When is it a bad idea for children to play around in school gardens?
This notion—that it is agreeably possible to do good (school gardens!) and live well (guinea hens!)—bears the hallmark of contemporary progressivism, a kind of win-win, “let them eat tarte tatin” approach to the world and one’s place in it that is prompting an improbable alliance of school reformers, volunteers, movie stars, politicians’ wives, and agricultural concerns (the California Fertilizer Foundation is a big friend of school gardens) to insert its values into the schools.
Ouch; I tried to wade through that article, but I don’t think you’re meant to have nosebleeds when reading the internet.
Where to start – with the logical fallacies that litter the article:
STRAWMAN: The poor benighted son of a struggling immigrant, whose only dream was for his six year old to learn calculus, is forced to watch as evil hippies force the lad to work as a child labourer. Sheesh!
FALSE CHOICE: Gardening or Shakespeare. Apparently our younglings are too over-worked to do both.
AD HOMINEM: Waters and followers are ridiculed for their appearance, never mind their beliefs.
To name just 3, on page 1 alone. Sorry – I’m too light headed from blood loss to enjoy the wisdom surely contained on pages 2, 3 and 4…
Interesting blog here, btw.
The other side of the story.
Managed to read the first page and skim the final few…. I assume the author of the piece is absolutely unaware of the relative shortage of agronomists, plant breeders and others involved in agriculture outside of farming itself (which also has a shortage of folk, although clearly by the tone of the article is far too low brow to be something to aspire to – which is a problem in itself – how could anyone want to scrabble about in the dirt for sustenance?!?) – nevermind this as an introduction to plant science and a point of entry to the multitude of different disciplines (and paychecks at least moderately higher than those of a lettuce picker one assumes) connected to plant science.
Never mind that the average american home (possibly not of the lowest income, but hey, we’re expecting these kids to break the cycle of poverty, so lets dream big right?) sits on an obscenely large footprint of land which is generally given over to maybe a couple of species of grass (which is not allowed generally to grow over a couple of inches tall….) which in an ideal world would at least, in a high percentage of cases, be given over to food production of some form or other to ameliorate the impact of agricultural demands from a growing world population – something I don’t think a class in English Literature, Euclidean Geometry, or film studes is likely to prime you for.