FabLearn paper

FabLearn paper Outdoor education in the Anthropocene

Outdoor education has long been part of the progressive vision for education in the united states. There is a distinctly American ideology which sees nature (and particularly wilderness) as a source of inspiration, renewal, and authenticity, particularly for city-dwellers. Entire schools will go to specially-designed camps where students spend a week hiking, looking at the stars, doing archery, perhaps sleeping in tents. Dewey’s pragmatism advocated for students recapitulating the historical material development of western civilization, for example by rediscovering together how clay can be fired into pottery or iron can be smelted from ore. 

However, we are in the anthropocene. The idea of pristine nature is not just inaccurate, but a destructive fantasy. 

Maker education has some of the same roots. The role of design. 

Cavallo’s work studying Thai indigenous expertise with motors, and Blikstein’s work in Brazilian favelas repairing and repurposing technologies 

and 

materiality, capital, anarchism

Cavallo, Freire

Parallel development in education and in landscape architecture. 

At the margins.