Creating Change in Farming and Education

By Joel Hammon

Princeton Learning Cooperative at Snipes Farm

Bucks Learning Cooperative and Snipes Farm and Education Center recently announced a partnership, arousing some curiosity around Bucks County. After all, what do education and farming have in common?

Traditionally, the answer is very little except for the occasional school trip to a farm. This new partnership, however, represents something quite different because both of our organizations are deeply committed to creating fundamental change in our industries. A partnership, therefore, makes eminent sense. Let me explain.

Through sophisticated technologies, the use of bio-engineered seeds and massive amounts of chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides, modern industrial farms today are able to produce fields of perfectly aligned rows of corn for as far as the eye can see. From a certain standpoint this is a beautiful and wonderful thing to behold until we consider that to achieve this “perfection,” industrial farming imposes enormous costs through loss of bio-diversity, pollution from chemical run-off, and in the case of animal production, a tremendous amount of suffering.

In the modern farm very little thought is given to what is actually good for the local environment and the people, plants and animals that depend on it for life. The goal is a highly standardized “one-size-fits-all” product.

In much the same way, modern education is also pushing for increased standardization and testing to ensure a “uniform product.” Think of hundreds or thousands of kids sitting in perfectly aligned desks, in required classes, using a curriculum based on Common Core standards and preparing for standardized state tests.

Once again, from a certain view, this looks good and produces high school graduates who are considered “proficient” but few people think about the costs associated with this “one-size-fits-all” approach to learning.

During my teaching career, I saw these costs firsthand: kids who were bright but bored to tears; students bullied for being different; kids who had learning differences that couldn't be addressed in the traditional system; kids who would rather be out exploring in the woods than sitting still and listening for 7 hours a day; kids who had real passions and talents that were pushed to the side by 3 to 4 hours of homework a night and families that endured so much stress from the nightly battles over doing that homework.

There is a growing awareness of the costs associated with modern farming practices. Snipes Farm and Education Center is part of the movement to show that local, organic and sustainable agriculture can produce food in a way that protects and nourishes everything that it touches – the soil, the plants and animals, the water, the farmers, and ultimately us, the people who eat the food.

And there is also a national movement that recognizes the heavy costs of the one-size-fits-all approach to education and wants to replace it with learning opportunities that light a fire within children, as opposed to smothering them with tests. Bucks Learning Cooperative is helping to lead this movement and is spreading the knowledge that families can in fact opt out of this standardized system and create a life and education for their children that will work for them and is based on their interests and talents.

We don't need perfect rows of corn or children at desks. We need a food and education system that recognizes the inherent value of our land and our children and works to nourish both.

Joel Hammon is the co-founder of Bucks Learning Cooperative and a former Neshaminy School District teacher. He can be reached at info@buckslearningcooperative.org.

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