FFA Liberal Arts Style
(Tim, Ben, and Kurt After Apple Picking; Photo by The Bar Jester)
Rock Island, IL
Educational experts woke up one day to find themselves in what they were pleased to call a “post-agrarian” society. They weren’t quite clever enough to see that everyone farms, whether actually or by proxy, which probably explains why they became educational experts, but, at any rate, like almost everyone else they bought into the insane notion that a service economy or a tech or an information economy floats above the ground and therefore isn’t a land-based economy–that it has no purchase on the minds of people who like to eat. Next they noticed that their own publication records were thin and that children didn’t really need their summers off to help on the farm any more, so these experts went into print and reasoned that the children should be sent to school year-round.
Such is the good luck of the inmates in the public school system here, for example.
That none of these experts thought to send children back to the farm is indicative of (1) the experts’ effete imaginations and (2) the chasm that yawns between themselves and the sources that sustain them. Both add up to a failure that has wreaked all kinds of havoc. That failure manifests itself in the current unassailable educational desideratum of preparing students “for the world of tomorrow,” which will be a post-post-agrarian world that no one may speak ill of because “the children are our future,” and “you can’t stand in the way of progress.”
In this “world of tomorrow,” the thinking goes, all young people are going to go to college and all of them are going to become leaders, a state of affairs as idiotic as having an entire football team made up only of coaches. How there can be effective leadership without reliable followership has yet to be explained by the experts, but that is not really their concern. Their job is to convince everyone else that their expert advice is indispensable and that we should keep paying them to keep inventing it.
Those of us in higher education are not exempt from certified expert opinion. We must also prepare students “for the world of tomorrow,” because that’s what all the brochures say we will do.
I personally take this quite seriously, and so does a colleague of mine. Over the last few years we have made a concerted effort to prepare students “for the world of tomorrow”–the one reality has in mind for them.
My colleague, Charlie, is a cultural geographer who’s got the history of American conservation deep in his bones. He was local when local wasn’t cool. Here he is giving some of our students a little talk about soil:
Charlie and I offer what is called a “learning community” or “LC” (which can be “assessed” because it has identifiable “outcomes,” even though it is but one more example of the promiscuous use of “community”). Our LC, “Environmental Literature and Landscape,” is comprised of paired courses taught from within our respective disciplines but with interdisciplinarity in mind. If the enrollment numbers don’t lie, ours is a somewhat coveted LC. Or, to brag just a little, at a college that boasts a very low student-faculty ratio, we’re a problem. Currently we have over sixty students in two sections of this program. I thrash thirty-some students for seventy-five minutes and then hand them over to Charlie, who thrashes them again. And then we do it all over, MWF, every fall term, 8:30-2:15.
Our syllabi call for a lot of heavy reading in nineteenth- and twentieth-century conservationists, nature-writers, ecologists, and environmentalists. Students get tested on Pinchot, Marsh, Muir, Thoreau, Emerson, Kingsley, Audubon, Leopold, McPhee, Carson, Berry, and many others. They have to learn about resource management, climate, and urban planning. They have to design their own houses, write an environmental ethic, and assess in writing their own environmental “footprint.”
But Charlie and I have had enough of cranking out educated fools who think citizenship means exercising the “right” to vote, so we also require every student to do a hands-on project outside the classroom, which we think is good for students and good for the community as well. In the past some students have made and sold rain barrels, built rain gardens, secured eroding slopes, helped write grammar-school and grade-school environmental curricula, set up composting programs for various organizations, insulated houses, conducted energy audits, even done a little gardening behind their frat houses, for which they’ve received some national attention. The projects have been numerous and interesting. This year a few students in the program will build a root cellar. It’s funny how creative a student can be when given the chance–or when clubbed with a requirement.
But students must also clock several hours of work on two different agricultural sites, one a local farm and the other a campus vegetable garden and orchard. This work requirement is the backbone of the program. It often turns out to be the most rewarding for the students as well. They help with planting, harvesting, construction, you name it:
The farmer we work with, Jim (pictured above in the bucket and below with the squash), is always glad to have visitors to the farm, especially students, and he is a very good on-location teacher himself. That is, he has something to say and knows how to say it.
