Scientific progress and science teaching:
Basic knowledge, interdisciplinary and ethical issues

SCHOOL MARKET GARDENS: ON THE WAYS OF A PRODUCTIVE SCHOOL

Santa Cruz, BOLIVIA

The Market Garden is a vegetable or fruit raising area within a school space or in its vicinity. It is an educational experience that, through these gardens, it intends to transfer to the different community members the knowledge of the latest organic technologies and recycling for the production of vegetables and fruits oriented toward the community's consumption. Likewise, the market garden is used as a workshop or laboratory in the areas of knowledge under the approach proposed by the Educational Reform in Bolivia: Language and Communication, Mathematics, Sciences of Life and Technology. The project proposes a curriculum diversification in accordance with the Santa Cruz educational community's needs. The school market garden experience falls within the My Effective School Program (MEE), implemented by PLAN Internacional Bolivia (Bolivia's International PLAN). The MEE Program has been formulated as a form of support to the Educational Reform in the communities served by PLAN (departments of La Paz, Potosí, Cochabamba, Santa Cruz and Tarija).

The achievement of the aims of the School Gardens is possible thanks to the methodology of the Classroom Projects, where children and teachers choose, define, plan, design, carry out and evaluate the classroom projects. Simultaneously, the agricultural engineers support the project's development process by introducing new technological, mathematical and linguistic elements developed by teachers and children. There is also a pedagogical advisor working with them, who assists them in the educational projects elaboration, having the market gardens in each participating school as a thematic axis. Thus, the experience realized by the children through the market gardens turns into a space that generates learning proposals in all areas of school knowledge. The market gardens benefits communities which participate in them through the organization of an economic commission in charge of administering the projects' economic funds. The MME program within which school gardens fall, includes the basic elements of the New Educational Reform (1994), such as learning through research, the active role of students and a new teacher-facilitating role.
The School Market Gardens experience has managed to establish and develop 13 consolidated school market gardens, 6 new implemented ones and 130 teachers trained in classroom projects and organic agricultural production. Some 3,494 primary school boys and girls and 11 teaching advisors have participated in the project activities, and 57 parents have participated in the pedagogical workshops and agricultural school market gardens internships

In Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia, 60% of the population are below the poverty line. The use of chemicals such as fertilizers and germicides is very frequent, since the idea is to find a solution to one of the main causes of rural poverty, the soil's low productivity. But these measures generate, at the same time, other problems. Thus, the School Market Gardens Project comes out of the need for a response to the frequent reports of germicide abuses and their effects on children, which have produced people's intoxication and in some cases even deaths. Initially, the proposal addresses the plague control in an organic way. Later, the experience demonstrates the need for moving forward to spread out the knowledge of healthy agricultural practices with an appropriate technology for children. These, in turn, will enable the people to apply it in their homes. The program allows the linking of the school knowledge to the relevant aspects of people's daily life and generates a space where different knowledge areas converge. These areas may be the understanding of the relations existing between societies and nature, the application of mathematical notions and development of a formal kind of language. Thus, the teaching of sciences and technology at school provides school learning with a new perspective, opening up a new possibility of organizing debates on interdisciplinary aspects and their ethical problems.

Ms. Columba Rodríguez
National Advisor on Learning for the Bolivia International Plan
2189 Capitán Ravelo Street
P.O. Box N° 6613 C Central La Paz - Bolivia
Tel.: (00591) 2 441 413
Fax: (00591) 2 441 413
E-mail: columba_rodriguez@hotmail.com

Mr. Manuel Cárdenas Muñoz
Regional Advisor of Learning Programs Bolivia International Plan
511 Yañez Pinzón and Orellana,
corner of Pinzón Condominium, 6th floor C.P. 171106374 Quito - Ecuador
Tel.: (00593-2) 558 930/558 931
Fax: (00593-2) 565 687
E-mail: cardemanu@hotmail.com
Web site:http://www.plan-international.org/

Institutional Partners
Local Department of Education, Ministry of Education, Institute of Agricultural Research (Gabriel René Moreno Autonomous University), Parents and Community Associations
Financial Partners
PLAN International Bureaus in the Netherlands (NLNO), Bolivia International PLAN

1998 Beginning of the MME Program
1999 Beginning of the SCHOOL MARKET GARDENS Project

November 2000 (medium term evaluation). The evaluation was carried out by the Education Development Center - European Office (EDC-Europe) - The Netherlands.