Words&Dirt

“The order of a conventional row-crop garden is the order of the machine.  This regimentation invites us to view plants as mechanical food factories.  We fuel them with fertilizer, service them with rakes and hoes, and measure their production in bushels, bins, and tons.  We view the plants as part of our dominion.  In a guild, we are but one living being among many others; and, like all the other animals enfolded by this community, we nurture and are nurtured by an almost-wild place.  We prune and cull, as do the deer and mice.  The fruit we leave does not rot on the ground to breed disease; it is gladly devoured by our many companions.  We turn over a bit of soil, and the worms turn over yet more.  We participate rather than rule.”

––Gaia’s Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture, by Toby Hemenway, loc. 4521

“The essential purpose of the public schools, the reason they receive public funding, is to teach young people the rights and responsibilities of citizens.  As citizens, they will be expected to discuss and deliberate issues, to choose our leaders, to take an active role in their communities, and to participate in civic affairs.  A secondary purpose was to strengthen our economy and our culture by raising the intelligence of our people and preparing them to lead independent lives as managers, workers, producers, consumers, and creators of ideas, products, and services.  A third purpose is to endow every individual with the intellectual and ethical power to pursue his or her own interests and to develop the judgment and character to survive life’s vicissitudes.

Today, policy makers think of education solely in terms of its secondary purposes.  They speak of children as future global competitors.  They sometimes refer to children in rather ugly terms as ‘human assets,’ forgetting that they are unique people and they are not fungible.  They want all students to be ‘college and career ready.’  They tend to speak only of preparation for the workforce, not education for citizenship.  But this is misguided.  Workforce training may take place in schools; it may take place in the workplace.  It is not unimportant.  Nor is college preparation unimportant.  But getting ready for college is not the central purpose of education.  Nor is workforce training.  The central purpose of education is to prepare everyone to assume the rights and responsibilities of citizenship in a democracy.”

––Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools, by Diane Ravitch, loc. 4820