Sustainable Education

Willow and other materials for making baskets and plant supports.

2011-05-11T11:39:00.000+01:00

What a boring title. I've been on two 1day courses for working with basket making materials.
Firstly, here in Bristol making plant supports and a willow ball (much enjoyed by Molly & Flo's two kittens Nim & Trixie. Imogen & I repeated the willow ball (with a small sponge tennis ball in the middle, removed once the structure was self suporting) and she made an excellent willow ball for her guinea pig. The plant support is holding up the huge pink Peonies by the front door. The larger, taller plant support will be for runner beans, transplanted yesterday.
The second workshop this April was given by our friends Jane & Peter at their place near Mirande in SW France, where they have been for 11 years now, teaching & practicing permaculture. A walk through their woods revealed many differnet materials which can be used for making things using basket weaving techniques. We gathered Hazel (thick & thin), Butcher's Broom (prickly with red berries but wonderfully straight and green), wild Clematis (old vines make excellent basket handles), Broom (covered in yellow flowers) and noticed the difference made by managing the woodland (also, badger setts, old tracks, ditches and the remains of a large pit alledgedly used for an arms cache by the Resistance during WWII). I spent a morning with them coppicing two old Hazel coppices, using some of the material for a bean frame. Yes I know we should be harvesting in late winter when the sap is not rising. After an excellent lunch, (we all brought food to share, amazing how this always seems to work with no planning), we made frames for the baskets and then set about weaving them. Jane had plenty of dried bullrushes dampened and wrapped in old wet towels. I have never used rushes before and found them to be a wonderful material to handle. She also has rows of different willow growing, some of which had been harvested, stored and then put in an old bath to soak for a few days prior to use in order to soften them. I made a little basket from fresh Hazel, Butcher's Broom and old dried (redampened/softened) rushes. We swapped some different willow cuttings.
It is hard to convey the atmosphere of joy and frustration, satisfaction and wonder amongst the group mostly making a basket for the first time. I am more determined than ever to teach the grandchildren how to make things themsleves using natural materials (often found) and basket weaving techniques.

What a mixture - wabi sabi, Tesco, non-linear pedagogy and Globalisation.

2011-02-16T12:03:00.000Z

Convergence today of a number of very diverse findings. Or are they?

I am "Exploring non-linear pedagogical approaches to ESDGC".

"Oh no Tesco!" New Internationalist Blog about a Tesco supermarket opening in Keynsham near Bristol. Read the comments.

An article on Pelican web about "The biology of Globalisation".

LESSONS OF NATURE

• All living systems self-organize and maintain themselves by the same biological principles, which we can identify and abstract.
• Among the principles essential to the health of living systems are empowered participation of all parts and continual negotiation of self-interest at all levels of organization.
• Humanity constitutes a living system within the larger living system of our Earth.
• Essential to the health of humanity is empowered participation of all humans and negotiated self-interest among individual, local and global economies as well as the Earth itself.

An e-mail about wabi sabi with a quote from "The Soul of Rumi".

How much longer will my poor old shed last?
The decay, weathering and changes after a hard winter.
The soil crumbly from the frost. Weeds enjoying freedom.
Clearing dead leaves from the pond. Sorry sleeping frog!
Cutting some willow.
Make something with the grandchildren over half term?
Raking up windblown rubbish and have a bonfire.
The snowdrops and croci emerging.
Catkins on the hazel bushes. Birdsong.

Only the good die young

2010-10-31T09:21:00.000Z

If I had enough time, I’d work on the barn more slowly, say no not today, maybe tomorrow I’ll help you sort out *&%^$** .

I’d play my saxophone every day, use my rowing machine and lose that extra stone, play the guitar again, dig over my allotment more thoroughly, not in such a rush, enjoying the moment, the smell of the broken soil, watching the worms, the earwig scuttling off, carefully picking out every last bit of fragile, white bindweed root …..

but in fact I’m trying to practise Permaculture, so I don’t dig over the whole allotment ever, usually I leave it covered perhaps with a green manure such as field beans or cardboard, composted leaves or leave the stalks with seed heads for the birds and the untidy joy of the seasons displayed, first frost on browning leaves.

Yes it is autumn now, the leaves so colourful have started falling in earnest now.

Each time I drive to Rob’s deserted deathly hush flat there are more leaves on the pavements of Redland, leaves being removed from green Clifton lawns and yes our Green has been covered, overshadowed, lost, yet not gone in our hearts. Molly his just teenage daughter still senses his presence.

