Place Based Education

[ originally on Synergeo, typos fixed]

I’m all into “place based education”, a term I learned form activist parents here in Portland. Given my dad’s city planning background, I tend to think in terms of maps and data overlays. I like the idea of high schoolers studying the city sewer and drinking water systems, if they happen to live in a city.

Sharing that picture of a high school strikes us as science fiction, as none of them actually do it in my experience. Maybe some do e.g. focus on the history and infrastructure of the locale in some detail. But that goes against the standardization standard, which says we need more homogeneity, not parochialism, and besides, textbook companies can’t be expected to customize their history to each and every zip code fer cryin’ out loud.

I remember in my role of contract editor at McGraw-Hill, we got this packet from a guy who had really pioneered place based. The names of the kids in the class would appear in word problems. The story of the town, village or hinterland would pop up all over in his templates. But we were a big New York publisher putting out a uniform product for vast markets. It was like getting a packet from our opposite pole.

The thing about place based education is it doesn’t result in a parochial mindset so much as it gives anyone easier access to the lore. European towns with guide books galore about every nook and cranny therein, have far greater awareness of their own past than many of us in nondescript strip mall culture, in our…