I bang away about why it is a good idea to have a substantial local food system on PEI.

The good news is that for years people have been working to pull this off - but either as separate groups or alone as producers. Isnt it time for all of us to get together? My bet is that if we do, we will be able to help each other, learn more and make more progress.

To this end a few people got together to organize a Meetup. Here are the details.

As well as meeting, sharing food and talking - we thought it may be fun to have people speak - but not in the normal way but in the style of Pecha Kucha - that is each speaker has 20 slides and only 6 minutes. No one is dull in that format and we have time to get a lot of information our in a concise way. 

Do you have a story to tell or do you know of someone who has? Do you want to make diference in this vital area for all our future?

Here is the Facebook Group page too. 

Beat the winter blahs and come out and be with us.

 Thursday, March 24th at 6.30 pm at The Farm Centre (420 University Avenue, Charlottetown.  

Special thanks to The Farm  Centre for supporting this initiative. This event is free and open to all, just bring your enthusiasm!

 

Many Islanders can hardly afford put food on the table as it is. High gas prices and high food prices and our current design for how we live = the impossible for many.

This is the bind that many in the Arab world find themselves. But we can think our way though this - provided we don't just hope that all of this is going away.

All our eggs are in this basket. You have fire insurance on your house. Some even life insurance! But we have no insurance for oil and a total dependency.

The case for local resiliency is surely a good one? So what might that mean for PEI which is a small Island community?

How can we protect ourselves from high energy costs and high food costs?

Heat - Gas - Electricity and the big one Food!

We use oil for all our heating - $200 million a year. This is the largest single expense in the family budget - a typical house uses 3,500 litres.

The quick answer here is more insulation and a shift to biomass.

We have had small programs for insulation - we could go bigger and have a community element with incentives.

With Biomass we could do as we did with wind. Convert all public buildings to Biomass to create demand - that will stimulate the supply. There is more than enough wood in Atlantic Canada for this. Drive wider conversion with incentives.

Link our wind with mini hydro. All over PEI are the remains of the early hydro dams. Mini hydro could give us the "Battery" we need to store surplus wind.

For Gasoline - make Telecommuting the new norm for government workers. Not push them into their homes but into local Commons. PEI is the Commuter Capital of Canada. This way most people would be minutes away from where they live not only cutting back on their gas use but making their communities more viable.

Start the shift from Factory Schools where all the kids are bused longer and longer distances - to experimenting with the virtual alternative. It makes no sense to me to have a school system that depends on busing. If prices go up much more how will it survive? I see instead the emergence of the new Super Local School where the education comes to the child and not the other way around.

This also supports a more local society.

We then have a lot of surplus buses - mmm maybe the beginning of a real public transport system?

Food - How can our current design of farming survive high oil prices? It cannot. This has to be thought out again. Smaller everything. More local too.

What is our most important market? Off PEI or on it? If people are hungry what is our real choice.

There is so much to think through here - I can only touch the surface here. But
if we thought this through, surely we could come up with a society that used much less oil and kept much more money here at home? Would not such an approach also revitalize our rural way of life? Would it also not bring back a lot of work?

Amplify’d from www.nytimes.com

“No one knows where this ends,” said Helima L. Croft, a director and senior geopolitical strategist at Barclays Capital. “A couple of weeks ago it was Tunisia and Egypt, and it was thought this can be contained to North Africa and the resource-poor Middle East countries. But now with protests in Bahrain, that’s the heart of the gulf, and it’s adding to anxieties.”

Middle Eastern oil fields are generally well defended and far from population centers, but energy analysts say the continuing turbulence potentially threatens supply lines and foreign investment that producers like Libya and Algeria depend on to increase production.

World oil prices started rising sharply when demonstrators overwhelmed downtown Cairo earlier in the month because of concerns that unrest could block the Suez Canal and Sumed pipeline through which three million barrels of crude pass daily. Labor unrest continues to roil the canal, though shipments have continued without incident.

Unrest in Yemen potentially threatens the 18-mile-wide Strait of Bab el-Mandeb, a shipping lane between the Horn of Africa and the Middle East that serves as a strategic link between the Indian Ocean and Mediterranean through which nearly four million barrels of oil pass daily. Security for tanker traffic in the area became a concern after terrorists attacked a French tanker off the coast of Yemen in 2002. Read more at www.nytimes.com

The province has accepted two proposals to supply biomass-based heat for five public buildings in Prince Edward Island, says Environment, Energy and Forestry Minister Richard Brown.

“Government is committed to creating opportunities to replace fossil fuels with renewable and domestically produced alternatives,” said Minister Brown. “The expansion of biomass heat will create significant environmental benefits while strengthening our economy and our rural communities.”

