Why do we have a farm? Part 1

by Andy

Why do we have a farm?

This is a perplexing question for me because to have an adolescent program on a farm is exactly to the opposite of my experience of secondary education. I sometimes have a hard time remembering why Lake Country makes such an effort to incorporate the Land School into the center of the school. The prevailing culture marginalizes rural life and separates people from nature and the sources of their food. In the face of that marginalization, I struggle to remember my own importance and convey to the students just how important their experience on the land is. To get a sense of the importance of the work, it is useful for me to return occasionally to the well of Maria Montessori’s work for inspiration.

Recently I attended an adolescent Montessori teachers’ conference in California. It was a big conference with hundreds of teachers from all over the country and the world, most of whom who come from adolescent programs with some sort of farm component. We welcomed the renowned researcher on the optimal state of "flow," Mihaly Czikzentmihalyi, who gave a keynote address. Then we received a series of lectures from experts in the field, who developed a picture of the “Educational Syllabus” as defined in the Appendices of From Childhood to Adolescence, Montessori’s seminal work where she specifically refers to the adolescent as an “Erdkinder” – a child of the soil. At the end of the experience I understood more about why we have a Land School, but I could also see that the experience of the land is just one of the elements of a Montessori education that is completely different and I would also say quite subversive. Montessori envisioned a world-wide unity with peace and progress wedded together, and she believed that to change society in this revolutionary way, we first need a revolutionary change in the education of adolescents.

Mihaly Czikzentmihalyi began by defining adolescence for us as a time for an individual to acquire the skills, knowledge and values necessary to function in society. He noted that adolescence is unnoticeable in most mammals, but in mammals with more complex social arrangements it is a problematic time, because the social skills, knowledge and values are not genetic, but rather have to be learned. There needs to be a mechanism to bring adolescents into society. Czikzentmihalyi said that throughout human evolution the family and the tribe/village served to initiate the young person into society, but now we have mostly entrusted our schools with that job. And modern schools are not doing a very good job of it. His research with thousands of young people has revealed that in school compared to other times adolescents are sadder, more irritable, more bored, have a harder time concentrating, are more often confused, are more self-conscious, feel more constrained, and most often do not want to be there.

Czikzentmihalyi talked about research that says that the way we feel and act as young people is a very good predictor of how we are as adults. He looked backward by referring to research about six general characteristics of elderly adult well-being: physical health and fitness, a vital mind, a continuous vocation, close relationships, involvement in the community, and wisdom. His point was that if those are the hallmarks of a happy adult, then we should have an education that starts that way from the beginning. Instead we have adolescent education that deviates from each of those six criteria. He spoke of the physical and mental passivity of vicarious entertainment and education, the lack of purpose, the isolation and the lack of involvement typical of today’s teenagers, and he specifically mentioned the prevailing cynicism that is consciously and unconsciously transmitted to young people in our schools.

Based on his research, Czikzentmihalyi recommends three things for adolescent education:

1. Allowing for autonomy and initiative – that leads to innovation.

2. Developing responsibility – for the planet and humanity.

3. Fostering collaboration – to develop teamwork and foster community.

In his explanation, he talked about how each of these elements was present throughout human history. In our hunter gatherer and rural agrarian past, young people had real responsibility for sustenance and care of the family. Their actions on the land had life or death consequences. They were depended upon and they depended on others. There was teamwork inherent in farm and tribal life. However, in the development of modern education the basic models were the Prussian army and the assembly line. Both of these models discourage autonomy and encourage dependence, and collaboration is not nearly as important as compliance.

So if I am to believe Mihaly Czikzentmihalyi, the problems faced by society are complex and require adults who are fully confident, inspired, capable and socialized to confront those problems. Except for about 5% of students, our modern schools actively, if unintentionally, function to discourage these traits in students. The farm is a place where young adults can work in an environment that demands responsibility, encourages initiative, and fosters teamwork. Although he did not specifically prescribe a farm, his discussion of a rural life endorsed it as a viable avenue to maturity.

It is interesting that Czikzentmihalyi indicted modern education in the way he did and prescribed his three recommendations, because his indictment and prescription mirror almost exactly what Maria Montessori saw and prescribed over fifty years ago. In the remainder of the conference, we were treated to an exposition of Montessori’s “Educational Syllabus,” which is also divided into 3 sections: Self-Expression (developing a unique interior self), Psychic Development (discovering one’s responsibility in relation to society), and Preparation for Adult Life (learning of nature, supernature, and the connections between the two throughout history). I plan to blog further about the exposition as I continue to riddle the question of why we have a farm.