Last year a student who had never been on a farm until Charlie and I took her there during the first week of classes spent almost every weekend thereafter on the farm—and brought many of her friends along with her. She wrote a news story about her experiences for a local paper and then spent this past summer as an intern on the farm. She knows more about the operation now than Charlie and I do, and we’re really smart guys, not to mention good-looking and likeable.
Produce from the farm goes straight to the college dining services, where the director, Garry, has his entire staff excited about cooking from scratch instead of heating up frozen trays trucked in by Aramark. Students eat produce that has traveled only ten miles, and all the meat they eat is local as well (save the chicken: we’re still working on that). Our table scraps go back to the farm as compost, and our cooking oil runs the equipment there. We’ve all been working to get other area schools, hospitals, and businesses to provide markets for local growers.
Students in charge of the campus garden sell their produce during the summer and then carry it four blocks to dining services once school starts. This past Monday I spent three hours at the farm (I sometimes take my own kids) . . .
. . . and yesterday I spent five at the garden. If you’ve never had to serve on an academic committee, it may not be possible for you to understand how much more enjoyable and useful it is to work outdoors with students than to listen to the armpit farts of bloviating colleagues parroting the recent findings of the experts, all of whom are wrong, wrong, wrong.
Am I in trouble? Nah! Most professors are too busy keeping student-faculty ratios good and low to read FPR.
I wish I went to your school.
What a great opportunity at Augustana College. I’d send my daughters there were it not so far.
Your reference to “FFA” in the title is a tad tragic. The FFA in my country school thirty-five years ago was held up for derision at every opportunity administration and faculty could take. I suspect that the organization and the VoAg department (one or two teachers) at the high school were taking all their cues, too, from the industrial agriculture and extension complex.
I had a lot of friends on the farm: not a single one of them was happy to be on the farm. Everyone — even those wearing that navy corduroy and gold applique — couldn’t wait to get a decent-paying job on the strip mine.
Thanks for this poetic corrective.
This is a very good post … and very hilarious. Commendable program. I hope others like it will develop. Would that we could find a balance between learning about the land, learning a practical skill (sometimes the same thing), and purely mental learning of facts and concepts.
Having grown up on a farm with a teacher-father employed in the public school system, and having married a wife both of whose parents spent their entire careers in public schooling, and now watching my beloved teach our children, and helping some myself (faculty/student ratio = 2 to 3 soon to be 4), while spending a part of each summer plowing through the regulatory requirements for educating outside the system, I have some insight into the utter banality (love that word) of the educational establishment. A perfect illustration is the state requirement to formulate “objectives,” an exercise in Dilbert-esque wordsmithing that isn’t worth the cheap recycled paper we print it on. As my dad is fond of pointing out, the good teachers have always managed to somehow educate and instill a love of learning despite the considerable obstacles the “experts” throw into their path. Their work is subversive but critical and, I think, is what keeps the educational system in this land functional. You rebel, you! Keep on keepin’ on, Dr. Peters. Your resistance is *not* futile.
I am duly impressed. The mere fact that you have found a way to turn the College “system” back upon itself and actually teach something worthwhile to students is downright revolutionary. When “The Man” finds out what you have been up to you are going to be in trouble mister!
Now I have to get back to work subverting the corporate world, by trying to find a way to humanize this Godless place instead of just making more disposable widgets to feed into the gaping maw of consumerism.
Keep up the good work.
Geesh, I thought this was developing into a swell bellyaching rant at first but then it ordered itself into an informative parable before rasberrying to the Provosts at the end.. One wonders if, in a future moment of dilemma, your intellectual serfs will more recall writing a paper on the bath house rhetorical sloshings of Foucault (not that this is all bad, nor as Ed would say “all good”) or picking produce after a reading of the Sand County Almanac, connecting philosophy to reality, thus proving thought aint jest an accumulated drudgery of facts.
Chickens = Salatin
Who said sedition is not a form of husbandry?
[...] Front Porch Republic » Blog Archive » FFA Liberal Arts Style [...]
Finally, someone takes the Midwestern interpretation of Ph.D. literally. Keep the manure piling.
My guess is the final exam is “Kumbaya” played on a six string in the key of ‘G’ and sung with intense earnestness and moist eyes…I’m half-way there myself.
