“The core of permaculture is design. Design
is a connection between things … It’s the very opposite of what we are taught
in school. Education takes everything and pulls it apart and makes no connections
at all. Permaculture makes the connection ...” Bill Mollison
“We can think of ourselves not as teachers
but as gardeners. A gardener does not ‘grow’ flowers; he tries to give them
what he thinks they need and they grow by themselves.” John Holt
I love gardening, and I love my children. I love watching
things grow. But all too often confusing messages that have filtered down
through generations of well-meaning adults get in the way of plain old common
sense. I find myself trying to bend the plants and the children to suit
my needs, often distorting their natural shape, twisting and bending them,
destroying the very essence of liveliness within them....
Luckily I found John Holt and Bill Mollison, two wise mentors who dared
to challenge the status quo and founded sustainable alternative movements:
Mollison permaculture and Holt unschooling. On the surface, they appear
to be talking about two different things, however, both talk about and celebrate
the nature of learning, and the importance of relationships, connections,
and patterns.
Education no longer serves the noble cause of enabling and empowering
individuals, neither does it truly recognize their intrinsic intelligence
and worth. As a self-serving bureaucracy, it focuses primarily on its own
survival, refusing to accept accountability for the results imposed on young
people.
Home education was in its infancy here in Australia in 1985. Hesitant
and uncertain that I had the right to “experiment” on my children and unsure
that teaching them from home would be successful, I made the decision to
liberate them from the tired, broken-down education system and set them
free. Nature always finds a way: Soon I connected with other “weeds” daring
to grow in the otherwise carefully restrained and cultivated educational
garden bed!
Drawing strength from the observations I made about my own and other
children’s progress and from the wisdom of Holt, Mollison, and other authors
who demonstrate respect for children as young people, I gradually developed
a confidence in allowing my children to learn naturally.
Families are where a child’s first connections, vital to their survival,
are made. They are social connections which happen naturally. A baby learns
to walk and talk because it is expected and necessary and encouraged. Children
do not learn in social isolation: they learn by imitating the behavior of
others, by studying it, and by desiring to be like others. This is often
the learning that happens when no one is watching, much like how my vegetables
and flowers grow! Recognizing the power of these connections is the key
to successfully facilitating the learning of young children, and indeed,
people of all ages. We all have the potential to learn new skills, to develop
latent talents and abilities. All too often the voices of experts interfere
with our enthusiasm and innate drive to learn, telling us that we are not
ready, don’t have the prerequisite skills, haven’t done the right course,
etc....a continual litany dulling our senses and reducing our capacity to
learn.
Permaculture offers us a set of principles we can use when designing
gardens. I have never considered these limited to landscape planning! I
believe them to be a design paradigm for living. Offering our young people
the opportunity to learn in their own homes is a wonderful way to help them
understand their place in the natural world. It discourages feelings of
disconnection and isolation, and builds a natural social life, from the
centre out. It allows the child to socially unfold from the egocentric toddler,
into the co-operative family member, then comfortably and confidently into
the social world of family friends, before finally choosing to participate
in the wider community, with self-esteem and confidence intact.
Education breaks learning into small, supposedly digestible chunks. But
no one knows how much I can eat at one time, or what I like to eat! Or how
my stomach or body will react to particular foods! Given time and space
to observe and learn in my garden, I have come to realize what nutrients
and support plants need, and when and how to nurture them. I do the same
for my children. It is impossible to predict the growth of each individual
child, especially in educational terms, and so I tend each child carefully,
using my powers of observation to determine how best to facilitate that
growth. Loving attention is the most powerful fertilizer for growth. At
home, this flows freely and in abundance. I have yet to witness this fertilizer
in any school environment!
Respect is the other powerful fertilizer I use and cultivate. I respect
the right of my children to follow their own paths, much like I have learned
to allow my plants to flourish in the position best suited to each individual
plant. Through permaculture, I have learned to recognize and respect the
innate characteristics and needs of each plant, and this has helped me understand
my children’s educational process. Instead of “giving” my children an “education,”
I look for what each child needs, what elements I can bring together to
help fulfill those needs, and I joyfully accept and capitalize on those
wonderful bonuses this approach always produces! In this way, I help my
children build microclimates that suit their individual learning styles
and needs.
In my permaculturally designed garden, I am mindful of those things I
desire to achieve and I do the same with parenting and education. Although
I have an overall design or plan held in my mind, I focus on what is happening
now. In my garden, the aim is to create, through careful placement of elements
and taking advantage of connections and relationships, a sustainable environment
that largely looks after itself. In education, my aim is to provide the
nourishment that will enable my children to eventually look after themselves.
The focus on immediate need combined with long-term goals based on permaculture
values and ethics, tended to diligently and attentively, produces the desired
results.
Within this context, I trust my children will manage and direct their
learning to meet their own needs. They find themselves perfectly placed
to learn what they need to learn at every given point in their day. In assisting
them, I am guided by their moods, requests, questions, desires, physical
needs, and responses to the people, environment, and actions of the day.
It takes very little effort to recognize their needs, in much the same way
that as a gardener watching my plants grow I know what to do next to keep
them healthy and help them prosper. All this is achieved by simply being
available and learning from the interactions between all elements as the
day progresses. It is a wonderfully dynamic process, and as it knits together
over time it becomes even more effortless.
I recognize the edge is where maximum growth occurs: In a garden, plants
cluster thickly together along the edge of pathways, usually looking abundantly
untidy! Learning is no different. We can’t control its appearance or its
voracity. Often, the edge is the point at which conflict occurs and we are
challenged to resolve or solve difficult problems. I battle to control weeds
until I realize their role and can then use them to enhance the fertility
and vigor of my garden. Children have a natural instinct to challenge themselves
in their development. We respect and honor this instinct and wait patiently
for our children to succeed at their own pace in their own chosen way. Schools
can rarely, if ever, offer children this chance. Life, if given space to
grow, will be abundant. It is up to us to value the result!
Although our home education began as a tentative experiment with only
“education” as the goal, we have seen the harvest of many wonderful yields.
For me it has been reclaiming the dignity of motherhood in a society which
encourages women to be workers, away from home and children for long hours.
I have reclaimed my children from a system of childcare and education that
will not be responsible and accountable for its outcomes. We have reclaimed
the right to be in control of our own learning, celebrating education as
a process of abundant growth rather than as training or preparation for
eventual employment. We have discovered that the definition of success and
failure is very personal, and that to judge performance and ability by arbitrary
standards is demeaning and destructive of self-esteem.
But best of all, we have grown together as a family, in love and friendship,
drawing our strength from the abundance of Nature and its powerful example
of natural learning.
Beverley Paine began home educating her children, now young
adults, in 1985. She’s an active member of the Australian home education
movement. As an author she’s published several homeschooling books and writes
fiction for children and young adults. Her other passions include permaculture,
alternative technology, and web design. Visit her Homeschool Australia website
at www.homeschoolaustralia.com.
