You Can't Be Green Enough These Days

Helpful as their contributions are, the efforts of most established agricultural literacy organizations do not extend to encouraging young people to take up farming. Aside from the Future Farmers of America (which I've always seen as geared to keeping the kids down on the farm) and 4-H, organizations like National Agriculture in the Classroom and the American Farm Bureau Foundation seem to be geared toward PR for agribusiness. The mission of FoodCorps is somewhat better because it involves children in gardening and appreciating healthy, fresh food that they help to grow.

Though all those organizations raise agricultural literacy, none of their programs will prepare the next generation of adults for what they are about to face. For that, permaculture education must be emphasized. Big Ag will go away with deindustrialization. Folks are going to have to know how to provide for themselves without relying on lengthy, automated supply chains.

Since the public school system does not appear to recognize the need to prepare the young for a hardscrabble future, permaculture schools are doing what they can to make up for it. One program that is heavily youth oriented is John Liu's ecosystem restoration camps. Their proposition seems to be, 'come and help heal the land, and we will teach you some vitally useful things.' Those things include formal permaculture training.

By Eatswords

There are also children's programs teaching permaculture. If only the lower income schools adopt this curricula, wealth inequities will shift in favor of today's poor once the economy collapses into agrarianism. The good news is that there is a curriculum offered online that parents can take along with their children. Agricultural literacy must set a higher bar than just getting kids to realize that chocolate milk doesn't come straight from the cow's udder.

It Takes a Pillage

The preliminary version of the Department of Education's budget proposal looks like they took the Green Party platform on education and came up with ways to do everything the opposite.

Hogwarts by Steve Tannock

Green Party Position	Blowhard Budget
The Green Party supports equal access to high-quality education, and sharp increases in financial aid for college students.	The Blowhard administration supports unequal access to high-quality education by promoting private schools, and sharp decreases in financial aid for college students.
The Green Party is strongly opposed to the dissolution of public schools and the privatization of education. We believe that the best educational experience is guaranteed by the democratic empowerment of organized students, their parents and communities along with organized teachers.	While advocating local control, DeVos proposes to use federal dollars to entice districts to adopt school-choice policies, adding new investment in alternatives to public schools.
We must stop disinvestment in education and instead put it at the top of our social and economic agenda. Effective schools have sufficient resources. Too many of our teachers are overworked, underpaid, and starved of key materials. We also must be more generous to our schools so that our children will learn what generosity is, and know enough to be able to be generous to us in return.	The Blowhard administration administration plans to cut $10.6 billion from federal education initiatives.
We also call attention to the results of a quarter century of corporate funding from the likes of the Bradley and Wal-Mart Family Foundations and a decade of No Child Left Behind — a vast, well-endowed and lucrative sector which seeks to dismantle, privatize, or militarize public education and destroy teachers unions. Regimes of high-stakes standardized testing and the wholesale diversion of resources away from public schools are provoking crises for which the bipartisan corporate consensus recommends school closings, dissolution of entire school districts and replacement by unaccountable, profit-based charter schools. The Green Party is unalterably opposed to the dissolution of public schools and the privatization of education.	The Bradley Foundation awarded a William F. Buckley prize to the Devoses last November. The Walton Family and Walmart Foundations have contributed large sums to Devos's school choice PAC.
Provide free college tuition to all qualified students at public universities and vocational schools. It's time to forgive all student and parent loans taken out to finance post-secondary and vocational education.	Blowhard's proposal would have undergraduate loan recipients pay up to 12.5 percent of their income for 15 years before it could be forgiven.
Oppose the administration of public schools by private, for-profit entities.	Charter schools are the darlings of the Blowhard education department. The budget includes $400 million to expand charter schools and vouchers for private schools and another $1 billion to push public schools to adopt choice-friendly policies.
Increase funding for after-school and daycare programs.	The proposal eliminates $1.2 billion for after-school programs and a $15 million program that provides child care for low-income parents in college.
Promote a diverse set of educational opportunities, including bi-lingual education, continuing education, job retraining, distance learning, mentoring and apprenticeship programs.	The Blowhard budget dedicates no money to a fund ($400 million in 2017) for student support and academic enrichment.
Give K-12 classroom teachers professional status and salaries commensurate with advanced education, training and responsibility.	Cut $2.1 billion for teacher training and class-size reduction.
Teach non-violent conflict resolution and humane education at all levels of education.	Anti-bullying support would be cut.
Make student loans available to all college students, with forgiveness for graduates who choose public service occupations.	The budget proposal eliminates a program to forgive loans of those who  pursue careers as social workers, teachers, public defenders or doctors in rural areas.
Expand arts education and physical education opportunities at school.	The proposal cuts a $27 million arts education program, $12 million for Special Olympics education programs, and support for physical education.
Oppose efforts to restrict the teaching of scientific in-formation and the portrayal of religious belief as fact.	Vouchers for parachioal schools would be greatly expanded.

The principal motivation for the incipient takeover of K-12 education by private entities is the (often delusional) hope by parents to give their children a better education than those in public schools. In the process, a lot of identification with one's community is lost by both the children and the parents. By encouraging this trend, the Blowhard administration exploits parental concern in order to divide communities and weaken local politics. It all plays into the nationalistic agenda of these fascist elites who seek to subjugate the working class in the same way they fight the efforts of labor unions and other local groups to organize and make common cause.

