Shouldnt gardening be taught in schools?

It seems like an essential life skill...Growing your own food, actually interacting with the Earth and not just cars and computers and televisions...

and learning what it means to live the way we were originally meant to. If that is not a powerful life lesson I don't know what would be. It actually seems messed up to me that they don't teach gardening in schools.

Does this make sense to anybody else? When it first occured to me it seemed like a profound realization....

If you asked most people how to grow their own food, or to ID any plant from nature, most people would not be able to give you an answer. But if you asked them to ID a clothing brand name by it's picture, they could probly tell you...

 

Yes Yes Yes. I agree gardening should be taught in schools. It is a huguely undernurtured skill, and people who would take to it should have the opportunity to do so. I feel that it should be a GCSE option for example.

 

i def think it should be taught in schools. i have a hard time keeping a cactus alive. When i think of people who have gardens, i always think of people with nurturing patience. a trait i think every person should have

 

my school has a class kind of like that i take, called Horticulture. In hort we plant all sorts of things, and learn different methods of propogation to do it. (as well as identifing wild/house plants, weeds, trees, how to do landscape design, and other things like that.) the option is there if we want to use chemicals, however i'm keeping all my plants organic

 

Yes Yes YES! This should be a compulsory course!! It might help kids tio eat sensibly too....

There is a sceme called Eco schools in the UK. My youngest sons nursery is an eco school - they grow veg and last year we planted willow so eventually they will have growing play houses.

I project managed a community garden for a while and we had kids up from all the local schools and of various age groups on a regular basis to learn about gardening and growing food on.

The thing is with that the way that the world is going I believe that we have a obligation to teach our kids how to grow food..it's the only way you know what you are really eating!

 

We had a horticulture class too. I also remember a little garden plot in elementary school, but I think we just planted and harvested without doing any of the maitenance work inbetween.

 

YES it should be in schools along with other things i think the schools should teach worm compost casting. Schools thro away so much food evry day. a worm bin in back will take of it keeping the land fill alittle smaller and the cost of desposle goes down,pluss the school can sell bags of worm casting to gardners to fund some activitys.
i think arizonna has a program like this. i could see elementery kids lovein this project. they can even sell worms for bait or gardens.worm farming project sounds cool.
hmmmmm i think im gonna call my local scxhool board
peace

 

Yeah i think both gardening and first aid are things that schools really need. It won't happen though, well not here cause all the schools are behind the government ideals so they would never waste their time on such non 'academic' subjects.

 

Go for it Woodenfrog. Keep us posted. You may find some info at www.grab.org.uk helpful. There is a guy at GRAB who goes round the local schools with a wormery so kids can see the process and start their own. They also talk about recycling and reducing. Also chencking out this site may help www.eco-schools.org.uk.

Good luck man, keep us posted as to how you progress.

 

Yup I had a hort class in high school, cool teacher too, he even told us how to get pot plants to produce more and better buds, man what a class.

 

Yes, I think it is very important to learn at an early age to live harmoniously with the earth and preserve as much of it as possible, especially now. I know I've mentioned the Waldorf Schools before but we had a gardening class, as I think all schools should.

 

Cuba is a good example of the benefits of teaching organic gardening in schools.

Trivia

A farmer in Cuba makes more money per year then a Doctor in Cuba makes in a year.

 

hey, I am actually looking for some experts like yourselves that might be interested in doing some simple on-line lessons for people. There is this site called www.flixee.com and you can create short little how to videos and upload them for people to view. I use to be a teacher and was thinking it would be so cool to create these little videos then have them available to teachers and students alike to share in the classroom. Since we know all the kids are on the internet anyways perhaps they could absorb some cool stuff through you guys teaching them.

All you need to do is use your digital camera to do a short video. It can be cooking, art, gardening, anything that is family friendly and "G" rated and upload it at www.flixee.com . You can actually take the link and bring it back over here and post it anywhere you want for people to view and become educated via each other.

I would love to see what you come up with. You all can become the resident experts in your field for the teachers and students that we can refer to the site!

Alicia

 

i think gardening should be taught instead of school. ;]

 

We're very lucky to have a 2nd grade teacher who is a combat gardener.
Jeannie------- is a prize, you go into her class room and see flats of starts of flowers and veggies. In the corner are worm boxes turning out worm caseings(compost).
In the spring she loads them op in a bus and brings them out to our greenhouse
for the 5 cent tour. My wife always makes sure there are alot of "tom thumb"
tomatoe plants for them to take home and grow, plus packages of seeds to start.
In our neck of the woods, most of the school year is snow bound so the kids have to garden inside. We have set aside two garden beds on the beach front thats the "kids garden". They get to plant their own stuff and put a stick next to them with their name on them.
Looks like we've got a new generation of gardeners growing........

 

That is so cool!

Why don't US elementary schools set aside say one recess period for working in a school garden? Think of all that free labor. The kids would be doing something constructive and learning good work habits at the same time as they exercised both small and large motor skills. The produce could be used in the School kitchen, and it would demonstrate the importance of gardening to the kids. They might eat more veggies if they grew them themselves.

 

a long time ago i heard all schools in the UK did gardening n veg growing type things. they should at least do it til the age of 11/12. so many benefits.

 

Oh, sure--I definitely think that gardening should be taught in schools--from elementary school right through high school! I remember when I was in kindergarten, my teacher gave each of us students a little butter tub with some dirt in it, and there were 5 pumpkin seeds in the tub--well, I took my seeds home and planted them on the East side of the house, between our house and the next-door neighbors' house--and those vines grew like crazy! When they started putting on pumpkins, there were pumpkins all the way down the sidewalk and into the neighbors' front yard! LOL I wound up giving a lot of them away--but I did get to keep one for my Halloween jack-o-lantern! It was then that I discovered that I had a "green thumb"--and I still garden to this day! I enjoy it--and who knows--maybe if gardening were taught in schools, there might be other kids who find out that they like it too! Peace!

 

If you didn't have it available in school you still have a chance.
The Master Gardener Program.
Heres a sample of one such program
http://antrimcounty.org/msue/msue-mg.html
My wife and I took this program (at different times) here in Alaska.
You get 40 hours of training and you give back 40 hours of service to your community with your new skills. A great program, anyone interested in gardening I strongly recommend this.
No you don't come away with a masters degree, but you will learn a lot and probably make some new friends with similar interests.
Check it out..........Dennis.....

 

Gardening should definitely be taught, along with real sex ed, but we all know how well that is taught.