Blog #5

"...write a blog entry outlining the goals and specific characteristics of a green learning community.  How would you know one if you saw one?"

Drawing from the readings so far on an introduction to green values and green pedagogy and political thought, I think that the overarching goal of a green community would be to serve as a model and a springboard for the development of more green communities. David Orr's project at Oberlin College in Ohio seems to strive for just that, creating a space in academia "to serve as genuine anchor institutions" to create models that can be mimicked in the rest of society. I think that the Learning Center for Sustainable Futures here at USC is really functioning with that purpose as well.  Orr's project takes the green community further, I think, in pushing so strongly to incorporate the entire community and make it function as one system, which I would like to identify as the second goal to a green community.  This means that the sustainable facilities and services must extend out to the community, including food systems and waste treatment as the article talks about. I think that small, local farms are specifically a huge part of this because a green community means that it would be self-sustaining, and thus function on a local scale. The final overarching goal that I see in the text is the focus on the "learning" aspect to the green learning community: the students and teachers have mutual respect built into their relationship and the student is more free to explore what he/she wishes to learn.  The learning style is more open and less directed.