![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
A friend asked if I'd be interested in giving a talk about permaculture to her daughter's class, who are doing a Food Sustainability unit at school.
So on Wednesday, I took a group of 11-12 year olds through the concepts of permaculture:
Apparently it went down pretty well. Unfortunately, my friend's daughter has COVID and wasn't at school that day, so...that was sad.
I got hold of a few sheets from a colouring book that's probably aimed at under-10s given the advanced education of kids these days. Honestly, the teacher used the phrase soil biome to talk about an excursion they were originally going to undertake, and I'm thinking I didn't learn that until I was at least in my thirties!
But the day was an opportunity and an experience - for me, as much as for the kids. Our permaculture group has been looking to improve our options for kids and teenagers: working out how to bring them around to a practical, ethical, and conservationist mentality when looking at the world. It's good that schools are teaching sustainability, but for many people the simple equation of 'supporting sustainability' involves things like "go vegan" or "protest climate change".
--
Our solutions never involve inconvenience from those who can afford it. Inconvenience that might involve using public transport rather than a car, choosing not to buy something from a climate change polluter company, only buying food in season instead of whenever we feel like. And I can already feel several people fuming at me while reading this: Are you suggesting that I don't get the medications for my condition? That I struggle through public transport when I'm disabled? That I eat bread and split peas for the rest of my life?
This morning, on one of the retrosuburbia groups, someone posted a cartoon of a woman looking at an outdoor clothesline drying clothes with the caption, "Yes, it's this newfangled technology that works of wind power and sun power." And after about six comments came a woman who said, huffily, "Well, if I put my washing out in midwinter then it comes in frozen!" And...not a single person said or implied that a clothesline should be the option for drying things in cold or wet weather. Not one. Not a single person who would advocate for clotheslines when the sun is out would say 'you should put your washing out on the line in every weather'. Frankly, we're all huffy, outraged, draggers-of-strawmen when it suits us.
We all make choices towards our convenience when possible. We all justify our convenience to everyone around us. And, yeah, some people need medication, or to use personal transport, or to use the dryer when the sun is out because taking it out and hanging it up means they have no spoons for other things. But some people don't. And what most people shy away from is the "if you don't need to, then maybe this time don't" angle.
Eat meatless one day a week. Hang out a load of washing when the sun is high and dry in the sky. Buy fewer things in plastic wrap. Take a keep cup along to Starbucks. And don't skip your medication!
Seriously, people!
One of the things I could have - maybe should have done - that morning of the talk was catch public transport. It would have involved getting myself on a bus, a train, switching trains, and walking, then doing the whole thing in reverse. I could have done it, although it would have cost me in terms of time spent. I didn't. That's one of the choices I mean.
Certainly the people with an excess of resources - time and money and opportunity - never make such a choice. In fact, it's fairly given that they shape the world to their own convenience, with little care or concern for others. That's the nature of excess.
But on a 'middle-upper class level' it's one of the most difficult choices to make: to inconvenience ourselves when we don't have to. When it's just a matter of time (which I had) and money (which I have), and I could have gotten myself organised, I just...didn't.
And if I can't explain that to a bunch of self-aware adults over the internet, then what hope do I have of explaining it to a bunch of pre-teens?
So on Wednesday, I took a group of 11-12 year olds through the concepts of permaculture:
- 'permanent culture' - cultures that don't eat themselves or consume everything leaving nothing for the future
- the three ethics: earth care, people care, future care
- earth care: looking after the land, feeding it, not poisoning it
- people care: developing community, looking out for others
- future care/fair share: sharing the surplus - including not using too much today so that others might use it tomorrow
Apparently it went down pretty well. Unfortunately, my friend's daughter has COVID and wasn't at school that day, so...that was sad.
I got hold of a few sheets from a colouring book that's probably aimed at under-10s given the advanced education of kids these days. Honestly, the teacher used the phrase soil biome to talk about an excursion they were originally going to undertake, and I'm thinking I didn't learn that until I was at least in my thirties!
But the day was an opportunity and an experience - for me, as much as for the kids. Our permaculture group has been looking to improve our options for kids and teenagers: working out how to bring them around to a practical, ethical, and conservationist mentality when looking at the world. It's good that schools are teaching sustainability, but for many people the simple equation of 'supporting sustainability' involves things like "go vegan" or "protest climate change".
--
Our solutions never involve inconvenience from those who can afford it. Inconvenience that might involve using public transport rather than a car, choosing not to buy something from a climate change polluter company, only buying food in season instead of whenever we feel like. And I can already feel several people fuming at me while reading this: Are you suggesting that I don't get the medications for my condition? That I struggle through public transport when I'm disabled? That I eat bread and split peas for the rest of my life?
This morning, on one of the retrosuburbia groups, someone posted a cartoon of a woman looking at an outdoor clothesline drying clothes with the caption, "Yes, it's this newfangled technology that works of wind power and sun power." And after about six comments came a woman who said, huffily, "Well, if I put my washing out in midwinter then it comes in frozen!" And...not a single person said or implied that a clothesline should be the option for drying things in cold or wet weather. Not one. Not a single person who would advocate for clotheslines when the sun is out would say 'you should put your washing out on the line in every weather'. Frankly, we're all huffy, outraged, draggers-of-strawmen when it suits us.
We all make choices towards our convenience when possible. We all justify our convenience to everyone around us. And, yeah, some people need medication, or to use personal transport, or to use the dryer when the sun is out because taking it out and hanging it up means they have no spoons for other things. But some people don't. And what most people shy away from is the "if you don't need to, then maybe this time don't" angle.
Eat meatless one day a week. Hang out a load of washing when the sun is high and dry in the sky. Buy fewer things in plastic wrap. Take a keep cup along to Starbucks. And don't skip your medication!
Seriously, people!
One of the things I could have - maybe should have done - that morning of the talk was catch public transport. It would have involved getting myself on a bus, a train, switching trains, and walking, then doing the whole thing in reverse. I could have done it, although it would have cost me in terms of time spent. I didn't. That's one of the choices I mean.
Certainly the people with an excess of resources - time and money and opportunity - never make such a choice. In fact, it's fairly given that they shape the world to their own convenience, with little care or concern for others. That's the nature of excess.
But on a 'middle-upper class level' it's one of the most difficult choices to make: to inconvenience ourselves when we don't have to. When it's just a matter of time (which I had) and money (which I have), and I could have gotten myself organised, I just...didn't.
And if I can't explain that to a bunch of self-aware adults over the internet, then what hope do I have of explaining it to a bunch of pre-teens?
Tags: