The Farm and the Factory

The factory came with the industrial age. Production, efficiency, and profit margin were the defining goals of the factory system. Everything else was just marketing. For workers, this meant punching the clock over long hours and only the minimal skill required to do the same thing, over and over again. A stunning lack of creativity and dare I say humanity. With only the faintest connection to their work, and to one another as human beings, "What's in it for me?" became the driving force in the worker's mind, as it was for the consumer of whatever the factory produced.

In many ways, education followed the pattern of the industrial system. So-called 'expert' instructors and administrators moved children (and adults) through a twelve to twenty year-long rigmarole of socialization. Think school bells, lines of desks, and 'graduation requirements.' Success was defined as promotion through a complicated, arcane system of advancement based on a medieval model that was centuries old when the first factory was built. Once you had the 'product' (a degree or diploma) of an industrialized education, you were 'ready' to go out into society and produce, or lead, or whatever, supposedly with greater value to society.

The factory came with the industrial age, but there's another model of education, one that existed before the factory came into being, and will continue to exist long after it's gone the way of the dodo. It's the model of relationship, of connection, of a particular place and particular people. You know it from childhood rhymes and toys, and maybe you've even been to one. Of course, I'm talking about the farm. The goal of the farm in the traditional sense is not production but sustainability. Farmer, poet, and activist Wendell Berry puts it this way:

The answers will come not from walking up to your farm and saying this is what I want and this is what I expect from you. You walk up and you say, what do you need?

Education in the industrial sense was like this. For hundreds of years, we have said to students, this is what what we expect from you. Attend these classes, write these papers, take these tests, get these grades. Follow the rules, work your way through our system, and the product you pay for will be your education, your degree, your diploma. Institutions of public and higher education themselves have similar requirements. In order to receive funding from state and federal sources, to keep the system working, they must comply with an accreditation structure that governs the quality (i.e., efficiency and production) of the education they offer.

Not that there's anything inherently wrong with quality and efficiency. But I think you'll agree, that system lacks a certain humanity and is failing us in many ways (see, for example, the book Fail U.: The False Promise of Higher Education by Charles Sykes). Even more, the crisis of today has revealed the fragility of that system and raised questions about to what extent it's good for people and whether or not it can last into the future.

Instead of all that, what if education were more like a farm, and the goal were something more like long-term sustainability and cultivation than production? What if you could step out of the industrial system of education, and still be educated by someone with whom you felt a deep connection, who cared for you personally and not just because you were a part of a larger system? What if you could tap into that teacher's passion on a regular basis and in the process discover your own? What if that relationship was what ultimately prepared you for your next thing, whatever it was?

Well, that's what I hope to give you. In my teaching, in my life, in how I serve you with my gifts, I hope that's how the education that I offer inspires you and empowers you.

That our connection has helped you discover who you are, and how you can use your gifts to help others.

When you do that, you make my impact exponential. Pretty awesome, right?

And I just want to say thank you to anyone who's given me the opportunity to influence their life through "education" or guidance or coaching, whether it's been through a class, a talk, or a conversation over a cup of coffee or other beverage.

Let's keep it going, maintain the connection, do the work we've all been called to do. Let's do the slow but sustainable labor of cultivating others, and let's work together to do it. If I can help in any way, I'm always here for you.

Grace and peace,

Mat