This blog posting was my attempt to link my placement work with theory. The theory I chose to write about was complexity theory or complex adaptive systems theory.
I am training to be a social worker and as part of my degree, we were asked to place our placement settings with a theory we had learned about in class or during placement. I had to think long and hard about what theories to use in my school garden/food security placement. There seem to be so many theories that fit. Here is a bit of what I've been thinking about over the last week or so.
There are numerous theories that could be used in the implementation of school gardens. In complex adaptive systems thinking, school gardens are part of larger systems. These systems include education, health, sustainability and environment. Complex adaptive systems help us think about the place of school gardens in the larger system of education, health and the environment. Western thinking tends to separate different elements in the world. As a result, we think of humans AND the environment as opposed to humans as PART OF the environment. Complex adaptive systems are basically special cases of complex systems. They are dynamic networks of interactions and relationships not aggregations of static entities. They are dynamic and evolve according to a changing environment.
School gardens are part of a larger system of environment, community, education and sustainability. School gardens promote a sustainable lifestyle, learning to grow food in a garden. It connects children to the earth and their place in a larger community. Humans need to feel the earth that gives them a sense of connectivity to the earth. If one reads Edward Wilsons’s ideas on biophilia or love of life, we can see how important it is for humans to feel that connectedness with the earth. Richard Louv discusses a disconnect from nature and how we need to feel a sense of belonging in our environment and get our children outside again. That sense of being able to plant seeds in soil, to learn about soil and composting is so important in an age where the understanding of such life systems seems to be vanishing.
The system of education needs to change in order to promote this new way of thinking of belonging and environment. Education is currently focused on a linear model, producing young people who are grounded in reading writing and arithmetic, but no more. Does school teach children about how to live in this modern, technological age? School should teach children about life, not just academics. By implementing school garden philosophy into school curriculum, schools can achieve a thorough grounding in learning about food and nutrition, about science, geography, math, history and social studies. Education should be a dynamic system that engages students in hands on learning.
By creating school gardens, students become familiar with their community. Community engagement is vital to the long term sustainability of school gardens. Schools can actively utilize community partners to bring about the creation of school gardens. There are many possibilities of liaising with community groups to illicit assistance in school gardening. The question is, how can we develop ties in the local neighbourhood that can enhance the school gardens? What questions should be asked to enhance these ties? There are many groups in the community that could provide programming that could enhance the programming of the schools.There are also many active parents who could assist in garden programming at their child's school. Staff also need to be actively engaged so that they can learn about how to teach in a school garden.
School gardens can promote health and nutrition. Schools are in a perfect location for enhancing student’s health and well being through the promotion of physical activity and good food. Obesity is on the rise and by having the opportunity to garden, students can keep active whilst learning about food and the natural environment of which we are all a part. It is vitally important that students know how to grow their own food. Many students today might think that their food comes from the supermarket and know nothing of how their food got there in the first place. Children often show a sense of wonderment when they are taught how to garden and are able to bring those lessons home to their own families. How wonderful it would be if children were able to grow in self esteem when their families use the vegetables they have been taught to grow in schools.
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