Balance is vital. The following quotes were published in 1901 and 1903 and butress your beliefs…
ABC’s Of Education Is Study Of Agriculture…
Serious times are before us, and there is great need for families to get out of the cities into the country, that the truth may be carried into the byways as well as the highways of the earth. Much depends upon laying our plans according to the word of the Lord and with persevering energy carrying them out. More depends upon consecrated (p. 179) activity and perseverance than upon genius and book learning. All the talents and ability given to human agents, if unused, are of little value. {6T 178.3}
A return to simpler methods will be appreciated by the children and youth. Work in the garden and field will be an agreeable change from the wearisome routine of abstract lessons, to which their young minds should never be confined. To the nervous child, who finds lessons from books exhausting and hard to remember, it will be especially valuable. There is health and happiness for him in the study of nature; and the impressions made will not fade out of his mind, for they will be associated with objects that are continually before his eyes. {6T 179.1}
Working the soil is one of the best kinds of employment, calling the muscles into action and resting the mind. Study in agricultural lines should be the A, B, and C of the education given in our schools. This is the very first work that should be entered upon. Our schools should not depend upon imported produce, for grain and vegetables, and the fruits so essential to health. Our youth need an education in felling trees and tilling the soil as well as in literary lines. Different teachers should be appointed to oversee a number of students in their work and should work with them. Thus the teachers themselves will learn to carry responsibilities as burden bearers. Proper students also should in this way be educated to bear responsibilities and to be laborers together with the teachers. All should counsel together as to the very best methods of carrying on the work. {6T 179.2}
Time is too short now to accomplish that which might have been done in past generations. But even in these last days we can do much to correct the existing evils in the education of youth. And because time is short, we (p. 180) should be in earnest and work zealously to give the young an education consistent with our faith. We are reformers. We desire that our children should study to the best advantage. In order to do this, employment should be given them which will call into exercise the muscles. Daily, systematic labor should constitute a part of the education of youth even at this late period. Much can now be gained in this way. In following this plan the students will realize elasticity of spirit and vigor of thought, and in a given time can accomplish more mental labor than they could by study alone. And thus they can leave school with constitutions unimpaired and with strength and courage to persevere in any position where the providence of God may place them. {6T 179.3}
The exercise that teaches the hand to be useful and trains the young to bear their share of life’s burdens, gives physical strength and develops every faculty. All should find something to do that will be beneficial to themselves and helpful to others. God appointed work as a blessing, and only the diligent worker finds the true glory and joy of life. {6T 180.1}
Brain and muscle must be taxed proportionately if health and vigor are to be maintained. The youth can then bring to the study of the word of God healthy perception and well-balanced nerves. They will have wholesome thoughts and can retain the precious things that are brought from the word. They will digest its truths and as a result will have brain power to discern what is truth. Then, as occasion demands, they can give to every man that asks a reason of the hope that is in them with meekness and fear. (181) {6T 180.2}
{Testimonies for the Church Volume Six (1901), E G White, Section 3, Education p. 178-180}
Life Through Death
The lesson of seed sowing teaches liberality. “He which soweth sparingly shall reap also sparingly; and he which soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully.” 2 Corinthians 9:6. {Ed 109.4}
The Lord says, “Blessed are ye that sow beside all waters.” Isaiah 32:20. To sow beside all waters means to give wherever our help is needed. This will not tend to (p. 110) poverty. “He which soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully.” By casting it away the sower multiplies his seed. So by imparting we increase our blessings. God’s promise assures a sufficiency, that we may continue to give. {Ed 109.5}
More than this: as we impart the blessings of this life, gratitude in the recipient prepares the heart to receive spiritual truth, and a harvest is produced unto life everlasting. {Ed 110.1}
By the casting of grain into the earth, the Saviour represents His sacrifice for us. “Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die.” He says, “it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.” John 12:24. Only through the sacrifice of Christ, the Seed, could fruit be brought forth for the kingdom of God. In accordance with the law of the vegetable kingdom, life is the result of His death. {Ed 110.2}