For 15 days I’ve been stirring up his immaculately organised stuff, delving into his affairs, stopping his life with letters, death certificates, phone calls, moves towards probate, an ever approaching finality , that my son-in-law and friend is really dead, his goods and chattels dispersed, his life deconstructed.

Beautifully shaped yellow maple leaves waiting to fall. The red leaves on the Japanese maple next to the Buddha in my garden who gently smiles at me.

Robert Leslie Green 12^th August 1964 – 8^th October 2010

Making your own timber and furniture oil

2010-08-13T23:23:00.000+01:00

Been treating the barn framework with a mixture of 60% linseed oil, 40% turpentine and a drying agent 2%. The old timber beams and uprights needed wirebrushing and cleaning, but now they are all painted with the oil, the colours in the wood stand out. Some of the timbers are pre1750, most from early 1800s, all very local I think. Many had already been used a couple of times at least. 5 new timbers were from local oak trees cut up by Phillipe Abadie at the saw mill less than a kilometre away, and delivered as green oak in Sept 2008, when we started the barn renovation, so lees than 2 years old. The oldest timbers are nearly black and deeply grained, the 1800s uprights are deep red/brown and the new oak as you would expect still very pale but darkening even after 2 years. Great pleasure to see these warm colours come alive from the dust and years of use.
I have used this mixture on floors (chestnut), the stairs (turkey oak) and garden furniture.
The beans and tomatoes planted in late May are going crazy now, enough for some everyday.

Little bits of self-sufficiency

2010-07-14T22:03:00.002+01:00

This year we have eaten all our own rhubarb, but due to dry weather it has gone to seed (first time in 7 years). Don't buy shallots or onions, grow my own from sets, the shallots keep for up to 2 years, just gathered them in before the welcome rain of the last two days. Must get onions up and in soon. Ground still very hard, big cracks in clayey soil on allotment. Wonderful red and black currants this year. The bushes are not expensive to buy as small plants, don't need a lot of work, weeding, feeding, mulching, pruning maybe twice a year, netting to save the fruit from pigeons. Just put away many pots of redcurrant jelly and blackcurrant jam, make good presents. French friends sometimes a bit bemused by my concotions such as rhubarb and ginger jam, green tomato chutney, chinese plum sauce... Trying to grow angelica again.

Potatoes this year a disaster, very dry weather and some late frost. Beans looking good and enough for some nearly every day, will get boring soon. Years ago used to slice with a little machine and then salt them in big earthenware jars. Remember having a complete cupboard filled with Kilner jars with mainly fruit in. No freezers in the 1950s only a small fridge. luxury (you were lucky... young people nowadays...). Bendix washing machine my dad bought to cope with the nappies after I arrived in 1945 cost over £100, a small fortune, you could survive on £200 a year, lasted 30 years. I digress. We used to have fruit picking parties with all ages involved, a huge picnic lunch. I remember lots of people sitting round the kitchen table preparing fruit for bottling or making into jam. A joint endeavor, laughter, singing, drinking, playing "sardines" in the garden, a lot of cigarette smoking (both parents smoked 50 a day).

What is the point of all this you might well ask? It feels good to produce some of your own food, to be able to give it away, to cook and eat it, to share it. I get great joy from watching my grandchildren pick fruit as I did when small, to look for beans to pick, where they gathered the bean seeds, dried, sorted and planted them. I'm trying to reconnect them to the soil, the earth on which we all depend for our survival. To feel a part of nature not apart from it. To develop a sense of place, belonging, heimat, at-homeness. To come to know the seasons, the weather, the need for rain and frost, as well as sun and warmth. ho hum

