Agency and Schooling (and gardening)
Dear friends,
Over at Palladium I have written School is Not Enough. The beginning may be familiar to some readers, the post is an elaboration of my thinking about agency. I speak a bit more about the problem, and potential solutions.
I leave it implicit that I find it this very interesting: While there is so much focus on education, the bottleneck for flourishing has not been knowledge acquisition for quite some time. Instead it seems to be within direction, discipline, and finding (or continuing to find) incentives to learn and build.
What else have I been doing with my time? I planted a small orchard1, I’m starting a rose garden in earnest, though right now its just a scattering of twelve. I have put two climbing roses on the Goose Palace, which are still quite small, and I will build a small wood shed this year and put more climbers on that. I have committed to a flurry of other plantings: 40 saplings, some lilacs, hopefully a few mature trees, and lastly I have ordered 1,400 bulbs, mostly tulips and daffodils, for planting in the fall. I have more gardening and building than this planned for this spring and summer, I have as usual over-committed all of my time. But I find it very pleasing. If next year I must spend an hour each day walking around outside, pruning and weeding and meandering about in my miniature botanical gardens, that would be just fine. Effort alone I love, but I also want to make something that feels magnificent, not just for my own family but for every passerby.
My drafts folder is a great mess. Many threads of thought tangled in a shoebox. I hope to write more to you soon. Maybe first about what I’ve been reading, and how.
s s
The painting is by Peder Krøyer, 1893, of his wife Marie in the garden of a house they were renting. This photograph of Peder and Marie was taken around the same time.
I began this in 2022 with two apples and finishing up some land clearing, and expanded this year after a number of people offered to sponsor a tree. Details are scattered about, eg nov 2022, jan 2023, and watering people’s trees in early may (I still water them nearly every day).
I absolutely loved your essay on Palladium. SO much to think about in reading it, still processing... but really resonated with this passage:
"The sad result of school’s length and primacy is that it ensures there is nothing in particular for children to do, and since the rigid framework precludes other options, we are sure to destroy their opportunities for making meaningful contributions to the world. The longer we disallow children from having the agency to act on the world, the harder it becomes for them to visualize it in the first place. The result is that we have young adults who have a difficult time adjusting once their life-script changes even a little bit. The path is rigid, yet brittle."
It made me wonder what would be different if we were encouraged from a young age to share our gifts with the world for the sake of contributing instead of for the sake of writing good college applications.
Thank you so much for your work!
YAY excellent piece, brava.
NO MORE DEADLINES