Tuesday, December 6, 2022

We Must Cultivate Our Gardens

 This week is a good time to come back from my 2-month absence I reckon. I am working (and even getting paid for it) and studying, but have a wee bit of time to post. This week in my master's studies we were only assigned a discussion topic and a portfolio topic for personal reflection. Usually there's a writing assignment as well. I managed to combine the two assignments in what I think is a clever way (scuse me whilst I pat myself on the back). 

The first is the discussion topic. We're halfway through the course "Living and Learning Globally" now and it has so far been only about conservation, saving the planet and such. It's a topic about which I feel strongly, but I was expecting a bit of a bird course about teaching outside your country, being culturally sensitive and that sort of thing which, of course, I would ace. Turns out this course has been the toughest of the 6 I've taken! Every week we're assigned a book worth of reading, the usual writing, grading, groupwork, etc., and THEN some extra material on the state of our planet, the sustainable development goals of the UN and stuff like that. 

The first part of this post was an assignment I was none too thrilled about. I don't like rubrics because, like standardized tests, I find they focus students' efforts on passing, not learning. We were ordered to make a rubric to evaluate students who were doing projects like the ones in the YouTube vid about Indian Ocean region kids conservation projects. I designed a rubric for a garden project that I hoped would encourage learning. Here it is:


                                               Garden-Based Learning Rubric

The part that most impressed me in the video about the Indian Ocean region’s eco-schools was the garden-based learning project. In the past I have read about garden-based learning projects and actually experimented with them on my own a few times. I believe it is a good example of experiential learning, ecological literacy, agricultural discovery, environmental awareness, hands-on science, cooperation/collaboration, moral improvement through hard work, and possibly most importantly a chance to form a connection with nature that will grow into responsible stewardship and conservation of living things on our planet. I particularly liked the way Matthew Teeluck, a student in the video, said that he shared what he was learning at school with his parents who don’t know much about environmental issues (Eco-Schools, 2018).

I decided that if I had to make a rubric for a future project such as this, it would be divided into three parts: two parts formative and one part summative evaluation. The first will be my observation of cooperation and communication between the groups. Though the project will be about 90% hands-on, it will require effective and efficient collaboration with a partner for things like dividing responsibilities equitably. Planting, tilling, fertilizing, watering, weeding, and harvesting duties must be shared. There will be a variety of vegetables to choose from as well, so that choice me be arrived at democratically. Finally, the fruits (or vegetables) of the students’ labors must be divided up reasonably between the members of each group.

The second part would consist of a written report done by the students (ideally in teams of two) on how gardening is a good way to help the environment. In-class lessons paired with the garden project will include gardening virtues such as cleaning the air; benefitting the soil; lowering trips to the grocery store; reducing imported produce; composting and using your own waste; benefits to bees, worms, birds, spiders, insects; reduction of carbon footprint; reduction of global warming; boosting physical health through exercise and nutrition; stimulating mental health through peace and beauty; and lowering noise pollution. Any combination of five of these or any other valid benefits to gardening will earn the group full marks on their essay.

Part three will be based on what kind of connection the students form with nature. This may seem a lot for a teacher to expect from students, however, as of March, 2021 over 83 million Tamagotchi electronic, egg-shaped pets had been sold. If millions of people can form bonds with those, I think connections with living plants should not be considered an unreasonable thing to ask. Maria Montessori was an advocate of garden-based education. In “The Absorbent Mind” she said that when a student learns that the life of a plant depends on his/her care, it becomes more than a lesson, it becomes a mission (Subramanium, 2002). Part three will be a measure of whether the groups just thought of their plants as schoolwork, or if they took a genuine interest in their survival and success.

Cooperation and Communication

5.

Students exhibit above average skills in democratic decision making and sharing.

4.

Students show good skills in decision making and sharing.

3.

Students show average cooperation and decision making skills.

2.

Students have some difficulty in working with one another and making decisions equitably.

1.

Students do not succeed in working well with one another.

Conservationism

(Written report)

Students mention five or more environmental advantages of gardening.

Students mention four environmental advantages of gardening.

Students mention three environmental advantages of gardening.

Students mention two environmental advantages of gardening.

Students mention one or fewer environmental advantages of gardening.

Connection

Students show an obvious connection to nature.

Students show a palpable connection to nature.

Students show some connection to nature.

Students show very little connection to nature.

Students show no connection to nature.

  

References

Eco-Schools. (2018, December 5). Eco-schools Indian Ocean: from schools to communities [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/ofvcL7MZ4XY

Subramanium, A. (2002). Garden-based learning in basic education: a historical review. UC Berkely Monograph Series. https://doi.org/https://littlegreenthumbs.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/GardenBasedLearninginBaseicEducation_4H.pdf

The second assignment of the week was more in my wheelhouse. It was a quote from Voltaire that some of you have probably heard. His epigrams could be said to be the most recognized of his contributions to literature and this was one that was well known: "Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers." We were told to contemplate the quote and relate it to our teaching. I did that while also relating it to the other writing assignment of the week. Here's what I wrote:


                                              Question Everything

Voltaire said, “Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers.”