Atlantic Bioheat will supply biomass-based heat to M.E. Callaghan and Hernewood Junior High Schools. Three Oaks High School, Bluefield High School and the O’Leary Community Hospital will be supplied with biomass-derived heat from Wood4heating.

“By replacing five existing heating systems with biomass-based heat, we are reducing our carbon footprint and improving our environment,” said Minister Ron MacKinley. “We expect to save money in the long run while using renewable fuels readily available on Prince Edward Island.”

Forest feedstock used to produce biomass heat must be harvested in a sustainable manner from woodlots with a registered forest management plan. Forestry products used to produce biomass heat include firewood, wood chips and sawdust. The contractors are required to use local resources and create local expertise with biomass.

Minister Brown said government will look at a further expansion of biomass-heating projects in the future.

Who gets the most bored and disengaged at school? The very bright and the very concrete.

School can be ok for those in the middle. But if you are intellectually a race horse, then school can become very boring. Boys like my son ended up having fights with the teachers - because he would question them and worse might know more than they did. He was quickly labelled a trouble maker.

Others, who have a very concrete mindset, just can't tune in to all this abstract stuff. It is just not how they experience the world. The teacher is just a source of noise. They get labelled as stupid.

The irony of our one size fits all situation is that it discounts two very talented groups of students - the truly academic and the truly pragmatic and concrete.

So what can be done? What can be done to make learning rich for these two extreme wings of the Bell Curve? The good news is that we have working experiments that we can draw on.

This is UTS University of Toronto Schools. It is a school in Toronto designed to meet the needs of a very misunderstood and badly served group of kids. The really really bright kids! I had the honour of working there back in the mid 1990's as the Principal was looking at the needs of this group of kids. I interviewed hundreds of them and spent months there. This is what I learned.

Really bright kids are under terrible social pressure at a "normal" school. They are among the least respected of all groups. Many have few peers to relate too. Many hide their gifts. Many are numbed by the pace and the low threshold of the work. Many are isolated and depressed. 

UTS is designed as a haven for such kids. It only takes the very gifted. While it is fee paying, money is never a barrier. They find a way to take any child who has this gift.

What is UTS like for these kids? It is a haven. Everyone is like you. This is the only school I know where the kids break into the school on weekends! We all knew that they did this and we all knew the "open window" that they used - it was an open secret. It was a hot house for all types of learning. At the concert where many bands, groups and orchestras played, a girl would play Chopin as they moved the chairs around as a filler - she would have been the star in any other school. I have never experienced such positive energy in a school.

So what can we do here on PEI? What about setting up such a school at UPEI?

Would it be so hard to set up a small school at UPEI that is modelled on UTS - where the bright kids can have their own place? Where they can be taught by University profs? Where they can truly fly? 

What then about the concrete thinkers?

Holland College has run a very successful experiment with this group. At its centre is a "carpentry" class. But it is also a maths class. All the key lessons about maths can be found in carpentry. Like the UTS experience, there is a social aspect to such an approach as well. These are kids who are easily labelled Stupid. They also tend to hide. They also get depressed. They also don't fit. they also can act out. But here they are among their peers.

There is a body of evidence behind this experiment. So the next step may well be to accept that such an approach can be expanded to include more kids and to include more areas of expertise. Mechanics? Really any of the practical fields has the power to explain all to concrete learners.

What about the resources? 

If we had 2 programs - one for the academic and one for the concrete - they leverage existing platforms. For the Academic group, they expand the use of UPEI's physical plant and they expand the use of UPEI's existing teaching staff and the Department of Ed - OISE has very close links to UTS and is just down the road from the school. For the Concrete Group, the do the same for Holland College.

What about the results?

By differentiating like this, we boost these two vital groups. We also free up the centre of the Bell Curve back in the school. For both the extreme wings of the curve create friction for those that find the existing system just fine. All win.

Is there any case for not doing this?

School is back soon. So what is the best result that we need for our children? Many focus on the 3 R's. Some worry about how kids will fit into the so called Knowledge Economy. 

So maybe the higher question is what is the world that our kids will have to cope with? Will it be getting a job at GM on the line? Will it be trading at Goldman Sachs? Will it be being a musician with their own studio?

What really is most likely the world that will face our kids? Will it look like ours at all? What if Peak Oil hits? What if government fails us as we are seeing in states like California? What about major weather disruption such as is happening in Pakistan?

I think that what is likely to confront our kids are tough times and disruptions. I think our kids will have to cope with lots of novel circumstances. 

So what then should we be thinking about in this context? What kind of society may have a chance in coping with these types of novel changes? I don’t think that this novelty demands that we all have PHD’s. I suspect that this novelty demands instead a “Pioneering Spirit”.

