Community and Economy

WARNING: At the moment I have a great many things on my mind and have been chewing on a variety of ideas all week - some related and others not - so be advised that the following may be a bit disjointed. Many of my thoughts in regard to this week's readings do not necessarily directly pertain to things each of the author's says, but rather thoughts that flooded my mind as I read and which relate to PCE.

**Entertaining anecdote before I begin: Sometimes I just can't handle how much of a giant small town our state is. Two weeks ago, the NETV video we watched featured my best friend's cousin from Albion and the opening scene of her segment was shot from the top of her family's grain bin, which I, too, have climbed several times to see the very same view. Now, this week, Bill and Jan Whitney, the founders of Prairie Planes Resource Institute, are the parents of one of my college roommates. I lived with their daughter, Erin, for a year and never knew. Talk about Place and its people being unbelievably intertwined in our lives!

Now, more to the point....

In exploring this week's websites and readings, two themes persisted in catching my attention: the role of economics in place and the concept of community (specifically small communities).

Specifically, I was drawn to the attention both Wes Jackson, in his "Matfield Green," and PromiseOfPlace.org , pay to the establishment and value of small communities. For Jackson the community he highlights (though he doesn't name it as a community specifically) is the New Century Club, whose "archive" of programs he uncovers. Likewise, for PromiseOfPlace.org, (though, again, they do not name them communities, per se) the classrooms that are highlighted in the group's "Stories from the Field" section, all represent small, tightly knit communities. Each of these groups, I think, were able to connect so deeply to the places around them because of the small community each provided for its members. It seems that a sense of place is both created by and creates communities.

I have long been interested in what "community" means, particularly in our contemporary education system. When I look back on my own educational experiences and look out at those that are happening around me today, I notice two key realities: 1. The most meaningful and productive educational and learning experiences I have and have had, have taken place with and within a group of people to whom I feel strongly connected, from whom I receive support and provide it, and to whom I feel accountable; and 2. such small communities - the kind in which every member is not just counted, but truly "seen" - seem to be lacking in our urban and suburban educational systems. One of the reasons I think PCE has taken off so well in rural schools, is that a community already exists; students know each other, teachers know students, and everyone knows the greater community. In contrast, in large schools, this is not nearly as often the case. With 2,500 kids in my high school, unless I made a conscious effort to root myself within a group, I could easily pass through my four years never having been seen and feeling entirely disconnected from my school community and the larger one. Moreover, I look at my mother's students, who are bused across Omaha to attend her magnet school and who, after 8th grade, will go onto any number of high schools and may or may not even remain at the high school at which they begin, I am struck by how desperate these kids seem for community. Why should they invest in one another when they'll part ways in two years, and why should they feel connected to or invested in their area, when they attend school 30 minutes from their homes and among peers whose home experiences may be very different than their own? I think it is particularly hard to invest these kids in place--in the way that Jackson shows the members of the New Century Club were invested in their place--when their place is so constantly changing.

Frau Bernicker's 11A Klass and Me, my last day of teaching at the Max Beckmann Schule. These students graduated last year and Markus (the boy in the middle) still keeps them connected through a facebook group.

This lack of community membership within a school is something that has long vexed me and something which I am just now beginning to be able to define. My interest in school communities began 4 years ago when I lived and taught English in a Frankfurt, Germany high school for a year. To avoid explaining the many differences in the German education system and the incredible variety of ways in which education gets enacted there, I'll focus here just on what I saw as the most interesting structures present in their school (to that end, what I say here most certainly does not apply to all or even most German high schools). In short, Germans don't really have neighborhood high schools because kids are divided by "ability" after 4th grade(boo! hiss!), so the system does not set them up to have any sort of community connection. The school in which I taught had only 11th, 12th, and 13th graders and was a "special" school designed to allow students who had earlier been placed in the "lower" tracks finish their last three grades and take the test to qualify for University. Because of this and because Frankfurt is an extremely diverse city, more of my students were non-native Germans than were and commuted to school from all over the city. Thus, they were set up to be "community-less."

