Organizing the information

Hi Rosemary! I love your pragmatic approach to teaching (or at least that is what I've gleaned from podcasts with you being interviewed).

As an educator and a curriculum generator, I appreciate especially your take on the format/design of Mollison's text. As I adapt the text to 7-12 grade learners in the US, I find it surprising that the information is organized the way it is once I get into the brasstacks of what is what and where.

Thank you!

Hello Matt:

Thanks for your comments. I believe we must have fidelity to the permaculture curriculum but it is ours to organise the way we find best. I have seen people change the emphasis to their various personal concerns and this surely isn't valid. It is brilliant applied science and it works. Some teachers tend to focus on say, rural land, others, urban or food gardens. However every student deserves the best balance of information and skills we can give them. Mine criteria always line up with a good competent graduate outcomes.

By the way, there was a teacher in Western Australia who used my book to develop a curriculum for a school for ages 12-15/16 and was very pleased with the result. Your experience would be useful for others teaching in schools. In developing countries we can teach the whole science program through permaculture and the outdoors where there are not enough classrooms and certainly no science labs. Teachers get very excited as you can imagine.

Thanks for your comments, Matt.

Rosemary

I should clarify on the Mollison manual with an example: He spreads out information in iterative cycles which in the macro, in a classroom, makes sense, but if it is a manual, I want to be able to look up condensation, read what it is, how it appears, how to use it and how to avoid it. I'm doing a lot of gathering and re-ordering of information, not losing anything per say, but making it more graspable and organized in the sense that my students in my high school can grasp easily and use. I think if I can get it calibrated right, we can have a supplement to 7-12 science classes in the US and hopefully other countries (we do have 6+ translators working currently).

The manual is the source in my eyes of permaculture as we have it. I do think your art is superior and fun. I enjoy studying them; I imagine it is welcoming to children as well. Thank you for doing what you are doing! I really liked the Permaculture Voices podcast and appreciated the spirit in which you spoke.

For anyone that's interested:

http://www.permaculturevoices.com/podcast/permaculture-and-the-forgotten-teaching-permaculture-in-places-that-absolutety-need-it-a-message-of-hope-with-rosemary-morrow-pvp068/