A significant feature of my work, exploration and propositioning is the relationship between socially and ecologically just transformations and how they are entangled through the ontologies and theories of educational practices. The structures and constructs of a society directly and indirectly influence how education is implemented, what curriculum is learnt and fundamentally the onto-epistemology of the pedagogies adopted through educational settings. This is additionally in relationship with utopian thinking and sustaining ‘openings’ for future potentialities, where how we learn, how we think, how we imagine influences the potential of our collective futures. Therefore, education and our future are inextricably entangled.
For the purposes of this blog I am speculating with the potential of place-conscious learning in relationship with the future capacity of communities to exist without ‘ownership’. The type of ‘ownership’ I am referring to is of course private, corporate and individual ownership that embeds hegemonic positions of power, control and profit from land or housing. Importantly, I want to clarify that commons/cooperative/familial and horizontal equitable ownership is included within the term of ‘placeship’, which directly enables land to be vital for place-consciousness, ecological consciousness, the co-creation of commons, sustainability and equality. I am intrigued by the possibility that changing the perception and use of ‘ownership’ can affect collective responsibility and commons participation as communities could shift how education as a system functions. What would living and learning through boundary-less geography, with shared responsibility for place and practices of commerce, governance, collaborative participation and equity look like?
Private/Corporate ownership has a destructive Ourstory, which includes land clearances, land grabs, violence, conflict, genocide, war, colonisation, imperialism, capitalism, and the loss of public spaces (libraries and parks) through more recent neo-liberal political and economic policies. Land equates often to accessing or producing resources, which in turn equates to capital (Patel and Moore, 2017). Across the planet, private/corporate ‘ownership’, through a capitalist and neo-liberal growth agenda has all been about profit and extractivism. Not about the health of the soil. Not about the ecosystems and life webs. Not about the livelihoods or naturecultures of communities relying on land for food supplies, water supplies or as their cultural and sacred space. It has certainly not been about ensuring peoples and places can co-create communities in peace, togetherness and with profound meaning-making for a just and sustainable future.
Poignantly, this blog article is also related to the current and future effects of the global Covid-19 pandemic. If homes and land do not require rents, mortgages or seasonal workers as cheap labour we would be existing very differently now and the knock-on impact of job losses and no incomes would not be deciding who lives and dies. Basic needs, defined as access to clean drinking water, secure food supplies, safe and healthy housing and warmth, can be met without a structure of insecure employment, rents/mortgages, capital and profit attached. If basic needs are met the economic infrastructure changes, politics and governance changes, community changes, and thus, education changes. What might educate for present and future look like? How might this change how we co-create ‘placeship’?
Place-Consciousness Education (Gruenewald, 2003) is posed as one fundamental way education can shift our perceptions and relationships with land through how we conceive of place and it’s importance to human meaning-making, especially ‘it aims to enlist teachers and students in the firsthand experience of local life and in the political process of understanding and shaping what happens there’ (Gruenewald 2003, p. 620). If humankind begins to consider how place is always in relationship to our identities, our destinies and our collaborative participation as communities then education is ‘place’ and learning as places and peoples could catalyse a different way of thinking about ecologies, culture, governance and the potential of the eco-social justice aims for the planet. The capacity of children and adults as storytellers, meaning-makers, myth-makers, crafters, creators, ‘crofters’ are entangled through ‘place-making’ (Gruenewald, 2003), which is argued as a socio-political process of material doing alongside abstract storying of how ‘we’ come into being through language, discourse, action, environment and affective collaboration.
If our geographical communities are commons, where we are free to roam respectfully and move with conservation and consideration of others; free to collaborate and create with togetherness and relational momentum; free to be in becoming with others and ecologies then a very different potential comes into being. With this in mind, learning does not require ‘classrooms’ and ‘schools’ with walls and standardised ‘clinical’ spaces of assesed knowledge retention. Learning occurs always across all activities, practices, doings and processes of peoples and places, whilst maintaining the protections and safety of all. This approach could include indigenous practices, such as ‘Land Pedagogy’ (Styres, 2011), where ‘pedagogy… is highly contextualised and grounded in organic and dynamic relationships that are constantly shifting and transforming’ (Styres 2011, p. 721) and ‘teaching is a storied act’ (Styres 2011, p. 719).
Some environmental educationalists add further potentials by proposing that changing the very way we geographically define place, let alone the constructs of ‘ownership’ could have profound influence on understanding our interdependence with place and relating as peoples. Bioregionalism (Berry, 1992), as a process of merging the ecological and cultural is one way to achieve this aim. ‘Cultural Commons’ (Bowers, 2012) is suggested as a practice of facilitating learning through community based projects, which enables consciousness of social justice, ecological justice and democratic participation through learnt ‘communicative competence’. Devolving centralised government powers is another way to encourage more direct democracy, which would enable integration of children and young people’s voices to local political issues and adults, politicians and the wealthy would not dominate or ‘own’ the halls of governance. Learning with place-consciousness, Land Pedagogy and ecological consciousness would also require very different ways of ‘assessing’ and could instead transition to portfolios of achievements. Regionally supporting schools and communities in life-long and life-wide learning programmes rather than set qualification markers as standardised knowledge and have transitions of skills embedded with place, people, community and local ecology, whilst interconnecting place with the wider global aspirations of planetary justice.
Gruenewald (2003) concludes that ‘the kinds of places that we acknowledge and make possible will determine the kinds and the quality of human and nonhuman life in our communities, bioregions, and on our planet. This prospect suggests an active role for schools as centres of both inquiry and action in local, regional, and global space’ (Gruenewald 2003, p. 637). Linking place-consciousness and Land Pedagogy back to the theme of ‘ownership’, I would additionally argue that these pedagogies align strongly with a transition to ‘commons’ land trusts and communities living without private/corporate hegemonic ownership, perhaps even transitioning local government land ownership to community ownership? Finally, to learn with place-consciousness one must be taught through a pedagogy of responsibility for land ‘placeship’ by teachers, carers, kin and family who support the care, love and culture of place as a practice, doing and becoming together.
References:
Berry, W. (1992) Sex, economy, freedom and community.
Bowers, C. A. (2011) University Reform in an Era of Global Warming, in Oregon: Eco-Justice Press, pp. 93-112
Gruenewald, D. A. (2003) Foundations of Place: A Multidisciplinary Framework for Place-Conscious Education, in American Educational Research Journal, Vol. 40:3, pp. 619-654
Patel, R. and Moore, J. W. (2017) A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things: A guide to capitalism, nature, and the future of the planet.
Styres, S. D. (2011) Land as first teacher: a philosophical journeying, in Reflective Practice: International and multidisciplinary Perspectives, Vol 12:6, pp. 717-731