My 11A students send me Christmas wishes from Frankfurt while I'm visiting home in the States. (YouTube video)

Now, keep in mind the Germans are not a people known for their "warm, fuzzy, do-things-because-they're-relationally-good-for-people" mentality. In spite of this, within my school (and many others I knew) each student had a "home room." However, these home rooms and their teachers were nothing like the home rooms we have constructed in the US which often only accomplish bureaucratic work. Each student's "class" was made up of the students and the teacher of one of their core classes (so, for example, someone's "class" might be their English or Biology class). Students maintained membership in these classes for their entire three years at school, even if they didn't continue to meet as, let’s say, an "English class." As a class, these students engaged in school politics and leadership (each class having a voice in school affairs), accomplished basic practical activities (i.e. announcements and such), engaged in service learning and field trips, created presentations and displays for school events, planned a "senior class trip" together, and most importantly, provided and incredibly close-knit support group for one another. Because students stayed connected to these core groups and had a vested interest in working together ( the lure of a class trip was always very compelling) and the groups were small, students rarely "fell through the cracks." If John had a bad cold and had missed school, his classmates knew and were expected to fill him in on missed work (based on the other classes they shared with him) and if Sara was struggling in school because she was having trouble at home peers from Sara's class were often aware and were able to help teachers best help Sara. If students encountered troubles of any kind their "class" teacher knew about it (especially as they were often seen as trusted mentors for their students) and thus provided a resource for other teachers in the school who might have the same student in another class. This community formed among students and teacher not only linked students to one another, but provided them with a reason to develop a vested interest in their place, their school, and their larger community. Not to mention, having an on-going small group of which to be a part, gave students (who often lacked it elsewhere) consistency and a network of love and support.

Frau Koehnen's 12 B class, a few students from the 12 A class, and me on their class trip to Berlin. A three day vacation entirely planned and executed by the two groups of students!

After having witnessed such a system in Germany where school is far from a "fuzzy, warm, supportive" place, education tends to follow a survival of the fittest model, and the German culture doesn't lend itself to many happy, casual relationships, I can't help but imagine that something similar would work here. it strikes me that such a model would not only be "doable" in many American schools without having to entirely restructure school systems, but would also allow a practical rout into PCE because it would provide space for students to form on-going connected relationships to each other and then move outward into forming connections with their place. Practically speaking, it would also allow teachers to engage students in longer-term projects and provide them with a space in the day to do this kind of place-based work. Given my on-going concern about how to make the work of PCE sustainable and more broadly applicable, creating such "home rooms" for students might be a first step down the path.

...WARNING: Drastic turn in content and direction ahead...

The second point that resonated with me from the readings this week, is the role economics plays in both PCE and education more generally. Rather than vilifying capitalism specifically (though he does suggest we need to "arrest consumerism"), Jackson accredits many of our educational troubles to "the tyranny of disregard by something we call the economy" (96). As I think capitalism, and it’s often associated opposite, socialism (though they really aren't opposites), have become incredibly politically charged terms, to think of ramped consumerism in terms of the "tyranny of the economy," allows the conversation to be reframed. Instead of suggesting that our economic model is troublesome, Jackson seems to be suggesting that allowing economics (whatever model they are driven by) to control our communities and, specifically, our educational choices and systems, constricts everyone’s ability to succeed (those who've made it rich on the back of capitalism and those who haven't).

He goes on to suggest that we need "a different form of accounting so that both efficiency and sufficiency have standing in our minds" (98). Reconsidering our connection to place and subsequently education from this perspective, I think helps make the argument for place-based education. I don't think he's suggesting that we ignore the importance of the economic factors entirely, but that we learn first, not be slave to them, and second, to learn with them, rather than under them.

Sitting, yesterday afternoon, at Pershing Auditorium, here in Lincoln, watching a range of people from our community stand and speak for and against the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline across Nebraska, all I could think was "Yes! This is it! This is place-based education and this is the kind of space we should be using as a classroom!" The debates of the hearing grappled, in very real world contexts, with the tensions among economics, place, community, people, and natural environment. What is more important the creation of construction jobs in a very troubled economy and a promise of greater energy independence from "unfriendly countries" (their words, not mine)? Or should our values be placed on the potential risk to water supplies, animals, plants, and communities? The issue of the pipeline and the debate surrounding it seemed like such a lovely place for some genuine PCE which would ask students to grapple with issues of environment and economy AND would provide them a forum in which to create meaningful materials for supporting their thoughts on the fraught issue.

The issues of human needs versus wants, environmental sustainability verses 'progress' or human comfort, and economic verses environmental and relational concerns; are not easy matters for anyone to address, let alone students. However, I'd agree with Jackson's implicit claim that, if we are to create a more critical citizenry and sustain our rural communities and the agriculture they produce, than we must ask students to grapple with these big issues. I only wish it were easier to identify "real world" contexts for this kind of work and learning (like the pipeline debate), so that teachers (namely me) could more readily incorporate this work into their classrooms.