Experience with gardening, even observing other students carrying out gardening activities, has the potential of introducing lifelong changes in thinking, health, responsibility, appreciation, environmental concern, enjoyment, family nutrition, practical planning, and many other factors too often lacking in traditional educational systems. Classes focused on gardening can raise a student’s interest in other subjects by connecting math, science, reading, and so on with ongoing projects and thus introducing personal purpose and interdisciplinary understanding into schooling. A gardening class can present vocational guidance: one student may establish a business of providing window boxes beautifying homes and later become a landscape architect; another may begin with a new appreciation of growing things and develop a passionate interest in becoming a farmer; others may be visited with diverse ambitions—because gardening includes many diverse activities and arenas of study, many directions for new interests to blossom along with the flowers and squash.
Eating healthful foods is essential to well-being; reducing childhood obesity is a critical issue; children no longer grow up learning at home how to prepare well balanced meals or even knowing how to select wholesome food in markets. Schools need to take more responsibility for this kind of education, because students aren’t getting it elsewhere, and this is not just a literacy project or a test to be passed: This is learning not only how to live in health but also how to parent the next generation, so we don’t continue to have students who think milk is produced in the back room at the supermarket, and continue to be indifferent to what is available in school cafeterias and vending machines, and remain indifferent to what goes on in school as long as it doesn’t cost too much and the kids pass tests. Today’s students are tomorrow’s parents and tax-payers; who’s going to correct the schools if they don’t? Textbooks and lessons have but a shadow of the power for change that personal experience offers. Students are excited by the act of growing edibles; preparing food they have raised is practiced as a life-changing part of this study. Even students who never plant another seed may well eat differently, and grow up to feed their families differently, because of the experience of learning to appreciate vegetables as good eating.
Growing food locally reduces the need for shipping foods long distances. This reduces our carbon footprint, giving students a way to contribute to this otherwise remote endeavor. Our educational systems need to be inculcating these crucial matters into their students’ experiences and training; this is the time to influence them in terms of caring about their home planet and the ongoing life of our species.
Growing food organically teaches sound gardening and farming principles such as recycling nutrients back to the soil by composting; growing many different, correctly selected crops together to achieve and sustain a balanced ecosystem; and respect for other life forms, including the life in the soil. Many such students will go on to nurture gardens, even if very small ones, as a way of living. Those who do not will recognize the importance of organic growth principles and thus be well informed about selecting and purchasing food, an approach to personal and family nutrition that may well become a change-agent in improving national health.
Students who relate to soil and seeds, and watch growth, develop an appreciation of natural beauty. They learn that they can enhance their environment with flowering plants; they grasp the value of protecting our environment; they grow up to contribute to civic beauty.
We are planting seeds for the future of our students and the health of our planet. Our students experience the joy and wonder of the natural world. This kindles curiosity which leads students to want to learn more about what they have seen. Student enthusiasm from direct experience with the Earth comes back to the classroom in the form of curiosity about what was observed in the garden. For some students experiencing the success of gardening changes how students see themselves. This can be life changing as students see themselves as capable and industrious. The proof is right in front of them at their school campus in all of its beautiful blooming glory.
