Ground and Grace to Grow On: Nurturing Nonviolent Education—and Curriculum Theorizing—via Narratives of the Forest School for Children in Cyprus

• In Event: Teaching in the Ruins, Learning from the Land: Grounding Curriculum in Place and Possibility

Abstract

In 2020, the Forest School for Children in Cyprus opened—its vision, to nurture love of self, the earth, nature, and others; and in response to current educational conditions which not only fail to nurture children well but are rather oft constituted by neglect; e.g., bypassing the pedagogical
relations and personhoods of teachers and students, in culture and context, within the neoliberal global millieu of advanced capitalism and abiding legacy of colonial settlerism. Humans are set apart from and deemed superior to nature; and are sorted, ranked and separated too via education; difference denigrated, some rendered unintelligible and ungrievable, outside the bounds of normativity. In this some argue our education systems continue to advance violence, rather than the flourishing of human community.

Authors

• Nicoletta Christodoulou, Frederick University

• Molly Quinn, Louisiana State University