Sonny, Don't Blow Up the Kids!

In my previous post, I referred to rising U.S. food prices and included a link to the latest monthly data as evidence. Critical readers may have questioned whether that supported the idea that we are seeing food price outpace inflation over any significant period of time, rather than just the latest month. You may research it yourself or take my word for it, but I took the PPI data from the BLS pages and compared the cumulative food price rise to core inflation over the 7+ years of data given and determined that food prices have, indeed, risen faster than inflation by 0.2 percent - not enough to even notice, but my statement stands. I could have researched CPI data and come up with slightly different results, but since my initial reference was based on producer prices, PPI should be adequate for this discussion.

The global picture is much more stark. Using data from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, it is easy to see from this graph that, since around 2000, food prices have risen faster than inflation by around 25% ! The yellow line factors inflation in and shows that the world has undergone a reversal from decreasing real food prices in the last part of the 20th century to increasing food prices in this century. The gyrations of the past decade very likely correlate to oil price swings.

The near-term effect of more costly food will be a gradual shift to cheaper food, with resultant effects on health. The Blowhard administration is ahead of the curve in cultivating a taste among the less privileged for cheap eats. Early this month they rolled back federal requirements for schools to limit sodium and include more whole grains in their meals. The disingenuous argument from Sonny Perdue that kids won't eat the healthier foods ignores the matter of kids being more malleable than adults, so, compared to other groups, kids are the best candidates for healthy meals. More importantly, experts tell us that "eating behaviors established in childhood lay the foundation for eating habits throughout life, and of course for health."

The Green Party cares about our children possibly more than any other political party. While fighting hard to preserve an external environment where future generations can hope to survive and thrive after us elders have departed, Greens also want to give those children a healthy internal start. In their platform, the Green Party calls for more regulation of school meals:

Provide healthy school meals that are rich in vitamins, minerals, protein and fiber, and offer plant-based vegetarian options. Support Farm-to-School programs that provide food from local family farms and educational opportunities. 

Ban the sale of soda pop and junk food in schools. Junk food is defined as food or beverages that are relatively high in saturated or trans fat, added sugars or salt, and relatively low in vitamins, minerals, protein and fiber.

So it costs a little more. Soon, probably a lot more. Good nutrition now will give our kids the strong bodies they need to handle a future with physical demands far greater than in the days of ubiquitous fossil-fueled assistants.

Putting Away Childish Things

Richard Branson lost an airline today. However, he has another in the works under the Virgin brand; more precisely, a spaceline: Virgin Galactica. Maybe we should just call it a high end airline - elites only, one of whom is pledged to be Stephen Hawking.

Stephen isn't the only disabled person getting a boost. Yesterday, the Supreme Court ruled that public schools must develop challenging curricula for every learning disabled student according to their capabilities. No longer can schools claim success with these students by teaching to the level of the lowest common denominator. In other words, special education students are going to be getting special treatment.

In sports, special kids are rising to challenges with the special olympics which is just about to wrap up for winter in Austria. For the rest of us, sports festivals are a kind of special olympics for not so special athletes. They help us keep fit and raise money for charity. Beyond that, adults competing in sports are, like space tourism, just a big ego trip.

Photo by Werner Kunz

Unfortunately, we lavish copious amounts of time, money, and memory on professional sports ego trips while the entertainment potential is already there cheaply with high school and college sports, and even the special olympics. The usefulness of sports is mainly that it gives kids an energy release and adults a way to stay fit. Why pay to watch adults do something that is basically child's play?

In the once again popular book, 1984, George Orwell showed his disdain for spectator sports as a way for the powerful to opiate the masses. Parallels to that novel are playing out not only because of Trump. We have allowed ourselves to be dumbed down by the din of televised sports, the daily buzz of contests without consequence.

As we deal with the hard decisions of catabolic collapse, we should step back and ask ourselves what is truly necessary and what is only benefitting the few. Professional sports is a giant racket. Our insistence that only the best will do has warped our society. We should content ourselves with enjoying the physicality of youth and then behave as grown ups.

Self Preservation

The University of Maryland Extension has me doing a lot these days. The little commitments you make to get into these volunteer roles turn out to require big allotments of time when you count all the self-directed projects and tasks that come from knowing how to do something. Even the free classes, given under the banner of "Garden Smarter," can alter your lifestyle by launching you into home-based activities you may have never undertaken otherwise.

In my case, it was the Garden Smarter series that acquainted me with the Master Gardener program and also taught me how to safely can produce. Prior to taking the free class on Home Food Preservation by our local extension educator, I was on pretty shaky ground with canning (though I still managed to win a blue ribbon in the Calvert County Fair for bread and butter pickles). Now, in our second year of canning per the Ball Blue Book (available at many hardware and farm goods stores), we are becoming somewhat proficient, having already canned homemade barbecue sauce, ketchup, tomato paste, and taco sauce using our bounty of biochar-farmed tomatoes, peppers, and onions. Even with all the canning, I've been picking more than enough to sell 15 lbs of heirloom tomatoes per week to a local restaurant. Our green beans are doing so well this year that, just to keep up with the harvest, we are freezing instead of canning them.

