Hello boppers,
So - just finished the Soils week for the apprentices. It's always a great week - all they do for 2 years is working on farms having fairly little theoretical input, and they're always very eager to come for an intensive week of lectures, art and soil experiments. I was thinking, perhaps I will experiment with offering them to come and do the 2nd year of our training as a follow-up after their apprenticeship. It will depend a bit on which farm they were if they have enough knowledge and experience equivalent to what you did in the first year of the FT training, but I think we'll give it a go. It will also help to boost the numbers somewhat in the second year and it will be nice to have some new people in the group... I welcome your thoughts on this!
1 comment:
I have been meaning for some time to write something about this, but never found the occasion. Anyway, if I try to imagine having apprentices with us in the second year... it really makes me wonder if the apprenticeship programme shouldn't be more integrated with our course so that people wanting to study BD with no prior experience of farming can get some before starting to do intellectual study on the subject. I really think it slows the group down in the context of the classroom when we have such a wide range of levels, since there is only one focal point - that of the teacher. In a practical scenario, this is different, since there is the opportunity for those with experience to show others without how things are done. I think that we also learn more ourselves by teaching what we know to others. So, this is also a question of how much the way we learn is organised to allow for the sharing of knowledge amongst the students, which in my opinion is something that I would like to see more of. There is also the question of group size in relation to resources, and my feeling was that with certain activities (eg soil testing, things that require the study of a book of which there is only one copy) the group size was simply far too large for the resources available. Thus for perhaps selfish reasons, there would be a motive to oppose any more people coming into the group. Those were my main thoughts, will write more if anything else comes to mind.
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