Growing Growers: Transformative Sustainability Learning (TSL) at UBC Farm as Embodied Change January 30, 2015 UBC Farm Symposium

Soil organic matter and composting fundamentals

At a department store in Kyoto One of my friends bought a beetle For his son, seven-years-old. A few hours later The boy brought his dead bug To a hardware store, asking "Change battery, please?“ -Nanao Sakaki

Dominant Pedagogical Model Transmissive – Neither the student nor the setting inform the educational experience. The teacher transmits information into the student Evidence-based disciplines dominate over other forms of knowledge such as intuition, common sense, creativity, ethics, memory, spirituality

“This model of rationalism has led to the search for value-free knowledge, a goal of efficiency and a focus on technology… It is absent of the human condition, devoid of story, attachment and meaning.” (Phelan, 2004)

What is Education For? “It is worth noting that [environmental problems are] not the work of ignorant people. [They are] largely the result of work by people with BAs, BSs, LLBs, MBAs, and PhDs. Similarly, “the Germans were the best educated people on Earth, but their education did not serve as an adequate barrier to barbarity. What was wrong with their education? – Eli Wiesel: "It emphasized theories instead of values, concepts rather than human beings, abstraction rather than consciousness, answers instead of questions, ideology and efficiency rather than conscience.“ “The same could be said of the way our education has prepared us to think about the natural world. --David Orr, “What is Education For?” 1990

“More of the same kind of education will only compound our problems. This is not an argument for ignorance, but rather a statement that the worth of education must now be measured against the standards of decency and human survival…It is not education that will save us, but education of a certain kind.” -David Orr

From David’s Orr’s Six Proposed Principles of Modern Education: I would like to propose that the way learning occurs is as important as the content of particular courses. Process is important for learning. Courses taught as lecture courses tend to induce passivity. Indoor classes create the illusion that learning only occurs inside four walls isolated from what students call without apparent irony the "real world."

I sincerely believe that for the child, and for the parent seeking to guide him, it is not half so important to know as to feel. If facts are the seeds that later produce knowledge and wisdom, then the emotions and the impressions of the senses are the fertile soil in which the seeds must grow. … Once the emotions have been aroused — a sense of the beautiful, the excitement of the new and the unknown, a feeling of sympathy, pity, admiration or love — then we wish for knowledge about the subject of our emotional response. Once found, it has lasting meaning. It is more important to pave the way for the child to want to know than to put him on a diet of facts he is not ready to assimilate. Rachel Carson, The Sense of Wonder (1965)

Transformative Sustainability Learning (Sipos, Battisti, and Grimm, 2006):

Transformational Sustainability Learning as Globally Significant “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and go do it. Because what the world needs are people who have come alive.” - Howard Thurman Transformational pedagogy lifts up vocational life as the individual and collective way through which we can care for the Earth.

From David’s Orr’s Six Myths of Modern Education: The plain fact is that the planet does not need more "successful" people. But it does desperately need more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers, and lovers of every shape and form. It needs people who live well in their places. It needs people of moral courage willing to join the fight to make the world habitable and humane. And these needs have little to do with success as our culture has defined it.

“The care of the earth is our most ancient and most worthy and, after all, our most pleasing responsibility. To cherish what remains of it, and to foster its renewal, is our only legitimate hope. We cannot exempt one place from ruin of another. All places are connected. To live sustainably, to live rightly requires us to each do ‘good work.’ Good work is always modestly scaled, for it cannot ignore either the nature of the places, or the difference between places. There is much good work to be done, we must begin to do it.” – Wendell Berry

Reflection Activity What is education for? In what ways is transformational pedagogy (TSL) already being utilized within the current higher education model? How can it be developed further? What makes you ‘come alive?’ What gifts can you offer? Let your deepest instincts be your guide.