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The transformation of schooling from a twelve-year jail sentence to freedom to learn.
John Taylor Gatto's Weapons of Mass Instruction , now available in paperback, focuses on mechanisms of traditional education which cripple imagination, discourage critical thinking, and create a false view of learning as a byproduct of rote-memorization drills. Gatto's earlier book, Dumbing Us Down , introduced the now-famous expression of the title into the common vernacular. Weapons of Mass Instruction adds another chilling metaphor to the brief against conventional schooling.
Gatto demonstrates that the harm school inflicts is rational and deliberate. The real function of pedagogy, he argues, is to render the common population manageable. To that end, young people must be conditioned to rely upon experts, to remain divided from natural alliances and to accept disconnections from their own lived experiences. They must at all costs be discouraged from developing self-reliance and independence.
Escaping this trap requires a strategy Gatto calls open source learning which imposes no artificial divisions between learning and life. Through this alternative approach our children can avoid being indoctrinated-only then can they achieve self-knowledge, good judgment, and courage.
Build healthy soil and grow better plants
Robert Pavlis, a gardener for over four decades, debunks common soil myths, explores the rhizosphere, and provides a personalized soil fertility improvement program in this three-part popular science guidebook.
Healthy soil means thriving plants. Yet untangling the soil food web and optimizing your soil health is beyond most gardeners, many of whom lack an in-depth knowledge of the soil ecosystem.
Soil Science for Gardeners is an accessible, science-based guide to understanding soil fertility and, in particular, the rhizosphere - the thin layer of liquid and soil surrounding plant roots, so vital to plant health.
Written for the home gardener, market gardener, and micro-farmer, Soil Science for Gardeners is packed with information to help you grow thriving plants.
Throw off the shackles of formal schooling and embark upon a rich journey of self-directed, life-long learning
After over 100 years of mandatory schooling in the U.S., literacy rates have dropped, families are fragmented, learning disabilities are skyrocketing, and children and youth are increasingly disaffected. Thirty years of teaching in the public school system led John Taylor Gatto to the sad conclusion that compulsory governmental schooling is to blame, accomplishing little but to teach young people to follow orders like cogs in an industrial machine.
He became a fierce advocate of families and young people taking back education and learning, arguing that genius is as common as dirt, but that conventional schooling is driving out the natural curiosity and problem-solving skills we're born with, replacing it with rule-following, fragmented time, and disillusionment.
Gatto's radical treatise on public education, a bestseller for 25 years, continues to bang the drum for an unshackling of children and learning from formal schooling. Now, in an ever-more-rapidly changing world with an explosion of alternative routes to learning, it's poised to continue to shake the world of institutional education for many more years.
Featuring a new foreword from Zachary Slayback, an Ivy League dropout and cofounder of tech start-up career foundry Praxis, this 25th anniversary edition will inspire new generations of parents and students to take control of learning and kickstart an empowered society of self-directed lifetime-learners.
Build healthy soil and grow better plants
Robert Pavlis, a gardener for over four decades, debunks common soil myths, explores the rhizosphere, and provides a personalized soil fertility improvement program in this three-part popular science guidebook.
Healthy soil means thriving plants. Yet untangling the soil food web and optimizing your soil health is beyond most gardeners, many of whom lack an in-depth knowledge of the soil ecosystem.
Soil Science for Gardeners is an accessible, science-based guide to understanding soil fertility and, in particular, the rhizosphere - the thin layer of liquid and soil surrounding plant roots, so vital to plant health.
Coverage includes:
Written for the home gardener, market gardener, and micro-farmer, Soil Science for Gardeners is packed with information to help you grow thriving plants.
Inspiration, practices, and meditations to empower us in the face of planetary suffering: True wisdom for tough times. --John Robbins, author of Diet for a New America
Deepening global crises surround us, causing many to fall prey to denial and despair. Coming Back to Life shows how grief, anger, and fear are healthy responses to the harsh realities of our time, and that when honored through the revolutionary practice of the Work That Reconnects, they can free us from paralysis and move us toward creative action.
This new, completely updated edition of the classic text illuminates the extraordinary Work that has inspired hundreds of thousands to make strides towards the creation of a life-sustaining human culture. Buddhist scholar and environmental activist Joanna Macy and Molly Young Brown introduce the Work's theoretical foundations, revealing the angst of our era with remarkable insight. Pointing the way forward out of apathy, they offer personal counsel as well as easy-to-use methods for group process that profoundly affect people's outlook and ability to act in the world.
