permaculture

[Jason Gerhardt <jasongerhardt@gmail.com>]

I'm glad that post made sense Darrell, Lawrence. Sometimes it's hard to
know. Lawrence, feel free to use whatever you like from that post and
attribute it to me. I'd be honored. I also thank you for maintaining this
list. When it's really engaging it can be so good. The recent biochar
thread was eye opening for me.

Declan, I basically agree with Mollison about the uneasy marriage between
permaculture and higher education. Being one week out of my professorial
career as a permaculture teacher of nearly 6 years at a private liberal
arts school as well as having taught at land grant colleges and state
universities, I found the headaches to be more difficult than the high
points, and there were plenty of very high points. I'd say it depends on
the institution and the attitude of the professor though. I'm well aware
that my anti-establishment attitude got in the way sometimes, as I suspect
was the case with Bill too. Ultimately, what bothered me most was the fact
that higher ed institutions are a business. I just want to teach and bring
the utmost of passion to it. I also couldn't shake the fact that student
debt is the largest form of debt in existence. It's exclusive, and it's a
sham, built on the faulty foundation of perpetual growth industrial
economics whose promises are crumbling before our very eyes, and have been
for a very long time. It's hard to teach about economics through a
permaculture lens when the majority of students in front of me are uneasily
wading into massive debt just to be there. Now could we design education
institutions in different ways that aren't based on exclusion, going into
debt, federal funding, the politics of business, etc? You bet. There are
good examples to pattern and improve off of too.

Jason Gerhardt

On Thu, Jul 7, 2016 at 6:23 PM, Darrell E. Frey <defrey@bioshelter.com>
wrote:

> 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 <jasongerhardt@gmail.com>
> 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 <toby@patternliteracy.com>
> 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
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > permaculture mailing list
> > permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
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> >
> >
>
>
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