Sustainable+Farming+Memo

Thomas Sgueglia Sustainable Agriculture Curriculum Review

The United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development, a part of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNSECO), is a program designed to fix future sustainability problems of the world by educating people. UNSECO feels that education is extremely important if a real change is going to occur. “Education is the most effective means that society possesses for confronting the challenges of the future. Indeed, education will shape the world of tomorrow.” This quote shows that UNSECO’s mission is to education and then act accordingly. The Sustainable Agriculture Module is an activities and reflection session. The first activity, called “What Is Sustainable Agriculture,” is to make a list of words or phrases that distinguish sustainable agriculture from conventional agriculture. Additionally, there are six different quotes from different areas of the world regarding the definition of sustainable agriculture. The activity wants its students to come up with an overarching definition of sustainable agriculture that incorporates all the six views. The second activity, called “Making Connections” is designed to teach students that there are many things that effects long-term farm profitability, environmental concerns, and quality of life. Next, the students analyze case studies in different countries to become familiar with global sustainable farming practices. The reflection session is for students to write about why it is important to learn about sustainable farming and how schools can take part in it. The module is designed to teach kids about differences in past farming techniques and sustainable farming, differences in farming in different places around the world, and to make the connection that farming is not a distant process that has no effect on their life. I think that this module it a great way to get kids to learn about different farming methods. This module is designed for upper middle school grades and high school students. It is not a difficult module to wrap your head around but the verbiage is a little intense for elementary school kids. The intended learning outcomes are similar to that of the Sustainability Education course as they both attempt to get people to understand “that their own actions have an array of proximate and far off effects.” The sustainable farming module gets kids to understand that the actions of the farm have an array of proximate and far off effects. This module is linked closest with that literary goal. In order for this module to cover more of the literary goals, genetically modified food and their relationship to society’s health could be incorporated. This would get students to draw the connection regarding their own health being shaped by an array of both proximate and far-off causes, specifically their diet.

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