Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
All of the participating teachers agreed that their understanding of citizenship changed from one that emphasized following rules and helping others to one that fostered student engagement in making decisions together about shared problems in the classroom community and beyond.
If we are indeed in an overshoot phase, we must do what we can to avert or minimize a die-off event.
Citizens’ Councils can also be part of a broader range of processes used within a given region to support a larger “deliberative system.”
Despite their differences, the intense time pressure, and being continuously filmed by a crew from Canadian TV (for an hour-long public affairs program) these ordinary citizens by the end of their third day had all signed a detailed, co-created, visionary agreement charting a course to greater mutual understanding by all Canadians.
Power is essential; without it, we would be literally powerless. But one can have too much of a good thing. How much power is enough? How much is too much?
With fossil fuels and electrification, and thus greater mobility and instant communications, we have indeed become a human “hive.”
The good news is that when place-based wisdom informs local solutions, the solutions are all the more sustainable.
The promise of conservation agriculture to bring life back to the land and support biodiversity both above and belowground should appeal to environmentalists and farmers alike. For like it or not, a large part of nature will be what lives on farms, because we now use more than a third of the world’s ice-free land area for growing crops and raising animals.
We must eat. But the land sacrifices so that we may live; the land ethic asks that we live in ways that show we are responsible citizens of the land community; and the law of reciprocity asks what we are giving back in return for that gift of life.
In Teaching History for the Common Good, Keith C. Barton and Linda S. Levstik recognize that the past can be used “in a variety of ways, and for a variety of purposes.” One of these is to use history’s “potential to prepare students for participation in a pluralist democracy.”
In the everyday work of my farm, most of the decisions I make, in one way or another, are driven by the goal of continuing to grow and protect soil.
In the 11 years I have been farming, all I can claim credit for is making the conditions right (and sometimes, admittedly, very wrong) for food and flowers to grow.
