CHAPTER ONE

Introduction

"Do not try to satisfy your vanity by teaching a great many things. Awaken people's curiosity. It is enough to open minds; do not overload them. Put there just a spark. If there is some good inflammable stuff, it will catch fire."

In our society, notions of production, consumption, competition, convenience, and ease are the driving forces behind our actions. The worldview that sustains those notions allows us to enjoy the fruits of Nature while we cavalierly undermine its ability to be fruitful. The usefulness, appropriateness, and meaning of our ancient conventional beliefs and suppositions about our human role in the living world have passed away. Science has shown us the error of our superstitious worldview, yet from habit or laziness we cling to it, unthinkingly poisoning life at its source.

We need to re-educate our worldview and instill a popular eco-ethic of nonabusive, harmonious, regenerative interaction with Earth. Education is the only path to this enlightened worldview. I propose to enter school children upon that path, which will lead them on a profound and illuminating exploration of the real nature of the world around them. By "real nature" I mean the regenerative dynamic of community: the interwoven mosaics of diverse life cycles intertwined through many millennia past and future. Community is the life force that transcends each and every passing generation of all things, animal, vegetable, and mineral. Community is the one thing which all living things have in common. When children become acquainted with the concept of community, they discover the advantages of contributing. They will begin to understand the value of diversity within any community. They will recognize the real-life value of interaction, the longterm advantages of balancing and harmonizing give and take, and they will find that the real-world manifestation of community is place.

Place is the result of community. If community is the transcendent dynamic of eternal recreation and regeneration, then its ever-evolving manifestation must be place. All places are communities of interacting elements. It must by definition be impossible to understand place without understanding community. Each informs on the other. Fundamental truths of community are fundamental truths of place. Children who understand and value community will be able to translate that understanding in terms of place. They will discover that any and all places are manifestations of that singularly allinclusive life-force: Community. Understanding community, school children will be able to explore and understand and ultimately design&emdash; place Given the facts, students will recognize that whether a place is big or small, microscopic or global, the same principles apply. What causes life on the shady side of a brick wall in central Detroit causes life in the rain forest, any roof~top garden, the Mojave Desert, a highway median, Tundra, a jam-jar terrarium, and the deep blue sea: the communal interaction of diverse elements through time balancing give and take, replenish and receive.

So school children will discover that it doesn't matter how large or small an educational model environment is. Understanding community, students will find themselves able to experiment, make models, design all types of environments to demonstrate to themselves the principles of life, the effects of pollution, the value of clean water, and most importantly, the personal advantage of contributing to the group effort. Understanding how place really comes to be, students will have a rule of thumb which transcends all the facts. With it they'll be able to decipher systems, comprehend patterns, and extrapolate on themes. School children will understand that they do not have to visit the rain forest to know what makes it tick.

Armed with knowledge of what makes ecosystems fail or flourish, school children will be able to save the rain forests without ever seeing them, heal the hole in the O-zone without poking their heads through it, and stop water pollution completely without ever being dragged to the bottom of the ocean by so many pounds of agglomerated toxic petroleum muck.

Teaching children to understand and value community, broadening their concept of time, and opening their eyes to the true nature of place would provide the preventative cure for what ails all our environments. It would undermine looming catastrophe, enlighten environmental design, and give birth to the future.