            What is your initial reaction to this quote?

The first thing I thought of when I read this quote was the two-word title of this paper and the best advice I have ever received or given: question everything. I received it from my 17th century literature professor Joyce Forbes, and it summarized quite succinctly the renewed hunger for knowledge and the vast supplies of it to which, at the time, my university education was opening my eyes. That, in turn, reminded me of the Socrates quote, “I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing” (Kreeft, 2002). The more I question things, the more I learn, and the more I learn, the more I learn I need to learn. Learning enough to satisfy my hunger is a lifelong challenge I cannot satisfy, but at which I will zealously fail. To be complacent in one’s knowledge is a sorry state I rejected early in life, but intellectual stagnation is a fate for which many volunteer, and this led me to my deeper reaction to this quote.

            What is your deeper reaction to this quote?

Consider the source. Voltaire was a significant contributor to the 18th century Enlightenment. He declared himself a member of the “party of humanity” and waged war on the twin Hydras of fanaticism and superstition to which the European social order of his time had fallen victim to their intellectual endarkening, in his opinion (Shank, 2022). His best known work, “Candide,” which is subtitled, “or The Optimist,” is a savagely told satirical tale of an ignorant optimist upon whom the world of horrors is unleashed. Candide, the title character, grows up in a castle and learns that “all is best in this best of possible worlds” (Boyd, 2017).  This is the philosophy taught to him by his tutor Pangloss. “Pan” and “glossa” are Greek words for “all” and “tongue” respectively. I will not get deeply into the plot, but Voltaire’s life (and mine) were similarly blissfully ignorant and optimistic in youth until knowledge of the world was revealed through experience and questioning comfortable positivity.  Voltaire was, and remains to this day, a hero to those who would promote skepticism, critical reason and political resistance to achieve intellectual liberty and advance progressive projects of modernization and reform (Shank, 2022). This led to an even deeper reaction to this quote.

            What is your even deeper reaction to this quote?

It seems to me that the good people who make up the majority in our world seem to be held in a similar miasma of false optimism and ignorant inaction as Voltaire perceived the people of Europe to be under during his day. In no aspect more than the main subject of this course: global competence. People seem to be kept globally incompetent with a Panglossian optimism about the state of our planet complicated by environmental and ecological illiteracy. In Voltaire’s day it might have (or might not have) been more a question of philosophy whereas in modern times the Panglosses of the world are captains of industry who want to wring every resource out of the world before someone else can, with little to no concern about destroying the planet that is the only place where they can use those resources. In a word, they are apocalyptically antisocial and need to be subverted. These are the people who are telling us that they have all the answers when their one and only question is, “How can I maximize my profit?” When will we realize they are all tongue?

            How do you relate this quote to active/inquiry-based learning and assessment of student learning outcome?

The answer to that question is in the word “inquiry,” isn’t it? As a teacher in a world where people are assets of industry and beholden to capitalist sophistry, we need to encourage our students to disregard the false answers and concentrate on the question from whence they all emanate. And we need to teach our students to question that question. Is life all about profit? Is profit just about resources? What are the things that will profit most and from which the most will profit? Soon the idea of profit will take on a less industrial and more egalitarian meaning. Soon we will realize that we profit more from brotherhood, compassion, and empathy than competition, avarice, and violence. Soon we will realize worldwide similarities abound and Robert Putnam’s idea of bonding social capital will replace money as capital and a novel capitalism will be formed (Claridge, 2018). If we can teach our students to fight extremism and radicalism with harmony and mutual respect, they can be the Voltaires of our era. We must protect our own planet, or as Candide might say, “We must cultivate our own garden” (Boyd, 2017). Our students can save our planet. What a learning outcome that could be!

 

References

Boyd, C. (2017). Voltaire's Candide is the hero we need. Medium. https://doi.org/https://clarkboyd.medium.com/voltaires-candide-is-the-hero-we-need-59e1c9e9292

Claridge, T. (2018). What is bonding social capital? Social Capital Research. https://doi.org/https://www.socialcapitalresearch.com/what-is-bonding-social-capital/

Kreeft, P. (2002). Philosophy 101 by Socrates: an introduction to philosophy via Plato's apology: forty things philosophy is according to history's first and wisest philosopher. San Francisco: Ignatius Press.

Shank, J. B. (2022). Voltaire (E. N. Zalta, Ed.). The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://doi.org/https://plato.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/encyclopedia/archinfo.cgi?entry=voltaire

 

What do ya figure?  


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