Going back and beyond: children’s learning through places

Abstract

In 1919, the Canadian province of British Columbia (BC) established the Elementary Correspondence (EC) School to provide formal education for children living in rural areas with difficult access to a school. Through children’s letters, this paper interrogates the concept of place, a key one for placed-based approaches to environmental education. Place-based education has focused on natural and rural environments to engage students in environmental learning, sometimes presenting the desirability of connectedness to nature and the local community with nostalgia and romanticism. Children’s letters suggest that their learning has long been shaped by their places, material and imaginary, and that the EC school was a place as important as nature in children’s learning and schooling. Children’s letters contribute a rich historical perspective that helps to rethink the rural/urban divide into a relationship of mutual constitution of childhood and nature across time and space.

Keywords:

• Children
• place-based education
• nature
• history
• environmental education

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank Dr Mona Gleason, Dr Claudia Ruitenberg, and Dr. Claudia Sepulveda for their insightful comments and discussions on an earlier version of this paper and the Special Issue’s reviewers for their valuable feedback.

Notes

1. British Columbia Archives (BCA), GR-0470, British Columbia (BC) Department of Education, Elementary Correspondence (EC) School, Box No. 24, File No. 51. GR-0470. March 7 1935. Hereafter BCA, GR-0470, Box 24, File 51, March 7 1935.

2. To illustrate how rural children have learned through place in the past of BC, I draw on The Land is My School Project lead by Dr Mona Gleason. The project focuses on children’s and families’ experiences of distance schooling in past BC with the purpose of informing contemporary environmental education (Diaz-Diaz and Gleason 2016).

3. BCA, GR-0470, Box 3, File 4. (n.d.).

4. BCA, GR-0470, Box 3, File 4. 1935.

5. Retrieved from: http://www.yesnet.yk.ca/schools/projects/canadianhistory/depression/depression.html

6. BCA, GR-0470 Box 24 File 51. November 1 1935.

7. BCA GR-0470 Box 24 File 17. 1934.

8. BCA GR-0470 Box 24 File 17. 1934.

9. BCA GR-0470 Box 24 File 17. 1934.

10. BCA GR-0470 Box 24 File 51. 1936.

11. BCA GR-0470 Box 24 File 51. February 20 1937.

12. BCA GR-0470 Box 24 File 51. February 20 1937.

13. BCA GR-0470 Box 24 File 17. June 8. 1934.

14. BCA GR-0470 Box 24 File 17. December 14 1935.

15. BCA GR-0470 Box 24 File 17. June 8 1934.

16. BCA GR-0470 Box 26 File 1. November 10 1938.

17. BCA GR-0470 Box 26 File 1. January 20 1935.