Introduction
2006 was the year to give life to “The pull of the Earth: participatory ethnography in the school garden” by Laurie Thorp, the ethnography on the relationship between humans and the Earth.
Laurie Thorp, the author of the book, is a director of the RISE program at Michigan State University. It is due to her efforts the students can get benefits from the environment.
One of the incredible works on the “talking to nature, contact with the Earth” Laurie Thorps book allows us to understand how a small school garden can affect our existence.
Description of the book
The author goes deeper into educational psychology to research the problem of getting isolated from the environment. The book is a kind of a struggle, a kind of a protest against the system. The book is not just a research work on some botany or any other natural science, it goes deeper to the roots of our existence.
Structurally, it is not just a standard ethnography or some research work, its a kind of experimental writing.
The structure of the book comprises nine chapters:
- Locating the Author, Locating the Other;
- The Grace of a Garden;
- A Place for Connection;
- Wonder;
- How Our Garden Grows;
- A Journey in One Place (Kristan Small);
- The Pizza-Earth Reunification (Daniel Brooks);
- A Methodology of Letting Go, Getting Lost, and Finding My Way;
- Telling the Story All the Way Through.
The first four chapters of the book is a “dirt-under-the-fingernails” ethnography of the author. Some chapters are made of the warm fillings and emotions of the children through the artworks, poetry, and prose, and some of them are dedicated to the obstacles pitted against Laurie and her students garden. Nevertheless Lauries “The pull of the Earth” is showing us the innovative teaching methodology, giving benefits of educating through nature.
The author does not use dry language. The whole book is made in the form of a discussion between a teacher and her pupils. She uses photos and poetry, multiple fonts, and sketches to purposefully show that our life is not just words but also the sun and the moon, peoples giggles, muddy shoes, and things like that.
All the characters of the book are the children of low-income families who are trying to obtain what they are naturally deprived of through the work in the school garden. This garden is a deeply social context for those who realize that these children are deprived of regular, natural fresh meals.
A school garden in the book is a venue for the poor children to get what they don’t get in life, a try to allow them to experience the diversity of life.
From first sight, the book might be the research on some natural issues, but upon a closer view, it can be seen that the garden in Lauries ethnography is not just the place for work, not just the place to have the crops cultivated in, but a vast field of research from on hand and deep social context from the other.
The main slogan read underlines through the whole book is that our life is our nature and our nature is our life.
References
Kozicki, S. (2006). Life Without Nature. EJ Magazine, fall 2006. Web.
Thorp, L. (2006) The Pull of the Earth: Participatory Ethnography in the School Garden. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.