So with all who bring forth fruit as workers together with Christ: self-love, self-interest, must perish; the life must be cast into the furrow of the world’s need. But the law of self-sacrifice is the law of self-preservation. The husbandman preserves his grain by casting it away. So the life that will be preserved is the life that is freely given in service to God and man. {Ed 110.3}
The seed dies, to spring forth into new life. In this we are taught the lesson of the resurrection. Of the human body laid away to molder in the grave, God has said: “It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption: it is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory: it is sown in weakness; it is raised in power.” 1 Corinthians 15:42, 43. (p. 111) {Ed 110.4}
As parents and teachers try to teach these lessons, the work should be made practical. Let the children themselves prepare the soil and sow the seed. As they work, the parent or teacher can explain the garden of the heart, with the good or bad seed sown there, and that as the garden must be prepared for the natural seed, so the heart must be prepared for the seed of truth. As the seed is cast into the ground, they can teach the lesson of Christ’s death; and as the blade springs up, the truth of the resurrection. As the plant grows, the correspondence between the natural and the spiritual sowing may be continued. {Ed 111.1}
The youth should be instructed in a similar way. From the tilling of the soil, lessons may constantly be learned. No one settles upon a raw piece of land with the expectation that it will at once yield a harvest. Diligent, persevering labor must be put forth in the preparation of the soil, the sowing of the seed, and the culture of the crop. So it must be in the spiritual sowing. The garden of the heart must be cultivated. The soil must be broken up by repentance. The evil growths that choke the good grain must be uprooted. As soil once overgrown with thorns can be reclaimed only by diligent labor, so the evil tendencies of the heart can be overcome only by earnest effort in the name and strength of Christ. {Ed 111.2}
In the cultivation of the soil the thoughtful worker will find that treasures little dreamed of are opening up before him. No one can succeed in agriculture or gardening without attention to the laws involved. The special needs of every variety of plant must be studied. Different varieties require different soil and cultivation, and (p. 112) compliance with the laws governing each is the condition of success. The attention required in transplanting, that not even a root fiber shall be crowded or misplaced, the care of the young plants, the pruning and watering, the shielding from frost at night and sun by day, keeping out weeds, disease, and insect pests, the training and arranging, not only teach important lessons concerning the development of character, but the work itself is a means of development. In cultivating carefulness, patience, attention to detail, obedience to law, it imparts a most essential training. The constant contact with the mystery of life and the loveliness of nature, as well as the tenderness called forth in ministering to these beautiful objects of God’s creation, tends to quicken the mind and refine and elevate the character; and the lessons taught prepare the worker to deal more successfully with other minds. {Ed 111.3}
{Education (1903), E G White, Chapter 11, Lessons Of Life p. 109-111}
Let the children and youth learn from the Bible how God has honored the work of the everyday toiler. Let them read of “the sons of the prophets” (2 Kings 6:1-7), students at school, who were building a house for themselves, and for whom a miracle was wrought to save from loss the ax that was borrowed. Let them read of Jesus the carpenter, and Paul the tentmaker, who with the toil of the craftsman linked the highest ministry, human and divine. Let them read of the lad whose five loaves were used by the Saviour in that wonderful miracle for the feeding of the multitude; of Dorcas the seamstress, called back from death, that she might continue to make garments for the poor; of the wise woman described in the Proverbs, who “seeketh wool and flax, and worketh willingly with her hands;” who “giveth meat to her household, and their task to her maidens;” who “planteth a vineyard,” and strengtheneth her arms;” who “stretcheth out her hand to the poor; yea,… reacheth forth her hands to the needy;” who “looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth not the bread of idleness.” Proverbs 31:13, 15, R.V.; 31:16, 17, 20, 27. {Ed 217.1}
Of such a one, God says: “She shall be praised. Give her of the fruit of her hands; and let her own works praise her in the gates.” Proverbs 31:30, 31. {Ed 217.2}
For every child the first industrial school should be the home. And, so far as possible, facilities for manual training should be connected with every school. To a great degree such training would supply the place of the gymnasium, with the additional benefit of affording valuable discipline. (p. 218) {Ed 217.3}
