One of the defining movements of the early 21st
century involves a re-focusing on our local communities. In terms of
food, the word used is “locavore.” A locavore tries to eat food that is
locally produced, which is often defined as being grown either in one’s
own garden or purchased from a farmer operating within one hundred miles
of its point of purchase or consumption. The benefits include knowing
the origin of one’s food, that it’s grown without any or excessive
amounts of chemicals, and is super fresh; environmental benefits such as
avoiding the pollution involved with transporting food long distances;
and support for local economies. Locavorism is part of a larger trend
toward shopping locally, from small, neighborhood businesses rather than
large, multinational chains – indie booksellers versus Amazon, the
corner coffee roaster versus Starbucks, and so on.
There is also a movement in education that focuses
locally. “Place-based education” (sometimes called experiential
education or community-based education) is a philosophy that was
developed by Massachusetts-based nonprofit The Orion Society in the
1990s. But it’s a term that could also be used to describe how
unschoolers learn. In fact, life learning could be seen as the ultimate
in place-based education, which is still the exception rather than the
rule in school classrooms.
Through place-based education, students use their
local communities as resources for learning by doing. Young people and
adults work together, often with local agencies, to solve community
problems and develop what is known as a “sense of place.” Many
philosophers believe that knowledge of the history, culture, and ecology
of one’s immediate surroundings is a stepping stone to understanding
broader international issues.
Gregory A. Smith – associate professor in the
Graduate School of Education, Lewis & Clark College, Portland, Oregon –
notes in a 2002 article in the Phi Delta Kappan magazine that
one of the primary strengths of place-based education is that, through
its adaptation to the unique characteristics of particular places, it
can “help overcome the disjuncture between school and children’s lives
that is often a characteristic of school.” He describes it as putting
learners in charge of their own learning agendas, with adults as
“experienced guides, co-learners, and brokers of community resources and
learning possibilities.” Smith also points out that place-based
education allows students to “become the creators of knowledge rather
than the consumers of knowledge created by others,” in much the same way
that graduate schools do.
Although place-based education theory, along with
Smith’s commentary, refers to school environments, it all sounds very
much like life learning to me!
Place-based education is usually hands-on,
project-based, and always related to something in the real world. It
involves kids in solving real-world problems. And that’s perfectly
suited to life learners, who populate their communities during the day
when others are in school. If they’re old enough, in many communities
they can volunteer at local institutions such as libraries, hospitals,
or nursing homes. Or they can assist entrepreneurs and researchers in
their real-life work. Or they can create their own projects, often with
an environmental or social aspect – helping monitor the health of a
local body of water, cleaning up a park and figuring out how to keep it
that way, documenting local flora and fauna as citizen scientists, or
exploring local history by interviewing local residents, for instance.
One well-known place-based project is the Appalachian Foxfire movement
of the 1970s, where young people documented their parents’ and
grandparents’ life experiences working in the coal mines and living a
hardscrabble life on small, rural properties.
Because such projects connect kids to the economic,
civic, and social lives of their communities, they can lead to
entrepreneurship opportunities and internships/apprenticeships with
local businesses as they begin to pursue career ideas.
One of the criticisms of home-based education in general, and
unschooling in particular, is that families whose kids aren’t in school
have scorned their civic duty, resulting in their kids becoming
self-centered and unable to participate in a democracy. I have always
argued that the opposite is true; life learners, with their place-based
education, have plenty of opportunities to become aware of their status
and responsibilities as residents of their neighborhoods and
communities. And that leads to a stronger commitment to recognize and
solve problems as they arise.
Wendy Priesnitz is Life Learning Magazine's editor. She is also a journalist with 40 years of experience, a former
broadcaster, the author of 13, and a changemaker by nature. Her two adult daughters learned without schooling.
You can learn more about Wendy and read some of her writing on her personal
website.
