MAKE IT LAST FOREVER: THE ... - National Service Resource Center

What are the key features of natural systems? Basically, they capture and store energy for the purpose of sustaining life for
self and other. As a condition of use of this energy, they also let it pass safely from the system. They are completely functional, in
that all resources are used; put another way, there is no waste. Natural systems are therefore quite different from energy systems
without life (machines), which usually perform one function, rely on continual energy input, and produce continual waste.
Our entire global economic system uses this approach. For example, people extract raw materials, convert their nutrients into
products for human use, and then release harmful and often toxic by-products into the air and water.
This system of production has also influenced other aspects of modern society. For example, our economy primarily employs
well-trained specialists who perform certain tasks on a daily basis and ignores other aspects of their mind, body, and soul. People are
usually not allowed to bring their children to the workplace, nor do they usually work near or at home. In these instances, human
potential for wholeness and happiness is wasted at the expense of productivity.
In the educational system, good ideas about education come from research and development centers (universities), whose
“experts” publish and lecture to educators, who then purchase reform programs or texts to implement such approaches, and modify
educational standards and curricula to reflect them, so that students will have an improved course of study. This linear, top-down
approach to teaching and learning expends an incredible amount of time, energy, and money to get students (the raw material) to
produce positive and measurable performance outcomes (the finished product). By the time students graduate from high school, they
are ready for careers in technology, which is essentially glorified factory work. Not only is this system incredibly inefficient and
repetitive, but it saps a lot of meaning out of life and essentially kills the once vibrant spirit of young people. Students do far too much
unnecessary work (which is a form of pollution), and much of their talents and skills are never tapped, which is a critical waste of
leadership potential.
Service-learning can address these problems, because it is not merely a new pedagogical approach, but a way to completely
transform the way teaching and learning occurs. It can, in fact, more than most strategies, change the educational system so that it
reflects more of the principles of natural systems.
Natural systems, by design, have managed to “institutionalize” all their functions, in that they are self-maintaining,
regenerative, and efficient. Optimal use of all elements in the system is a prerequisite for existence; there is no waste in nature. The
evolution and adaptive process ensures that changes within an ecosystem occur in such a way as to preserve the integrity of life in the
system. If the educational system, or any human-designed system, modeled itself after natural systems, it would undoubtedly look quite
different; people would certainly care for one another and the Earth, and learning would be an investment in this kind of ethical life.
The following chart, developed by the author, illustrates the difference between many human systems and natural systems.
HUMAN SYSTEMS
AND MACHINES
CURRENT APPROACH
TO EDUCATION
NATURAL
SYSTEMS
IDEAL APPROACH
TO EDUCATION
simple classroom instruction complex learning through projects, research,
apprenticeships, experience, and with
many role models
unidirectional states dictate curricula via teachers multidirectional students shape their learning
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