So from having been a scientist working in development, I had to unlearn. But what seemed so profoundly unfair what that people I lived and worked with in Lesotho, had no possible way of accessing good information - in this case permaculture which would improve the quality of their lives. Permaculture appeared to have many of the answers.
I returned to Australia for family reasons and decided to learn about teaching. I was offered a radical course in Non-formal education. It made sense. No top-down curriculum, no entry qualifications and a long exciting history whose first records we have go back to Socrates. And later through the ages and in the 20thC people like Gandhi and Paulo Friere. It meant your bag was the permaculture curriculum and some butcher's paper and you carried that out to the market and places where people are and offer it. Absolutely no one controlled it and once you had a
PDC you were able to be start.
My
PDC was very chalk and talk - the Sage on The Stage. I'd had years of this at Univesity and reckoned it was disrespectful to adults who had a lifetime of
experience. So I focussed on learned-centred education. This was wonderful. People know about food, they garden or their parents did. They know about food. Their knowledge and the curriculum became a dance. And it has never ended. The music goes on.
I write once a year to David Holmgren and
Bill Mollison and thank them for Permaculture and giving me a life with such meaning. It seems we carry a sacred trust in having it. But I also thought that the curriculum was a bit one sided on the Care of the Earth ethic and the actually delivery of a course need to demonstrate Care of People and so create a community of Learners that would continue after the PDC. So I simply asked participants for behaviours which meant that we treat each other well and teachers to model it. I didn't develop a curriculum but rather gave help for behaviours that challenged me.
Next I'll chat about the curriculum and why I wrote my
books.
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