Chief Seattle's Testimony

2010-07-09T16:08:00.001+01:00

I came across Neil Spencer's "looped cursive" handwriting book from my class of 9 year olds in 1976. His handwriting had improved wonderfully during the year in my class and he was proud for me to keep it as an example of what can be achieved. What has this to do with sustainability you might well ask. Well, after using Spike Milligan poems and children's regional skipping games (Iona & Peter Opie + children's own knowledge) for the texts for our daily 4 lines or so of handwriting, I came across Chief Seattle's Testimony. So we used that and spent time discussing what had happened in 1854, what his message to the white man was and what it might mean for us in Colne, Lancashire today. The children were genuinely inspired by his words (even if he didn't say exactly that, even if they were changed at a later date, even if they were invention. See "A native american eco-gospel or Southern Baptist creation?") It made them think about their environment and how it was being spoiled. It helped them to realise the importance of noticing nature across the seasons, during our monthly walk around the same patch of cemetry, riverbank, woodland and abandoned land behind the old Lancashire cotton mills, long silent. That summer term we organised cleaning the river/stream with the help of the local district council who provided, gloves and plastic sacks and a skip. It was a success but deemed too risky to repeat. "Why were they not in school? Wasn't it too dangerous? What were they learning from the experience? "Shouldn't the council clean up the river/stream?... How proud they were of what they had achieved. I told them earlier in the year that if they started and finished each lesson on time saving at least 5 mins. for each lesson, more than 20 mins. a day, and nearly 2 hours a week, they would earn 3 whole days during the summer term to do some worthwhile project that they could choose. Another year and another class, we conducted a local tree survey over a period of a few weeks.
The good news, some of the trees especially the ones with TPOs (tree preservation order) are still there, the little saplings in danger of being vandalised, now majestically line the road. The children knew they had made a small difference. The bad news, 3 years after the river clean up a local company up stream suffered a fractured pipe on a suphuric acid storage tank. The children now at the local secondary school came to me one day after school in tears to tell me about the dead fish. It mattered to them, it was their river now. The company was fined, and eventually life returned to the little river. I have happy memories watching them play by the side of a sand bank, swimming and splashing after the clean up knowing all the broken glass, old bikes and steel drums ... had been removed. I wonder what their children's experiences have been?. Neil will be 43.
How can we develop a sense of place in today's children?

Might Twitter give rise to Tweets as the new Haiku?

2010-05-26T21:32:00.001+01:00

Direct experience before words and language?

Cool morning air touches my nostrils. Am I breathing in
or is Gaia breathing out? Ah!

2 crickets signal the end of St Glace, the warmth returns.
In go the tomato plants.

Watching hairs on my old paintbrush.
How many strokes, cutting in, playing a role to make the edge?

This mouthful, honey's silky sweetness, nectar gathered from many flowers,
incessant work for my one lick.

Nothing to lose but my insanity.
Memories of playing a kazoo on the train. Just be. Now.

The candle is burning down. My gap year is coming to an end.
I need to use my time wisely.

Transient birdsong, blackbird, cuckoo, dog barking, traffic, my breath,
bell chimes 9.

When spitting, spit, with a balance of tension and relaxation,
with intention, deliberately, mindfully.

Small actions; little things

2010-05-04T21:10:00.000+01:00

What litte things can we do to live a bit more simply?
"Live simply, that others may simply live." A 1970s sound-bite..
I picked some fresh mint to make tea and thought about the zero food miles, packaging.....
For years I've been planting cuttings from herbs, growing them on a bit and then giving them away or selling them at school fairs etc. I've planted out a few sprigs of rosemary and lavender descended from parent plants from 1986 in Cornwall, now growing in France and heaven knows where else.
I filled a raised bed, made from salvaged timber, with compost which must be at least 5yrs old. I'll plant beans in one and tomatoes in the other. All the old garden rubbish had completely broken down. The ash tree benefitted from all that rubbish we piled next to it in 1994, such as layers of ancient chicken muck we initailly mistook for lime rendering it was so hard. I use a shredder now to reduce all the hedge and orchard prunings to small pieces. I store them for a year or two before using them as mulch.
The weather has been getting colder 20, 19, 18 ....15 degrees C. So put on another sweater. Once I get working I soon warm up. It is interesting how quickly the body gets used to a dwelling at around 15 degrees C. No central heating here to turn down in these C18th cottages, but thick mud and river stone walls hold the heat. I knew it was colder inside because the butter was hard.
Snowed today so had to cut up some old wood and light the woodburner. Old hand riven oak roofing lattes, salvaged when the barn was re-roofed 10 years ago, must be well over 100 years old nearer 200.

Spring is on its way

2010-03-25T18:31:00.000Z

The cold weather has broken down the soil into a fine tilth; just hoed with a push-pull hoe, cuts the weeds well. Burning rubbish, hope to make some charcoal to incorporate into the soil, great benefits and easy to do. Get the fire going, put on the wood or organic matter, waste, cuttings... cover up with weeds or soil to excluded air. Next day open up the reduced pile. There should be charcoal (bio-char) amongst the ashes. Rake shovel out and work into the soil. Planted shallots, easy to grow, keep well and a high value crop. Half my onion sets in now rest in later. Very early potatoes in now.
Met my friends John & Sarah Snyder, from the Sahara Project 1986 - 1992, after 18 years. John has just digitised the 35000 images he took in Mali and converted them into a film. A copy of the 43G file now sits on a tiny 250G external hard drive that easily fits in my pocket. Oh how the technology has changed since laser vision disc of the late 1980s. John is still working with Dr Mark Porter of "Muscat" fame (an early probablisitic search engine). Their current project is "Grapeshot".

