permaculture

["Darrell E. Frey" <defrey@bioshelter.com>]

Well said Jason!

Darrell E. Frey
Three Sisters Farm
defrey@bioshelter.com
www.bioshelter.com

Author; Bioshelter Market Garden: A Permaculture Farm. New Society 
Publishing, 2011

On Thu, 7 Jul 2016 13:47:19 -0600, Jason Gerhardt  wrote:

      In large part, I think the PDC certification problem revolves around
framing. We haven't done a great job at framing what the PDC is, in both
advertisements and in the PDC itself. Looking at most course advertisements
the PDC seems to be a long list of skills to learn ranging from natural
building to food forests. Are we really training people to be
competent/professional natural builders and food foresters, among all the
other things on the list? Not in my experience. So what ARE we doing? Toby
said it really well that "the PDC's main function is to get people thinking
in permaculture terms". I think we need to examine what that really means. 
A fundamental question for me is why do many people who take a PDC decide
to teach the PDC or become landscape designers? Sure it's a great way to
force oneself to practice and experience all that permaculture has to
offer, but in the end it's not thinking with a permaculture lens as far as
I'm concerned; it's just monkey see, monkey do. 

Permaculture and the PDC are all about story to me. We train people to be
designers starting with tracking the patterns of the stories all around
them, and within them. As a permaculture teacher I feel I am narrating the
story of what it means to be a living organism in an ecosystem. I have to
tell the stories of climate function and hydrology and soil science and
social history to effectively narrate what it means to be alive on this
planet. The curriculum then builds into how to harness or deflect these
forces to create a civilization that is integrated rather than
disintegrating. Where I think we are lacking is in guiding people in a way
that they can integrate THEMSELVES into that greater story. Do we give them
a new story to live out (you be a farmer, you be a natural builder)? That's
not how I would approach designing for a client, so it's certainly not how
I'm gonna teach people to be pattern readers and how to design. Giving
people a new story to live is just the same old narrative that anybody has
ever been given (you be a banker, you be a drug dealer). Where the PDC can
shine more is in helping people discover their own story. I ask my students
to ask themselves where they come from, what they care about and why, what
experiences they've had and how that affects who they are, etc. I require
students to look at their own life, to map their own sectors and zones,
analyze their own element, so they can place themselves in right
relationship to everything else. It seems to me if we approached the PDC
through that lens we'd have a lot more people discovering their own
passions and incorporating permaculture into the world that way. THAT is
thinking through a permaculture lens. It's a long process, and there is no
promise of a pot of gold at the end, but it actually helps people, rather
than just giving people some new thing to do for a while as a "certified
designer or teacher". 

We are again at a point in human society where people are fundamentally
questioning on a large scale the stories told from the powers that be. My
question is, when do we get guided through a process that helps us discover
the powers that be dormant inside us? When do we discover our own stories?
I actually think permaculture and the PDC can be really good at that (and
quite subversive to the status quo too). Mollison said, permaculture is
basically about putting things in the right place. So ask your students to
design their own lives so they can understand where the right place is for
them. In my experience teaching this way I get few who want to teach the
PDC or design professionally after the course. They realize more how much
they don't know, rather than how much they do know. It leads them to be
curious, to seek further, to think critically, and to really try to arrange
things thoughtfully, starting with themselves. It leads them inward rather
than sending them to their resume to try and look good outward. 

Jason Gerhardt

On Sat, Oct 23, 2010 at 11:53 AM, Toby Hemenway
wrote:

> On Oct 22, 2010, at 4:24 PM, Cory Brennan wrote:
>
> Every PDC I know of gives a certificate at the end of the course saying
> "Permaculture Design Course" and none of them say "trainee." I was told by
> my teacher that I should apprentice for minimum two years to become a
> teacher, but not a designer. 
>
>
> There's no restriction on doing design work. Get out and design, no matter
> whether you've taken a PDC or whatever. And design, and design some more. 
> The issue is in calling oneself "certified," as the paper you get is simply
> a certificate of completion of the PDC, not of certification as a designer
> (I'd hate to think there are certificates out there saying "certified Pc
> designer", but then, most people just make up their own. I use the one
> Mollison created, via the Permaculture Institute USA). It seems bizarre for
> someone who has done one team design project in a class to say they are a
> certified designer. 
>
> And I totally agree that BIll set up many policies in very vague ways, and
> as Paul and other say, plenty of people claim the certificate makes them a
> certified designer. There are currently a number of efforts, in Oz, NZ, UK,
> and US, among others, to clarify this and correct it. The comments here so
> far all suggest a high level of integrity, which is the saving grace for
> all this. 
>
> Paul's Java story points out a related issue. Java certification, for one,
> claims from the get-go to be a certification program, and the PDC was never
> intended to be that. I think some people engaged in what I call "resume
> bloat" and started saying they were certified after a PDC because it sounds
> very grand, and it caught on. 
>
> And the Java program ends with an exam. There is no exam in the PDC. The
> design project is not very rigorously "graded." I know there are rare times
> when a PDC teacher says a design presentation is too lame to warrant a
> PDC, but that almost never happens. You show up for the project, you get
> your certificate. That's not really grading. PDC teachers all recognize
> that the design project is a student project and is not graded with
> anything at all approaching the rigor of a project that might actually get
> built as designed. I don't think this is so much a weakness of a PDC as it
> is proof that the PDC is a merely an intro to permaculture, and underscores
> that nobody gains enough experience in a PDC to actually do competent
> design work. The PDC's main function is to get people thinking in
> permaculture terms. 
>
> Toby
> http://patternliteracy.com
>
>
>
>
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