When you put so much work into growing your own food, you darn sure aren't going to let it go to waste. The reward comes when you get to savor all the real food flavor that the corn syrup laden commercial versions leave out. There is also the assurance that you are getting more nutrition and avoiding harmful chemicals with each mouthful. If you need convincing, I would encourage you to try home canned items bought from a farm stand, made yourself, or here at our place. We have a good year of eatin' to look forward to.

Physical Reality

STEM seems to be the focus of many parents' desire for their children's educations due, in part, to the sponsorship of Bill Gates of educational programs including common core standards.  Whatever it takes for the kids to be admitted to college is what most parents are willing to aim for, and with the new standards, it takes a lot more technical ability than before.  What parents need to realize is that a college education is going to become ever more unattainable as the economy devolves into a less energetic state.  People power is what is going to be more valued in the near future as the consequences of peak oil play out.

For that reason, we shouldn't fret over the dismally low scores of many minority groups in Maryland showing that 95% of them aren't ready for college when they should be.  On the one hand, it does not serve the fight against discrimination for their cohorts to be left behind those of whites and Asians.  On the other hand, many whites and Asians will be less prepared than these less brainy youth to take on the physical demands of the new-old world of work.  Fewer and fewer of them will be able to enter or complete college due to costs.  Many of those that do finish college will be no better off than their less educated peers due to their debt burdens.

I'm not saying we shouldn't keep pushing the tech envelope, and science offers hope of discovering keys to our continued occupation of the planet, but if you happen to fall short in intellectual or financial capacities, you can still look forward to having a role to play in the economy we are entering - just don't fall short in phys-ed.

Future Reedy

Calvert County's school district, like over 2,000 districts across the country, took a pledge recently to support the Future Ready initiative that attempts to level the digital playing field for students while enhancing the payoff of technology-based learning.  Half of Maryland's school districts have taken the same pledge and almost all are sure to follow suit, since parents and corporations are quite concerned about youths' ability to deal with the work challenges of the future.

In Calvert County this year, there was a lot of anguish over the 2016 budget squeeze which resulted in possible cuts to many extracurricular programs.  Nevertheless, the march of technology is going to require more funds, some of which will have to be paid by the school district.  It will probably mean that students will have fewer opportunities or incentives to become athletic and will be more encouraged to become geeks.  This is an unrealistic plan since the energy-deficient future these kids will face will actually require of them more physical strength and endurance than their parents had.  High school represents the best opportunity for most people to grow into strong adults.  Confidence in one's abilities and perseverance gained in those years can carry on through life.  The challenges faced by one generation are not going to be the same for their offspring.

Getting Smart

Higher education holds out some promise for getting us away from the canyon our economy is stumbling toward.  Canyon is an apt metaphor since the easiest way to stay or get out is orthogonal to the slope that you might tumble down.  When the direction that worked for awhile leads to danger, maybe there will be enough smart people around to understand that we need to change course.

Such critical thinking is rare and difficult to engender with many of the higher education programs currently available.  Non-traditional education and online groups may be better.

Here in Southern Maryland, they are pressing on with business-as-usual in the groundbreaking for a new community college campus in Hughesville, central to our tri-county area.  With the higher education industry in crisis partly due to overleveraging their student portfolios with debt slaves, many colleges will be unable to continue as before.  Community colleges will suffer less than many of the 4-year schools, but even they are at risk when they buy into poorly conceived estimates of strong economic growth such as the Bureau of Labor Statistic's projected > 20% increase in demand for construction industry trades over the coming decade.

I hope the College of Southern Maryland's new Center for Trades and Energy Training will turn 90 degrees before we tumble down the canyon and that they will prepare our workforce for building smaller, renewably energized, and resilient accommodations for a future that includes a lot more time in the outdoors.

Cultivating the EcoMind

STEM extracurricular programs seem to be all the rage these days, but the environment gets a modicum of educational attention on our continent by way of an annual Envirothon.  Engineering (the 'E' in STEM) includes consideration of the context directly affecting the artificial system of interest.  One aspect of these contextual influences is that associated with the natural environment.  Some understanding of the environment is essential, therefore, to design of engineering systems, but the engineering perspective typically assumes that we can surmount or circumvent environmental forces by adjustments in the system's design. However, an environmental perspective of our human systems' contexts would lead to designs more harmonious with nature.  (Have you ever noticed that Environmental Engineering is usually all about how to clean up the messes we make on our planet?)
I am, therefore, pleased to note that the environmental literacy standards that Maryland instituted for its childhood education programs just won Silver in the 2015 Future Policy Awards of the World Future Council, the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) and UNICEF.  These were the first such standards adopted by any of our states and serve to counter the narrowing of curricula caused by the No Child Left Behind law.  Other states are taking notice and coming along as well. 
If, by wild chance, Martin O'Malley becomes our next President, I hope he won't forget to carry with him the environmental legacy endowed to Maryland by his governorship.