If you want to connect with your joy even in the midst of sadness, if you want to see new life arise out of despair, Coming Back to Life has my highest possible recommendation. --John Robbins, author of Diet for a New America and co-founder and president, The Food Revolution Network
A must for all who want to mobilize humanity in service of all beings. These concepts, exercises, and meditations have proven to work across generations, religions, ethnicities and races. --Rabbi Mordechai Liebling, Director of Social Justice Organizing, Reconstructionist Rabbinical College
Grow better not bigger
AS LOCAL ORGANIC agriculture continues to flourish, young professional growers like Jean-Martin Fortier are leading the way with their innovative ideas about how to start a farm. Growing on just 1.5 acres, he and his wife have been making a good living from their vegetable operation for over 10 years, feeding more than 200 families through their thriving CSA and seasonal market stand.
Based on low-tech, high-yield methods of production, The Market Gardener is packed with practical information on:
The Market Gardener is a complete, modern, micro-scale farming handbook which shows that making a living wage growing food without large capital outlay or access to an acreage may be closer than you think.
An existential manual for tragic optimists, can-do pessimists, and compassionate doomers
WITH GLOBAL WARMING projected to rocket past the 1.5 C limit, lifelong activist Andrew Boyd is thrown into a crisis of hope, and off on a quest to learn how to live with the impossible news of our climate doom.
He searches out eight leading climate thinkers -- from collapse-psychologist Jamey Hecht to grassroots strategist adrienne maree brown, eco-philosopher Joanna Macy, and Indigenous botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer -- asking them: Is it really the end of the world? and if so, now what?
With gallows humor and a broken heart, Boyd steers readers through their climate angst as he walks his own. From storm-battered coastlines to pipeline blockades and hopelessness workshops, he maps out our existential options, and tackles some familiar dilemmas: Should I bring kids into such a world? Can I lose hope when others can't afford to? and Why the fuck am I recycling?
He finds answers that will surprise, inspire, and maybe even make you laugh in this insightful and irreverent guide for achieving a better catastrophe.
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The comprehensive grower's guide to seed production
The Seed Farmer is required reading for any grower who cares about being part of a truly sustainable local food system.
Whether you're interested in growing your own seeds for on-farm use, or scaling up for retail or commercial sales, this comprehensive manual will help you ensure reliable access to quality seed stock adapted to your own climate and bioregion. Coverage includes:
With everything you need to help integrate seed production into your small-scale farm or market garden simply, profitably, and successfully, this unique and exciting guide proves that going to seed is easier than you think!
Everything you need to know to create an intentional community from scratch
An intentional community is a group of people who have chosen to live or work together in pursuit of a common ideal or vision. An ecovillage is a village-scale intentional community that intends to create, ecological, social, economic, and spiritual sustainability over several generations.
The 90s saw a revitalized surge of interest in intentional communities and ecovillages in North America: the number of intentional communities listed in the Communities Directory increased 60 percent between 1990 and 1995. But only 10 percent of the actual number of forming-community groups actually succeeded. Ninety percent failed, often in conflict and heartbreak. After visiting and interviewing founders of dozens of successful and failed communities, along with her own forming-community experiences, the author concluded that the successful 10 percent had all done the same five or six things right, and the unsuccessful 90 percent had made the same handful of mistakes. Recognizing that a wealth of wisdom were contained in these experiences, she set out to distill and capture them in one place.
Creating a Life Together is the only resource available that provides step-by-step, practical how-to information on how to launch and sustain a successful ecovillage or intentional community. Through anecdotes, stories, and cautionary tales about real communities, and by profiling seven successful communities in depth, the book examines the successful 10 percent and why 90 percent fail; the role of community founders; getting a group off to a good start; vision and vision documents; decision-making and governance; agreements; legal options; finding, financing, and developing land; structuring a community economy; selecting new members; and communication, process, and dealing well with conflict. Sample vision documents, community agreements, and visioning exercises are included, along with abundant resources for learning more.
It's time for a whole new way of doing school
People are born systems-thinkers. Education has the power to encourage our innate connection with the complex world, yet instead our schools focus on creating a workforce educated just enough to feed the capitalist pipeline. Reminiscent of and building further on John Taylor Gatto's education critiques, The End of Education as We Know It is for people who want to create schools that teach how to live in harmony with each other, with Earth, and with all the Earth holds.
Readers will understand when and how to engage in disruptive actions, manage system tensions, support child and adult learning, and use these skills to design whole new approaches to school- ing. Far more than a call to education-reform-as-usual, Ida Rose Florez's inspiring critique:
This clarion call to action rings a bell for teachers, parents, grandparents, educators, and policy- makers to challenge the outdated paradigm of coercion and exploitation that shapes our current schools. It's time to build a new educational model based on a resilient and regenerative future.
