Beyond the dreaming spires
It is an old chestnut that we remember the teachers who inspired us at school. I personally also remember the ones whose teaching style left me completely cold. Miss Bailey managed to destroy any interest I might have had in history by conducting her lessons as what was in effect a dictation exercise. She obviously had excellent hearing; she was always picking up on my whispered comments expressing disgust and boredom to the person sitting next to me. This usually resulted in being told to stand up for the rest of the lesson, making note taking much more difficult, and ensuring that I dropped the subject as soon as I was allowed to.
Mr Fielding had just the approach I needed for English A level. He managed to convey a huge knowledge and command of the subject without intimidating us. I strove to see in the texts the subtleties and meanings he highlighted, and was inspired to find my own understanding. My education was a straightforward focus on the academic, which is perhaps why I am fascinated by the growth of programmes that take the classroom outdoors.
My children benefited from the Woodcraft Folk and Forest School camps. The former was a co-educational alternative to Scouts and Guides, with the absence of reference to religion and the monarchy an added bonus. We were happy with our offspring promising to grow strong and tall in the greenwood and be supple like the elm. Forest School Camps (FSC) took this one step further with standing camps where ‘soft’ survival skills were developed and they learned to muck in with everyone in a non-hierarchical way. You will no doubt have spotted the left-leaning sympathies which led us to choose these options. After all, their father declared himself a conscientious objector when his boarding school wanted to him to join the CCF.
As climate change is now a reality and the climate emergency is upon us, Forest School is another expanding movement which takes children outdoors to their local natural environment. It’s not quite survival skills, but learning how to use basic tools can only be a good thing as screens and the virtual world increasingly dominate our lives.
I have just learned that for those young people who have outgrown Forest School, there is a new higher education institute that has opened in the Black Mountains in Wales. Black Mountains College is offering a radical new degree course designed to prepare students for a career in times of climate breakdown, and build a generation with the innovative skills and ideas required to tackle the crisis. The first students for its BA in ‘sustainable futures: arts, ecology and systems change’ will arrive at the campus in September 2023 to take the three-year cross-disciplinary course, which features the latest climate science, neuroscience, environmental history and critical thinking.
The aim is to equip a new generation with the skills to become ‘climate literate’. The institute wants to act as a catalyst for the different thinking and attitudes which will be needed as the century progresses. The campus farm is a key part of the learning, with experimental growing plots trialling regenerative farming techniques. I suppose that this is not so much ‘dreaming spires’, more a question of ‘reality check’, one that I guess we all need in some form or other.
As I was brought up in the country wilds, the great outdoors was my playground and normal life to me.
I couldn’t wait to move to the city!
Now of course I can see how lucky I was.
The Black Mountains College sounds brilliant and just what is needed. Let’s hope for more.
Absolutely! Hopefully this is just the beginning..
Dame B