permaculture

[Michael Pilarski <friendsofthetrees@yahoo.com>]

Scott,

I appreciate you writing your latest musings. It is good food for thought and 
for discussion within permaculture circles.  Of course the discussion has 
been ongoing but your sally this time elucidated your position in more depth. 

I am with you in much of your thinking, but certainly not all.  I too have 
been horrified at how short some of the courses are being offered these days. 
 In the old days we really turned up our eyebrows at new teachers on the 
block who were offering 10 day courses.  There are only a few courses in the 
world that do 21 days as you are suggesting.  In fact I am not sure anyone 
offers a 21-day course? the Bullock Brothers pdc on Orcas island is a 3-week 
course but there are two days off during the course.  My first pdc I took in 
1982  was 3 weeks long, but we had 2 days off during the course. these long 
courses generally have large price tags on them.  This makes them 19 day 
courses in my eyes. 

Just this week I made a list of all the on-line permaculture design courses I 
could find out about. There are about 10 on the list with some comments.  I 
posted it on the NAPC Hackpad document site. and will see about getting it on 
my website in the next couple days. www.friendsofthetrees.net  My opinion 
after doing my research are that there are some really good on-line pdc 
programs out there and some not so good ones. 

These curriculum/certification discussions are one reason I think that the 
North American Permaculture Convergence will be useful.  It isn't that there 
is going to be one way to do it.  There are, and will continue to be, many 
ways to run permaculture design courses.  Their quality will vary.  Those of 
us who have experience teaching many pdcs will have more informed opinions 
than people who have experienced only one or several. Nonetheless, everyone 
that has taken one or more pdc will have opinions and some of them will be 
valid.  When a lot of us get together and share opinions a greater group 
gestaldt (if that is the right work) or group understanding develops.  There 
will still be differences of opinions but everyone (or most everyone) will be 
clearer what the differences are.  I propose that we have a pdc curriculum 
panel and group discussion at NAPC for those interested.  

I hope that all of you who have strong opinions will show up at NAPC and 
share your perspective.

I suspect that what will develop is several certifying organizations who will 
have specific standards.  This may be similar to the proliferation of 
"organic food" certifying organizations. Some certifications will carry more 
weight than others.  Some people will continue to go their own way and offer 
pdcs with no certifying organization to back them up. People who want to take 
pdcs have choices. They should do their research and check out reputations, 
etc before plunking their money down. 

A few thoughts by Michael Pilarski





On Tuesday, January 21, 2014 5:41 PM, Scott Pittman <scott@permaculture.org> 
wrote:
 
Jason,
Thanks for your support.  Kelly and I have been battling with Vlad for the
past month on LinkedIn and it has been exhausting!!

Hope to see you this spring.

Scott

"To change something build a new model that makes the existing model
obsolete"  Buckminster Fuller
-----Original Message-----
From: permaculture-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org
[mailto:permaculture-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Jason Gerhardt
Sent: Tuesday, January 21, 2014 3:06 PM
To: permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: Re: [permaculture] Musings III

Scott,
Thank you for your diligence in documenting your IPC experience (especially
while being incredibly busy). The Musings lll is very well put and
articulated! I completely share your concerns. I feel the PDC can be so
powerful when really done well that it is completely worth guarding. I hope
we can get some of this work accomplished at the North American
Permaculture Convergence. Meanwhile, we'll keep plugging away at PI USA.
Enjoy the jungles,
Jason

-- 

PO Box 4355
Boulder, CO 80306
720-496-9744
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https://plus.google.com/+Avantgeared
Permaculture: -- portal to an expanding global network of landtech pioneers 
-- who are designing ecological land use systems with integrated elements for 
synergy, sustainability, regeneration and enhanced nature-compatible human 
habitat
>From toby@patternliteracy.com  Wed Jan 22 15:10:29 2014
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Scott-

This is excellent. Thank you for putting it together.

Have you posted this anywhere that is publicly available, on FaceBook or on a 
blog or website? If not, I encourage you to, and I would like to link to it 
and direct people to it. I think it needs to be shared widely. I'm posting 
this on LL's list and I hope you will respond here so that more of us can get 
a link to it.

Toby
http://patternliteracy.com


On Jan 21, 2014, at 11:43 AM, Scott Pittman wrote:

> 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
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> How to permaculture your urban lifestyle
> http://www.ipermie.net 
> Avant Geared  http://www.avantgeared.com
> https://plus.google.com/+Avantgeared
> Permaculture: -- portal to an expanding global network of landtech pioneers 
> -- who are designing ecological land use systems with integrated elements 
> for synergy, sustainability, regeneration and enhanced nature-compatible 
> human habitat