From the bestselling author of The Market Gardener - key principles for biointensive market gardening and powerful stories of successful growers who are farming profitably on a human-scale
Microfarms is a guide to setting up and running profitable small-scale vegetable farms using organic, low-tech, and highly intensive production methods grounded in ecological principles.
This full-color, richly illustrated resource brings to life the core principles of Jean-Martin Fortier's time-tested approach and includes eight detailed case studies showcasing a diverse range of market gardeners who have started successful farms using Jean-Martin's biointensive techniques. Key features of the book include:
Microfarms champions local agriculture on a human-scale, advocating for a food system that honors the environment, nurtures communities, and supports farmers. This book is an essential read for new and aspiring small-scale farmers, market gardeners, homesteaders, proponents of local food systems, and food lovers everywhere.
Shows us how to garden like our ancestors gardened . . . with just four basic hand tools, and with little or no electricity or irrigation. --Carol Deppe, author of The Resilient Gardener
In hard times, the family can be greatly helped by growing a highly productive food garden, requiring little cash outlay or watering. This book shows that any family with access to 3-5,000 sq. ft. of garden land can halve their food costs using a growing system requiring just the odd bucketful of household wastewater, perhaps two hundred dollars' worth of hand tools.
Gardening When It Counts helps readers rediscover traditional low-input gardening methods to produce healthy food. Currently popular intensive vegetable gardening methods are largely inappropriate to the new circumstances we find ourselves in. Crowded raised beds require high inputs of water, fertility and organic matter, and demand large amounts of human time and effort. Prior to the 1970s, North American home food growing used more land with less labor, with wider plant spacing, with less or no irrigation, and all done with sharp hand tools. But these sustainable systems have been largely forgotten.
Designed for readers with no experience and applicable to most areas in the English-speaking world except the tropics and hot deserts, Gardening When It Counts is inspiring increasing numbers of North Americans to achieve some measure of backyard food self-sufficiency.
Delightfully informative and abundantly rich with humor and grandfatherly wisdom. A must-read for anyone wanting a feast off the land of their own making. --Elaine Smitha, host of the Evolving Ideas cable talk show and author of If You Make the Rules, How Come You're Not Boss?
The updated bestselling guide to laid-back beekeeping for all, naturally!
Are you a beginner beekeeper curious about bees or a practicing beekeeper looking for natural alternatives that work? Then this book is for you!
In the second edition of the bestselling beekeeping guide Keeping Bees with a Smile, Fedor Lazutin, one of Europe's most successful natural beekeepers, shares the bee-friendly approach to apiculture that is fun, healthful, rewarding, and accessible to all. This new edition includes dozens of color photographs, new hive management techniques, and an updated version of Lazutin hive plans. Additional coverage includes:
Keeping Bees with a Smile is an invaluable resource for apiculture beginners and professionals alike, complete with plans for making bee-friendly, well-insulated horizontal hives with extra-deep frames, plus other fascinating beekeeping advice you won't find anywhere else.
In a time of climate change and mass extinction, how we garden matters more than ever.
An outstanding and deeply passionate book. -Marc Bekoff, author of The Emotional Lives of Animals
Plenty of books tell home gardeners and professional landscape designers how to garden sustainably, what plants to use, and what resources to explore. Yet few examine why our urban wildlife gardens matter so much-not just for ourselves, but for the larger human and animal communities.
Our landscapes push aside wildlife and in turn diminish our genetically programmed love for wildness. How can we get ourselves back into balance through gardens, to speak life's language and learn from other species?
Benjamin Vogt addresses why we need a new garden ethic, and why we urgently need wildness in our daily lives-lives sequestered in buildings surrounded by monocultures of lawn and concrete that significantly harm our physical and mental health. He examines the psychological issues around climate change and mass extinction as a way to understand how we are short-circuiting our response to global crises, especially by not growing native plants in our gardens. Simply put, environmentalism is not political; it's social justice for all species marginalized today and for those facing extinction tomorrow. By thinking deeply and honestly about our built landscapes, we can create a compassionate activism that connects us more profoundly to nature and to one another.
Everyone's guide to using the power of science to produce healthier and tastier fruits and vegetables
From garden to fork, Food Science for Gardeners is everyone's guide to optimizing the quality of garden produce and preparing the most delicious and nutritious food possible.
