Toward a Rural Philosophy of Education

This essay calls for the development of a rural philosophy of education and outlines considerations toward that end. Questioning the applicability of current school reform initiatives to rural education, the essay draws on the work of rural philosopher Wendell Berry, educational historian Paul Theobald, and other rural scholars to outline considerations for the development of such an education philosophy. Education policy issues, rural history, and current economic, political, and cultural challenges are presented. Differences, strengths, and needs of rural education are highlighted as considerations that must be addressed in the formation of a philosophy of rural education.

The Wind’s Prayer, the World’s Sabbath: Spirit and Place in Lance Henson and Wendell Berry

Although a vast body of poetry celebrates the natural world and addresses issues concerning the environment, it can be overlooked in the discourses of environmental activism. In this paper, we seek to demonstrate the unique contributions that poetry makes to a thoughtful, and in this case, theological, engagement with our present environmental crises. Here, we create a conversation between two poets of two different religious traditions. Cheyenne poet Lance Henson’s poem “we are a people” reimagines humanity’s self-conception in light of earthly interconnectedness from the perspective of his own Native American spiritual sensibilities. Christian poet Wendell Berry’s poem “Sabbaths IV” (1983) relocates our understanding of Sabbath beyond its liturgical designations and practices, asking us to attend to “the true world’s Sabbath”. We offer close readings of these two poems that mark the distinctions that emerge from and interact with their respective theological visions, but also where they find common ground. Through this work of reading literature theologically, we argue that these poems both refine our attentiveness to the earth as the site of religious import and consequence, and call upon readers to enact other ways of being in the world amidst the climate catastrophe that are inspired by faith and spirituality.

Reclaiming Location in Education: a Response to the COVID Pandemic

The school shutdowns necessitated by the 2020 COVID pandemic have highlighted the importance of “located” education. A located education is not determined by medium or physical proximity. Instead, a located education acknowledges the limits of human understanding and sustains mutually beneficial relationships. Recent neoliberal reform efforts have sought to dis-locate education – to strip it of both spatial limitation and the obligations of interdependent care. However, the COVID-related shutdowns have highlight the brokenness of a dis-located education. Drawing from the work of activist Wendell Berry and philosopher Nel Noddings, this article makes the case for located education – an education that recognizes the importance of both place and people.

Soil: the great connector of our lives now and beyond COVID-19

Humanity depends on the existence of healthy soils, both for the production of food and for ensuring a healthy, biodiverse environment, among other functions. COVID-19 is threatening food availability in many places of the world due to the disruption of food chains, lack of workforce, closed borders and national lockdowns. As a consequence, more emphasis is being placed on local food production, which may lead to more intensive cultivation of vulnerable areas and to soil degradation. In order to increase the resilience of populations facing this pandemic and future global crises, transitioning to a paradigm that relies more heavily on local food production on soils that are carefully tended and protected through sustainable management is necessary. To reach this goal, the Intergovernmental Technical Panel on Soils (ITPS) of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) recommends five active strategies: improved access to land, sound land use planning, sustainable soil management, enhanced research, and investments in education and extension. The soil is the great connector of lives, the source and destination of all. It is the healer and restorer and resurrector, by which disease passes into health, age into youth, death into life. Without proper care for it we can have no community, because without proper care for it we can have no life. – Wendell Berry (American novelist)

Rethinking food, fortune, and misfortune: Reading Wendell Berry in a time of pandemic

The highly efficient food system produced by industrial agriculture is often thought to be one of the great blessings of modern technology. In a time of pandemic, however, this supposed “good fortune” becomes highly problematic. Using the observation from Boethius that “good fortune corrupts, bad fortune instructs,” I turn to the insights gained from reading Wendell Berry during a time of pandemic. Berry is particularly insightful at helping readers understand how one can overcome the cultural amnesia brought about by our loss of connection with food and farming through the cultivation of a renewed imagination, self-control, and a reinvigorated work ethic.

Separated but Whole: Pursuing Health and Redefining Community Amidst COVID-19

In his speech "Health is Wholeness," Wendell Berry says that when we are healthy, we are unconscious of our bodies—only sickness brings our attention to them. He also says that people’s sense of wholeness is tied to community, and any removal from common life together is a denial of wholeness and a removal of health. As we find ourselves in this strange COVID-19 moment, we are wrestling with a sudden awareness and anxiety about our own bodies while also hearing the call for social separation that takes us apart from the communities which provide us meaning. This is precisely the type of issue that Berry describes; a closer look at Berry’s theological leanings may give us the resources we need to find hope and meaning during this crisis. Within COVID-19’s clear violation of wholeness, Berry’s understanding of health as interconnection and orientation toward one another under God’s divine love is a faithful and loving way to find meaning during this crisis. If we follow Berry's assertion that under Christ the community is the smallest unit of health, then observing social distancing for the sake of public health is faithfully in line with a theological vision of health as wholeness.

Manifesto: frente de libertação do fazendeiro irado

Wendell Berry nasceu em 1934 em Henry County, Kentucky (EUA), onde mora com sua família em uma fazenda. É poeta, romancista, ensaísta, crítico cultural, ativista e fazendeiro; no começo dos anos 1960, foi professor universitário. Seu trabalho literário explora fundamentalmente a relação entre sujeito e lugar em um contexto rural ”“ tema presente também em seus ensaios e em seu trabalho de ativismo. Já recebeu numerosos prêmios por sua obra. Sua poesia une traços da écloga e da poesia didática, sem abdicar de aspectos políticos. O poema que ora apresentamos em tradução ”“ “Manifesto: the mad farmer liberation front”, do livro The Country of Marriage (1973) ”“ exemplifica bem a veia política de Berry, calcada em uma peculiar ironia e uma dicção direta, assim como o universo rural de onde emanam as personagens, cenários e problemáticas exploradas pelo poeta.

Wendell Berry

Although Wendell Berry is often thought of as Appalachian, he comes from western Kentucky. He has written about Appalachia, however, and his importance to the region is great. Berry was born in 1934 in Henry County in western Kentucky. He earned degrees in English at the University of Kentucky and studied creative writing with Wallace Stegner at Stanford University. After teaching at New York University’s Bronx campus, he moved back to Kentucky with his wife and children, and in 1965 began farming in Henry County. For many years he taught creative writing at the University of Kentucky....

Gurney Norman

Gurney Norman was born in the coalfields of Virginia in 1937 and spent his childhood under the care of his grandparents in that state and Kentucky. As an undergraduate student at the University of Kentucky, Norman met future writers Wendell Berry, James Baker Hall, and Bobbie Ann Mason. Norman continued his study of writing at Stanford University. From 1963 to 1965 Norman worked as a reporter at the ...