Next week I begin a 2 week very condensed ecology main lesson with my son and another homeschooled 9th grader. Two weeks is really a silly amount of time for a main lesson like this - but this is homeschooling and we have to compromise, right? Factors that got in the way included a two week cooking block for the boys (what they're doing right now) and then my son's involvement in the school play at the high school he used to attend full time. I somehow forgot that in the last two weeks of school, those students in the play do nothing but the play all day from 8:30 till 3pm (other students do building projects or gardening at this time). I even wrote on my calendar "ecology main lesson" right next to where it already said "Gabriel at school all day"!! Oh well....
So - two weeks to squeeze in an ecology main lesson. I had briefly considered skipping this but I really wanted to do it because I want to do botany and zoology with the boys next year. If you look at the Waldorf high school curriculum as it appears in many schools around the world, ecology does not come in 9th grade - it is a culmination of sorts in 12th grade. This puzzles me. Twelfth grade, quite sensibly, is when one finds subjects like "biotechnology", "genetics" and, increasingly, "chaos theory" - topics which need a great deal of life experience, maturity and knowledge to engage with properly. So why is ecology in 12th grade? I shall explore and try to find the answer.
My thinking is that ecology is just right for 9th grade so as to prepare for a more detailed look at the "components" as it were, that make up ecology, namely, plants, animals and minerals. I feel this is setting the stage for a more holistic way of looking at these subjects, by starting with a grand sweep of the whole - a bit like the way I did
world geography with the 8th grade at our local Waldorf school a couple of months ago. I want to set the stage with a beautiful look at how our Earth is whole and how this whole expresses itself through weather, minerals, geography, plant and animal life. I want the boys to really get how these things are utterly interconnected.
I think that this is especially important with a subject like ecology. One might think that there is no way that ecology could be taught in a reductionist way, but it generally is - just get a hold of a biology or ecology text used in your local high school to see. One starts with cells and goes "up" from there. One boils concepts down to abstractions at all times, never giving a sense for the life which should surely flow through a study of - well, of life!
Here's what Martyn Rawson, a long time Waldorf teacher says, writing in Paideia, a British journal for Waldorf teachers:
When we (move from whole to part) in an artistic, creative way, then the relationship of the parts to the whole is a living one, where the whole somehow always expresses more than the sum of the parts and the identity of the parts is complimented by the whole. This mood far better expresses the reality of ecological relationships within the living world than reductionist building block or jigsaw puzzle models which are also "true" but limited. As long as the child's experiences are open to further, later enhancement then the foundation for an understanding of organic processes is cultivated. A one-sided experience of fixed, merely additive and absolute forms is more conducive to a mechanistic thinking that is suitable for the inorganic world, perhaps, but inappropriate for knowing the living world.
Now Martyn Rawson is, of course, speaking about the elementary school grades but I think his point continues to be valid at least as an introduction for life sciences in high school. And I further think that one should not be apologetic about striving to maintain such a living approach throughout high school. It is not as if "living thinking" is synonymous with "poor thinking"!!
Anyway.... I will return after our block is finished and give a description of what we did. I should add that we will, actually, go past two weeks as the boys final joint project (on ethanol) is due to be presented to both families a week after the block ends and that our other big project, setting up a 40 gallon warm water fish tank, wont commence until the summer.
I leave you with a link to a wonderful article by Craig Holdrege of the Nature Institute, the first place anyone should look when looking for stimulating information and suggestions on creating and working with an artistic, life imbued way of science.
This article is the first reading assignment I am giving the boys.