Beginning with a high-level overview of food quality and nutrient density, this invaluable resource then takes a deep, but accessible, dive into:
Whether you're a home gardener, local food enthusiast, or small-scale farmer, Food Science for Gardeners demystifies the science of food, enabling you to put the best quality vegetables and fruits on your plate.
Find connection with the land and feed your family locally, seasonally, and sustainably
Nourish your family from nature's pantry. Foraging as a Way of Life documents twelve months of wildcrafting, featuring five different plants each month for a full year of abundant, local, and seasonal eating. Enhance your sense of self-sufficiency while increasing food security, protecting habitat, and connecting with the land.
Full-color and lavishly illustrated, this accessible, in-depth resource features:
Drawing on the author's field experience and her study of herbalism and ethnobotany, Foraging as a Way of Life is designed to inspire readers to share the exuberance and joy of wild foods while finding nourishment and connection in their local fields or forests. A must for every gardener who would like to gather dinner while weeding, for those wishing to learn sustainable harvesting while hiking, or for anyone who wants to create healthy, foraged meals while living lightly on the planet.
Build a natural pond for wildlife, beauty, and quiet contemplation
Typical backyard ponds are a complicated mess of pipes, pumps, filters, and nasty chemicals designed to adjust pH and keep algae at bay. Hardly the bucolic, natural ecosystem beloved by dragonflies, frogs, and songbirds.
The antidote is a natural pond, free of hassle, cost, and complexity and designed as a fully functional ecosystem, ideal for biodiversity, swimming, irrigation, and quiet contemplation.
Building Natural Ponds is the first step-by-step guide to designing and building natural ponds that use no pumps, filters, chemicals, or electricity and mimic native ponds in both aesthetics and functionality. Highly illustrated with how-to drawings and photographs, coverage includes:
Whether you're a backyard gardener looking to add a small serene natural water feature or a homesteader with visions of a large pond for fish, swimming, and irrigation, Building Natural Ponds is the complete guide to building ponds in tune with nature, where plants, insects, and amphibians thrive in blissful serenity.
Robert Pavlis , a Master Gardener with over 40 years of gardening experience, is owner and developer of Aspen Grove Gardens, a six-acre botanical garden featuring over 2,500 varieties of plants. A well-respected speaker and teacher, Robert has published articles in Mother Earth News , Ontario Gardening magazine, the widely read blog GardenMyths.com, which explodes common gardening myths and gardening information site GardenFundamentals.com.
Igniting the $100 billion Indigenous economy
It is time. It is time to increase the visibility, role, and responsibility of the emerging modern Indigenous economy and the people involved. This is the foundation for economic reconciliation. This is Indigenomics.
Indigenomics lays out the tenets of the emerging Indigenous economy, built around relationships, multigenerational stewardship of resources, and care for all. Highlights include:
Indigenomics calls for a new model of development, one that advances Indigenous self-determination, collective well-being, and reconciliation. This is vital reading for business leaders and entrepreneurs, Indigenous organizations and nations, governments and policymakers, and economists.
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Forges a path away from polarization toward ethical problem solving and a more humane, equitable, and healthy society
From tackling injustice to protecting the environment to ending animal cruelty to improving the strength of our communities, deep divisions in our society often prevent us from working collaboratively to solve the problems we face.
Based on Zoe Weil's decades of work as a humane educator, The Solutionary Way provides clear, achievable methods to bridge divides, address the causes of seemingly intractable challenges, and create positive change. Grounded in evidence-based optimism and illustrated with dozens of real-world examples, this book provides:
This exciting and empowering book will appeal to a broad audience, including changemakers, activists, advocates for social justice, environmental sustainability, and animal protection, business and political leaders, and anyone who yearns to contribute to a healthy, equitable, and humane world.
A little plant science grows a long way
Plant Science for Gardeners empowers growers to analyze common problems, find solutions, and make better decisions in the garden for optimal plant health and productivity.
Most gardeners learn by accumulating rules - water once a week, never dry out snowdrop bulbs, prune lilacs after flowering, plant garlic in October--the list is endless.
Rules take years to learn and yet leave you floundering when the unexpected strikes and plants look unhealthy, produce poorly, or die.
There is a better way.
By understanding the basic biology of how plants grow, you can become a thinking gardener with the confidence to problem solve for optimized plant health and productivity. Learn the science and ditch the rules! Coverage includes:
Whether you're a home gardener, micro-farmer, market gardener, or homesteader, this entertaining and accessible guide shortens the learning curve and gives you the knowledge to succeed no matter where you live.
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