I've been thinking a LOT lately about the pedagogy of garden and ecological education. I'm not going to go that deep right now but i think this is going to be a topic i'll be touching on in an ongoing way soon.

I've had experiences of educational frameworks that are situated within a learning community with open-ended interdisciplinary questions where I have seen that what usually is considered "expert knowledge" built from the ground up through facilitation, observation, & dialog

furthermore this situated community-derived knowledge can draw from traditions, academic or not, but noticeably lacks an ongoing deference to hierarchy because it can reassemble itself to serve unique circumstances.

I think the process of learning to garden, to design, to address climate change all can be generated in this way.

trying to strip away some of the jargon: groups, can be served by people with training who are willing to be students themselves but they MUST create settings where we go out, learn our own stories about our observations and interactions with the world, and return to share them.

something to always keep in mind is that institutions of expertise have the tendency to ensure their own continuation (all systems do this really) and that means they will strongly resist the releasing of their own authority. They will ALWAYS prescribe more of their own domain.

even if they confirm benefit they ultimately will cause dependency. Which means they must overstate the value of their own investment & the necessity of only operating in the domain with the hoops. Passage through the training becomes more important then the process.

ex: i have a higher education in botany. but i have heard scores of people tell me "oh well I've just been into plants for 20 years but I'm no botanist because i never went to school. What do you think happens in botany school?

for only a couple years, you read a few books, you look closely at some plants, you might watch a few lectures, depending on the program you may or may not have direct guidance. But all of that is just a container for going out and looking at plants and talking to others.

now the experts will say "well people can be mislead and i see it all the time with bad identifications online or people spreading plant myths." sure but that's because your profession builds walls rather then advocates for overall botanical literacy for those who want it

i see gardening "experts" making things harder for gardeners. turning having a relationship wplants to be a thing you have to constantly ask others about. Relationship w your surroundings is innate in humans. but deferring to experts is like needing cyrano de bergerac for a date

you'll be awkward, you'll make mistakes, you'll stress out your plants, but please stop following recipes and scripts after you've looked at the basics

what you need is supportive community and culture building, and experts who have rejected that title.

But I want to go beyond “garden education” and propose this is also true for the rebuilding of a stable climate.