During the past 25 years of witnessing and participating in the nationwide struggle to plant gardens in urban dump lots, in schoolyards and deserts, in barren courtyards and on reservations, I wrote a book called Our Sacred Garden: The Living Earth. It was finally published two years ago.
While I was questioning people and doing research for the book, I was appalled at the lack of knowledge- or interest -in gardening or in anything else in nature, which I found in both adults and children. Not only where does food come from in their minds: (eggs from cartons, milk from cardboard containers) but also what does global warming or polluted soils and waters or fossil fuels or factory farming mean to them? What is sustainability?
What are “they” teaching our children in school?
In the past 5 years (due to the recession or angelic intercession?), there is an American revival of interest in not only gardens but sustainability in all forms: land and aquifer preservation, clean energies, green building, etc. Thank Heavens!
But education too is in desperate need of transformation. So, I’ve been learning about what “they” are teaching today in our schools, and what “we” as parents or citizens are not teaching or learning. And, along with about a thousand others, I am writing a book about what is, and what is not, being taught today. Basically, a revolution is in progress, ground rules are collapsing, new reforms seem to encourage more failures, and almost everyone is being seduced by both the opportunities and priorities of the Internet, television, smart phones, etc! Where are the balances: the arts, the ancient wisdoms, the physical opportunities; the new paradigms in this current overturning in schooling? Where is learning?
For me, there is need of not just lightning bolts, but of clear skies, of spiritual enlightenment, of a muse. My muse is the title of the new book that I am writing: Pegasus, A Life-Force with Wings in Education.
And the struggle for me in the writing is: how to fly with Pegasus?
