A disdainful article in the Atlantic Jan/Feb issue about school gardens here.
It's titled "Cultivating Failure", which gives you an idea of the point of view - mostly that immigrant students shouldn't be laboring outdoors for food (isn't that what they left behind?) and that school gardens take time away from learning. How are students going to pass their classes when they are out digging in the dirt?
Nice response on Civil Eats that points out how working outdoors and learning where your food comes from is invaluable, and how the curriculum from Alice Waters and others in the Slow Food movement connects the garden work to science, math, history, and more. And since 1 in 3 kids born after 2000 are likely to develop juvenile diabetes, it might be a lifesaver.
Food: Foraging in Spring
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So right now (as alluded to in my previous post), I’m focused on things of
a domestic nature in order to cope with the chaos raging outside my door.
Call i...
3 years ago
3 comments:
yuck.
when i was a social worker, a lot of the families i worked with were immigrants with school-aged kids. several of them happily participated in community gardens, and brought the kids, because they were worried that their kids were losing their attachment to the land and forgetting how to grow their own food. i think the assumption that immigrants want to leave everything behind is misguided - immigration is so often an act of financial need, not a desire to slough off one's past.
my dos centavitos.
Sam Fromartz's response is good, too: http://ow.ly/W6D4
p.s. did you see this?
http://www.grist.org/article/2010-01-14-caitlin-flanagan-colbert/
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