Sit Down Sunday With Jane Hallsworth; One Of Our Eco Warriors!
Today I’m very excited to be speaking with Jayne who I’ve mentioned is one of my Eco Ed Forest School tribe.
It was a pleasure having her on the show to speak about her incredible project that her family have underway, their move into home schooling and the appeal of Forest School.
During the conversation we also touched on adoption and her experiences with adopting Dave and Tilly a few years ago alongside her maternal children Thomas and Alice.
Thoughts and Pondering’s
What a great conversation today. It’s always a thought provoking process doing these interviews and lots of things either come to light, are consolidated within your mind or are approach for the first time and that is truly mind extending.
There were a couple of themes from today’s conversation that will form areas to explore in future episodes. The first was something that actually came up last week and this is the notion of community and the importance of community in our lives.
Whether that be a niche community such as van life or bushcraft to the developmentally important community for children of peers and neighbourhood figures alongside a family unit.
The second theme that will is stimuli for exploring in future episodes is the brand or commodity of Forest School. As Dr Mark SackVille Ford and colleagues wrote about recently in the book critical issues in forest school the term Forest School has become somewhat a marketing gimmick to sell places in schools, nurseries or even independent establishments.
However, by doing this the true essence and life changing potential of the movement becomes lost and subdued so that it becomes a mere tick box feature to bring in the crowds
In academia around Forest School there is much debate about how Forest School is much removed from it’s origins in Scandinavia and become a commodity or thing to sell.
My argument is well of course it is! Our culture is different, our beliefs are different. What is failed to be understood is that certain techniques and approaches that have value in other approaches to education have been modelled and adapted to fit into others contexts across the world for millennia.
And I suppose it has all come full circle once or twice before. It is just the commodity of Forest School and its ethos of child led play, valuing their holistic development or development of the whole child taking place in a woodland on specific dates and times throughout the year is the British adaption that fits our cultural context.
Even then it has been a huge culture shock to many as this is a completely bi polar approach to our ingrained education system that in my life time at least will not be overthrown despite its damaging approaches treating children as mere cogs for a machine aka children for the work market and £ signs above each child’s head.
Our conditioning is to believe true learning is done through objectives, outcomes, scores, reports and tick boxes so is it any wonder why Forest School becomes a commodity? It has to if it wants its message or rather Forest leaders want its message out there.
It’s commoditisation and the belief that Forest School does not align with our education system as is and so must adapt to fit the mould of teacher led outdoor learning or die is how Forest School has transitioned from full fat to lite and has become that marketing gimmick Sackville-Ford refers too. There is nothing in this world I would argue that isn’t commoditised. Even our children as I’ve just shown!
It is disheartening to a full fat Forest School leader like myself and it has never been Forest Schools intention to over thrown anything but simply complement and fill in the gaps missed by mainstream education to develop well rounded individuals.
But then as I referred to in the conversation it is a sign of Forest School exponential explosion onto the education scene with a bottom up growth model meaning the people delivering it found their own way to navigate through the way Forest school should be done and explained, so was open for a long time to different peoples interpretation.
Quite opposite to a bottom up growth model will be a top down model where a body such as the newly formed FSA or Forest School association would give guidance as to best practice. Some may comment that this opens it up conformatism.
I would argue that Forest School is already being shoe horned into that direction, but it is the work of organisations like the FSA that are maintaining the uniqueness of Forest School as a stand alone, support to mainstream education that sets children up for life success creating a culture of practice that is more full fat than diet or lite.
You’re Just One Session Away!
To listen to the full conversation click here;
