
are but to get a diploma in "design' one had to complete a minimum of 10
designs. (I now operate with the AQF Accredited Permaculture Training - APT-
certificates & diploma and include the PDC as a part of the foundation
training)
There's also inflated promotion of the PDC (Permaculture Design COURSE) as
Permaculture Design Certificate, but the paper issued at the end of the
course is simply a certificate of COMPLETION not an actual Certificate award
- there's a big difference between the two. The APT Cert IV which trains
people in basic urban & rural design and community development work is a
full-time 2 semester course of 800 hours and I'm confident to call these
graduates "designers".

Ciao
Robyn