Manual training is deserving of far more attention than it has received. Schools should be established that, in addition to the highest mental and moral culture, shall provide the best possible facilities for physical development and industrial training. Instruction should be given in agriculture, manufactures – covering as many as possible of the most useful trades – also in household economy, healthful cookery, sewing, hygienic dressmaking, the treatment of the sick, and kindred lines. Gardens, workshops, and treatment rooms should be provided, and the work in every line should be under the direction of skilled instructors. {Ed 218.1}
The work should have a definite aim and should be thorough. While every person needs some knowledge of different handicrafts, it is indispensable that he become proficient in at least one. Every youth, on leaving school, should have acquired a knowledge of some trade or occupation by which, if need be, he may earn a livelihood. {Ed 218.2}
The objection most often urged against industrial training in the schools is the large outlay involved. But the object to be gained is worthy of its cost. No other work committed to us is so important as the training of the youth, and every outlay demanded for its right accomplishment is means well spent. {Ed 218.3}
Even from the viewpoint of financial results, the outlay required for manual training would prove the truest economy. Multitudes of our boys would thus be kept from the street corner and the groggery; the expenditure for gardens, workshops, and baths would be more than met by the saving on hospitals and reformatories. And the youth themselves, trained to habits of industry, and skilled in lines of useful and productive labor – who (p. 219) can estimate their value to society and to the nation? {Ed 218.4}
As a relaxation from study, occupations pursued in the open air, and affording exercise for the whole body, are the most beneficial. No line of manual training is of more value than agriculture. A greater effort should be made to create and to encourage an interest in agricultural pursuits. Let the teacher call attention to what the Bible says about agriculture: that it was God’s plan for man to till the earth; that the first man, the ruler of the whole world, was given a garden to cultivate; and that many of the world’s greatest men, its real nobility, have been tillers of the soil. Show the opportunities in such a life. The wise man says, “The king himself is served by the field.” Ecclesiastes 5:9. Of him who cultivates the soil the Bible declares, “His God doth instruct him to discretion, and doth teach him.” Isaiah 28:26. And again, “Whoso keepeth the fig tree shall eat the fruit thereof.” Proverbs 27:18. He who earns his livelihood by agriculture escapes many temptations and enjoys unnumbered privileges and blessings denied to those whose work lies in the great cities. And in these days of mammoth trusts and business competition, there are few who enjoy so real an independence and so great certainty of fair return for their labor as does the tiller of the soil. {Ed 219.1}
In the study of agriculture, let pupils be given not only theory, but practice. While they learn what science can teach in regard to the nature and preparation of the soil, the value of different crops, and the best methods of production, let them put their knowledge to use. Let teachers share the work with the students, and show what results can be achieved through skillful, intelligent effort. Thus may be awakened a genuine interest, an ambition (p. 220) to do the work in the best possible manner. Such an ambition, together with the invigorating effect of exercise, sunshine, and pure air, will create a love for agricultural labor that with many youth will determine their choice of an occupation. Thus might be set on foot influences that would go far in turning the tide of migration which now sets so strongly toward the great cities. {Ed 219.2}
Thus, also, our schools could aid effectively in the disposition of the unemployed masses. Thousands of helpless and starving beings, whose numbers are daily swelling the ranks of the criminal classes, might achieve self-support in a happy, healthy, independent life if they could be directed in skillful, diligent labor in the tilling of the soil. {Ed 220.1}
The benefit of manual training is needed also by professional men. A man may have a brilliant mind; he may be quick to catch ideas; his knowledge and skill may secure for him admission to his chosen calling; yet he may still be far from possessing a fitness for its duties. An education derived chiefly from books leads to superficial thinking. Practical work encourages close observation and independent thought. Rightly performed, it tends to develop that practical wisdom which we call common sense. It develops ability to plan and execute, strengthens courage and perseverance, and calls for the exercise of tact and skill. {Ed 220.2}
{Education (1903), EG White, Chapter 24, Manual Training p. 218-222}
I enjoy the submissions on this site.
Three cheers for your efforts and more power to you.
What I never understand, however, is why certain outlooks have to come at the ridiculing expense of others. Agrarian-localist ethics, for which I have great respect, might get a few inches further if it weren’t regularly laced with how idiotic the efforts of us still plugging away in public sectors, sectors we consider home and place. Sidewalks and public schools count just as much as dirt roads and magnets, don’t they?
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