My Head in a Tag Cloud

2009-12-16T10:51:00.000Z

Strange the way things come together. Have made contact with old friends over the past few weeks and new contacts have offered new links and ideas. Brenda is working in France on local green issues and suggested I opened up the comments. So I have. Caleb Gattegno's Educational Solutions has changed hands and now most of his extensive writing is available to read on-line. Re-inventing Education is increasingly important. Gattegno suggested that we "sub-ordinate teaching to learning".
After many years interest in the use of charcoal to improve soils both in my own garden/allotment and when in Zambia in early 70s, BioChar is now big news. Can you imagine the internal surface area of a lump of charcoal no bigger than a sugar lump being 100m2!! Imagine you are a micro-organism. What a great place to live. terra preta
Rolf Jucker gave an interesting seminar at IRIS in Cheltenham on 4th Dec. "Systemic Change in the Age of Stupid" Swiss goings on in ESD. He is Director of Swiss Foundation for Environmental Education.
I'm still struggling with what to use as tags. Too many tags makes the tag cloud I'm using weaker, too few restricts the concepts/ideas in the cloud. Restricted vocabulary or free? What happens in ESD Electronic Service Delivery that is when the words you think are really important for survival, such as resilience, soil improvement, rich soil, power down, energy descent, energy decline, limits to growth, are not included?
Wonderful, wonderful COP15. Will it be??
Have a look at 10x10, Ecoloqo & of course my Diigo tag cloud.

Autumn 2009

2009-11-17T19:38:00.000Z

Well I'm back from France. The main structural work on the eco-barn is completed. I hope to finish it next summer. The allotment looks a bit neglected but good crops of potatoes, shallots, onions, black & red currants and beans before we left end of July. Green manure has worked well and covering fallow soil with garden rubbish &/or cardboard just fine.
Major recent influences include: Great new book on Sustainability Literacy; continued interest globally in the potentail for bio-char to sequester Carbon and improve soils water and nutrient holding capacity and hence productivity.
Eckhart Tolle and excellent articles in Resurgence magazine 256 on Consciousness.
I'm still stuggling with Tag list (controlled vocabulary), but warming to a solution.
Tag cloud for ESDGC

2009-02-13T21:26:00.000Z

Mirandanet has just had a most fullsome discussion about the merits of teaching touch-typing to children.
I've managed to get a "Tag Cloud" on the http://esd.escalate.ac.uk site. I imported it from my Diigo site, where they are called "Tag Rolls".
I've set up a Group on Diigo for "Sustainable Education". Anyone can join.
http://groups.diigo.com/groups/sustainable-education
You are welcome. I've written a little about a possible protocol for tags.

2009-02-06T10:41:00.000Z

Diigo made me think about ideas from 1989. 'ere 'tis

PEBBLES (First appeared in “Education 2010” Newman Software 1989)

