Much of what children know about the world comes from what is taught in school. Yet schools on the Prairies teach little about how food is produced and about opportunities in agriculture despite the importance of the agriculture sector in the region. Reporters Robert Arnason in Brandon and Barb Glen in Lethbridge visited schools and talked with educators, students and agricultural education promoters. They found the emphasis on agricultural education often depends on teacher interest, and found a need for accurate, balanced information.
Livingstone School is the hub of the hamlet of Lundbreck, Alta., population 300.
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It draws kindergarten to Grade 12 students from prime farm and ranching country. Yet a show of hands in a Grade 11 class shows two of 18 students live on farms.
In Nobleford, Alta., 90 kilometres to the east, four of 26 students in grades 11 and 12 say they live on a farm, even though the town of 950 is in the middle of prime irrigated farmland.
The numbers are a surprise to a visitor but perhaps indicative of the distance successive generations have travelled from farming roots and on-farm food production.
However, agriculture is part of the Alberta school curriculum, and the information available to teachers is augmented by the Agriculture in the Classroom program and farm groups.
Brent Andressen, an agriculture education specialist with Alberta Agriculture, said Agriculture in the Classroom responds to what he sees as increasing interest in food and its origins.
His role is to provide resources to teachers who want more information about agriculture.
“If there are outcomes in various programs of study that could be agriculture related, we do get calls from teachers wondering how to visit a farm, or if we have resources,” Andressen said.
“The teachers are showing a greater interest in it and we are responding to that. I’d say the awareness is growing and the interest in finding out is growing.”
Agriculture often figures in social studies and health classes in elementary grades. At the high school level, career technology studies and the green certificate program are the main delivery methods.
Simone Demers Collins handles education, marketing and promotion for the Alberta Canola Producers Commission. It has developed lesson plans for grades one to 12, focusing on canola but also on agriculture in general.
“As more and more students and teachers are involved in urban settings and are further afield from agriculture groups, there is a need, especially within the Alberta curriculum, to have some of the resources that will allow them to make better decisions in the future,” Demers Collins said.
The commission makes information available to teachers on a website and rarely misses a chance to present resources at teachers’ conventions, she added.
“We’re trying to make that particular job as easy as it possibly can be so that it allows the teachers to have accurate information and be able to teach the subject matter with as balanced a viewpoint as can possibly be presented.”
Though much of the available teaching materials are geared to lower grades, some aspects reach into high school. For example, Demers Collins said the commission was able to provide information on biodiesel for Chemistry 20 and 30 classes.
She isn’t particularly worried about finding balance in the delivery of agricultural messages because the intent of the Alberta curriculum, specifically social studies, is to examine the issues.
“If we look at something like (the documentary)Food Inc.… it allows us to start the discussion, and to say if we are really, truly teaching social studies with the original intent within the province of Alberta, we cannot simply provideFood Inc.as education.
“We need to provide it in the context of education, as part of the discussion and that there be the opportunity to explore the validity and the correctness of that particular topic and to look at other people’s perspectives.”
Saskatchewan cattle producer Sherri Grant has worked for years to educate children about beef production at farm shows.
Agriculture is part of the provincial school curriculum, but it is often more of a peripheral mention. For example, an exploration of major provincial industries would include agriculture.
“What we seemed to find was, because many of the teachers are not familiar with agricultural production in Saskatchewan, they’re not very comfortable teaching it,” said Grant.
She looks with envy at the United States, which has an agricultural education component in almost every state. There is even a National Association of Agricultural Educators with more than 7,600 members dedicated to teaching teachers how to teach agriculture.
