How is the military-industrial complex of growing corn like modern American eduction? It was a quiet Sunday morning as I was reading Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma and this question rather suddenly sprung into my mind.
According to Pollan in Omnivore’s Dilemma, “Unlike grain, grass can’t be broken down into its constituent molecules and reassembled as value-added processed foods; meat, milk, and fiber is about all you can make out of grass, and the only way to do that is with a living organism, not a machine. Grass farming with skill involves so many variables, and so much local knowledge, that it is difficult to systematize. As faithful to the logic of biology as a carefully grazed pasture is, it meshes poorly with the logic of industry, which has no use for anything it cannot bend to its wheels and bottom line. And, at least for the time being, it is the logic of industry that rules” (Pollan 202).
I can’t help but think of my own profession when I read this, particularly the corruption of the American education system via over-regulation, and attempts to find a one-size-fits-all method. Kids are people and people do not operate according to instruction manuals. We do not all learn in the same way and we do not all thrive from the same “corn” prescription. It is up to the teacher and communities to develop systems that work for their environment. Like Joel Salatin, the local grower held up as a model in Pollan’s book, we teach best by understanding the wisdom that is local.
For education this means that we really need to understand our individual students’ needs, the way Salatin gets down on his hands and knees to comprehend the complexity of the grasses that nourish his cows. We need to work in teams and discuss what works, rather than blindly follow curriculum units mapped out by No Child Left Behind. Instead of government-regulated testing as our focus, we go back to basics – to the land of education, to what is actually being learned.
Like Salatin who has accululated decades of knowledge from extensive, quality time spent with the land, teachers who are most successful fully immerse themselves in their craft, in understanding their students and working with individual needs.
Salatin’s knowledge cannot be packaged and sold, and that is why agri-business cannot recreate that model, much as it tries. The Slow Movement realizes the impossibility of big agriculture truly being successful, either economically or morally. By becoming more local and allowing the land to take its time, food becomes more authentic and far more nutritious.
The quick fix of corn and bi agriculture is increasingly showing its inability to provide us what we really need to thrive. Education is much the same. The more we try look to change en masse, never giving anything a chance to stick, allowing the same test to access a plethora of learning styles, the less we are serving our students. Our nation is increasingly malnourished.
Pollan mentioned Salatin’s quoting of an old agricultural textbook: “Farming is not adapted to large-scale operations because of the following reasons: Farming is concerned with plants and animals that live, grow, and die” (214). I can’t help but think abut education’s concern with actual students, not cogs in a sort-of-education machine.
