Help, someone. Or some official agency. Anybody. A wonderful educational move, imaginative and constructive, has lost its funding. How to find a successor? Paddy Madden, that great innovator, writes from Straffan, County Kildare, with word that the funding by An Bord Glas has been withdrawn from the Gort Project. This, based on Blackrock Education Centre aimed to help establish nature-friendly gardens on school grounds and, among other things to stimulate in pupils a sense of wonder, of inquiry as to how nature works, which many think should be at the heart of education. For city and country children alike, and all very practical.
First there were 150 schools involved, with a waiting list of another 150. Some schools, indeed, had already established gardens, but most were starting from scratch. A project report states that approximately 600 teachers and 10,000 pupils were involved. It declares that the programme is for the benefit, enjoyment and education of the same students, but that it could in the future become the core of the social, environmental and scientific education curriculum in primary schools. More ambitiously, it could serve as a teaching module for the Transition Year Curriculum in post-primary schools.
It also brings home to students direct experience of food production - even in small spaces. It could promote healthy eating habits in children by growing herbs, vegetables and soft fruit. And then there is the whole picture of the need to conserve, to use what we have. "Food production is fun," it says. But it needs commitment, after-care and work which is healthy. It could have a by-product, though this is not mentioned in the report: it could help the rising generation to respect plants everywhere, to have regard for trees, say, in public places, and to encourage an aversion to litter - to take an increased pride in the world that is Ireland.
The document should leave everyone who reads it with a respect for the experiment and wishful to see it continue. Where is the money to come from? We hear all the time of the need in the modern world for even better education for our young. This is education on a very civilised plane. Many experienced gardeners could well be glad to pin up in their tool shed the lists of duties recommended to be carried out in October and November - when to put down hardwood cuttings, stack leaves for leaf mould, etc.