Information, data, and collections have always accompanied civilisations, but the form, content, context and quantity has developed and expanded. There is already a vast amount of data available to us from a variety of sources. The great library at Alexandria was one such example from long ago. Current libraries in wealthy countries have moved swiftly to microfilm, microfiche, and latterly to computerised databases, often accessed by phone. The fact is that our collections of books, articles, newspapers are now so huge that we can no longer afford to actually keep and handle them first hand for a variety of reasons; space, cost of purchase, cost of storing, cost of cataloguing, cost of maintenance ..... Even our collections of artefacts such as those found in the British Museum are so extensive that they cannot be shown regularly. In fact some exhibits aren't, they never see the light of day. Figures for the rate of growth of the number of articles published in scientific journals each year are quite staggering. Knowledge, facts, and printed material are threatening to engulf us. I dread to think what it might be like by 2010.
There is a great need to personalise large databases.
If you think for a moment about your books, your library or indeed any collection you may own or have access to, and consider how you know your way around it, there is inevitably a personal side to that knowledge. You may use a catalogue and a number system, but also it is highly likely that your own personal experiences before, during and after your various uses of the collection, have coloured your view, mental map and ultimately the way you feel and think about the collection. Most of us know our books by colour, shape, where they go on the shelf, and inside, we pave, mark, underline, make notes, put in paper slips or fold over corners.
Pebbles is an attempt to describe a way of personalising vast amounts of data.
On the Apple Mac in Hypercard, the system assuming the human user to be somewhat simple and easily confused, keeps a record of the last 20 screens visited by the idiot human.
Some years ago Bob Kowalski, talking about developments in Prolog, proposed the very simple but incredibly useful idea of SYMMETRY. He explained that if the Prolog system couldn't answer a query from the user, then the system could ask for more information by querying the user. This whole notion of symmetry between the system and the user seems so obvious, but when we either feel in control of the system or know that it controls us, we don't think of symmetry, only our role and that of the system. Hansel and Gretel stole bread and crumbled it so they could find their way home again, but the trail had a finite length, like the Mac's breadcrumb trail. Moreover, Hansel and Gretel were in control of the distribution of the bread at least, but it was when they used pebbles that they found their way home. I term the objects with which I am going to suggest we personalise databases, PEBBLES. Pebbles are hard and durable, they have been used for thousands of years for counting and playing games, and painted pebbles have been found in prehistoric sites. Pebbles can be re-used, unlike breadcrumbs, which were eaten by the birds, as Hansel and Gretel found to their cost.
Pebbles can come in different shapes, sizes, patterns, colours, surfaces, and densities. In computing terms, they can be described as objects. I propose that these objects can be given various properties, ultimately as part of an object oriented programming environment. But I rush on too far, too fast. The user is in control of the pebbles, not the system with its breadcrumbs.
Some ways of using Pebbles.
The user browsing a vast database with a handful of pebbles can choose to drop a pebble at any point. Any page of interest, any piece of interesting data can be marked using a pebble. Pebbles can be dropped in any order.
At the end of a session, the references marked by the pebbles can be requested, and a second selection made. Pebbles can be taken back if the reference is not deemed worth keeping. References can be reordered and saved as a set of references.
The important concept is that pebbles can have as many or as few properties as required.
In reality pebbles are simply property lists stored on a disc linked to the user or other property lists. Hard copy of the material can be obtained .depending on the system being used; pebbles merely keeps track of where you went and which pages or references etc you wished to mark.
Students could use prepared routes marked out by pebbles. This doesn't preclude them from browsing the system. Students could use their own pebbles like a signet ring to mark pages in which they were interested. The database would appear to show which pages in a text or set of newspaper articles were deemed important by the students. Of course, the teacher could lay down a paper trail, or just leave a few clues lying around.
Pebbles can be collected in with their references, sifted, sorted and ordered into a linear sequence. The pebbles, when drilled, can be strung together, making a bead necklace.
Branching strings of beads can be produced, as can networks. They can be built up over a period of time without actually touching or changing the original data as it exists on a CD ROM or whatever. Networks can be hierarchical, in that large pebbles denote important routes, whilst small! ones denote minor routes. The metaphor could be changed to roads, and travel in general. Remember tracking and scouting; consider the marks made by rich and poor sedentary and mobile peoples. Pebbles is a system, not unlike buttons in Hypercard. Pebbles can build up simple or complex networks, fractals if you prefer, of information based on how we as individuals think and come to that information. Pebbles is a metaphor, which hopefully will allow us to personalise vast amounts of information, making them our own. At its simplest, pebbles should save us from getting lost in the myriad knowledge which threatens to engulf us.

Henry Liebling in thoughtful mood. May 1989 .(ISBN 0948048042)
My friend Paul Spurgeon & I worked on these ideas through the 1990s.
Now I think Diigo have realised most of this. Feb 6th 2009

2009-02-05T13:51:00.001Z

I've just set up a Sustainable Education Group on Diigo to share and maybe annotate websites, webpages, documents...
I'm sure we can use Diigo to make more sense of and manage the huge amount of information there is out there.
http://groups.diigo.com/groups/sustainable-education

Send me an e-mail if you want to join us

hliebling@gmail.com

best wishes
Henry

18000 hits from all over the world

2008-06-30T16:26:00.000+01:00

I have been amazed by how many visitors we have had. Also no feedback via e-mails. So might make a link to this blog.
So many contrasting views in the media on topics such as bio-fuels.
Need to feel joyful, hopeful rather than desparate about the world.
How far along the raod to a view such as "in Gaia we are just another species"?
If humans are so interconnected to all life on the planet, then surely all life is special not just humans. If this is so then what of religious views which clearly in many cases (not all) place humans above and stewards of all life. We are not doing a very good job are we?
I'm going to play with my grand children. Then pick some food from my allottment!

New E4S Website

2008-06-09T22:50:00.000+01:00

A new website has been launched for
Education for Sustainability and Global Citizenship.
It is at
http://esd.escalate.ac.uk
Have a look
Let me know what you think
Give me your website address and maybe we can swap links

I want a future for my grandchildren.
Yours hopefully
Henry Liebling
"The Pampa"