When many people came to the Island (PEI) for the first time 100 -200 years ago, they too were confronted by a New World. At first, all their challenges were novel. How to clear land and how to grow food? How to build a house and a barn? How to use the water for energy? How to educate their children? How to have an economy? Most on PEI came as indentured people who had little experience back in Scotland of any of these issues.

So how did they do it? How did they create a new society from scratch? I think what made them successful was the pioneering spirit.

What is it then?

• A Sense of Adventure and Hope - They wanted a better life - if not for themselves then for their kids and they took control of getting there. They knew that there was no going back home to the old world. They knew that no one could or would help from outside. They knew that they would have to do it themselves. They learned that being with others who also dared and shared made the adventure better.

• They had a sense of a future - They knew that if they cleared 2 acres this year, that they could clear another 2 the next and that by the time their kids were adult - there would be a real farm. They could see in the clearing by the water’s edge a town. They could see in the oak grove, ships. They did not dwell in the past.

• Good Coping skills - Pioneers accepted that there were challenges out there and were not put off by the first problem or failure. They became mentally tough. They could lose a crop and a child and still keep going.

• Technical Skills - They quickly developed technical skills that would help them be as self sufficient as possible. They knew how to do things that had real value to them and to their community. This then gave them a natural self confidence. Having mastered some skills, they knew that they could master others. The more real skills a person had, the greater their standing. Men and woman became famous for being capable.

• Social Skills - It was clear to all in a pioneer state that no individual could thrive on their own. Much of the work that had to be done had to involve others. So establishing and maintaining family and community were centrally important building blocks for success. Family and community were not buzz words - they were the keys to an in- dividual’s success and survival.

• Literacy - It was clear to most that the more you knew, the better off you were going to be. Literacy was paramount. At the time of the revolution in America, literacy was about 90%1. Literacy was rooted in what happened in the home.

So for me the issue of what is a good education is one of Context. What should we prepare for?

How does our current system stack up against the Pioneering Spirit - what does it instill?

• Obedience  - Thought is punished - giving the "right answer" is how you get on. They have little sense of hope or adventure. 

• No sense of a future - My sense is that intuitively most kids know that the system is broken and they play the game to get the credential or not - the context given to them of "Work hard at school and you will get a good job etc" they know is a lie. School as it is does not offer a way ahead but for most a way down.

• Poor Coping Skills - All real challenge is removed - there are no consequences for not doing well - so the true lesson of life - that it is hard - is never acquired. They are not resilient.

• Poor Social Skills - All social interactions are mediated by the staff and by parents - I hear that today college dorm issues are shoed by warring mums! The kids are given no social responsibility and so are socially clueless and dependent.

• Literacy - Not only are more than 60% of our grads functionally illiterate but are unable to think critically. They find it very hard to discriminate between true and false, right or wrong and a god idea and a poor one. 

In reality we have a system that produces incompetence at all levels.

What should be the aim of an education system? I can't help but go back to the Greeks. It is surely to work as a community to produce good citizens.

When King Philip of Macedon hired Aristotle to tutor his son Alexander, it was not with the intent of Alexander getting into Harvard, passing some exams or getting some kind of diploma.

King Philip’s aim in educating his son was to prepare him to be a King. The purpose of an education in Greece, the most innovative society that has ever existed, was to prepare the child to be a citizen.

I fear that we have got ourselves lost today. We have lost the broader aim for education which is to create citizens who can take their full place in their polis. In practice we have set up an education system whose objective is to screen out all who cannot use abstract thought well. Rather than create citizens, we create helots - dependent manual laborers.

80% of our children leave school feeling helpless. Because they do not fit into a narrow definition of ability, they are labeled sub par.. But in reality most have many gifts. Many have great gifts. But because these gifts do not fit our narrow definition of ability, we exclude them. If we are not to waste most of our children’s potential, we will have to start instead with where their gifts are to be found.

We have to fit them and not them us. 

Widening our focus does not have to be hard. Holland College has found that if some boys are given a concrete task such as learning to build something, that this will give these boys the context and the motivation to learn how to read, write and to use math.

Giving most of our children a chance demands that we acknowledge what we have been doing and vow to widen our perspective of ability and commit to supporting the growth of citizens.

Can we reform our system directly? I doubt it for the system is too entrenched. So what do we do?

Starting in small groups of families who are sure that the system if broken, build a new one in parallel use the provision for Home Schooling to create a new network that is based on the principles of helping our kids be pioneers and good citizens - people who can cope with novelty and hardship.

Maybe even negotiate with the board for one school - on PEI we have a number that are now vacant.

Co create a curriculum that shifts the emphasis from mind to experience. Reach out to the wider world for help and resources.

If you think that this is too hard - I will post later this week a series of examples of schools are are doing well at this.