"Kill the army worms!""Let them Live"

"Kill the army worms!" "Let them live!":

Facing an ecological dilemma in a democratic classroom community.

Pam Wister, Kathy Beaton and Pam Nason

About the authors.

Pam Wister, who was the classroom teacher at the University of New Brunswick multi-level primary when this incident took place, now teaches Kindergarten at Priestman Street School in Fredericton.

Kathy Beaton, a professional forester and Michael's mother , is currently engaged in forest research with the Canadian Forest Service in Fredericton.

Pam Nason is a professor in early childhood education and curriculum theory at the University of New Brunswick.

Copyright to be retained by the authors.

"Kill the army worms!" "Let them live!": Facing an ecological dilemma in a democratic classroom community.

Written in three voices, a teacher's, a mother's and an education professor's, this article tells what happened when a teacher sought a mother's expertise to help primary school children decide what to do about the army worms defoliating the trees in their playground. Reflecting on the episode reveals the pedagogical thoughtfulness and preparedness with which the teacher approached this particular event in this classroom community, and locates it in the broader educational context.

Ecological dilemmas

(The classroom teacher, Pam (insert surname after review), writes. . . )

"Kill the army worms!"

"Let them live!"

The words echoed throughout the playground.

"Let's drown them."

"Yeah in the river. We'll make it deep."

Some children dug furiously in the sand box to enlarge the river, while others ran to collect army worms from our apple tree. Voices were escalating in pitch as an argument ensued.

"We don't want to kill the army worms. That's not fair!"

"You're killing the army worms and we don't want to."

"They aren't hurting us. They're pretty and soon they'll be butterflies."

"Yeah, but they eat leaves and they will eat all the leaves on our tree if we don't kill them."

Other children argued that they were soft, and the army worms tickled as they crawled up their arms. Both sides continued to voice their opinions, but neither side could compromise. Everyone seemed frustrated and so I suggested a meeting under the willow tree of anyone interested in discussing what to do with the worms.

This was the third year for the army worms in our playground. It was also the third year for eight of the children to be in this multi-age primary class. Those children had never seen our apple tree with such beautiful leaves as there were this spring. The past two years the tree had been laden with huge nests of army worms which had eaten all the blossoms and leaves. The first year we had admired them, examining their markings and features. We had observed how they moved and what they ate, and marvelled at how they spun their yellowish cocoons. We had let them tickle our skin as they crawled over our bodies. We had even welcomed them into our classroom and taken them home. We had also discovered how destructive these creatures were as they consumed every leaf within a week or two, and our tree was left stripped of its foliage. This experience had provided some children with the knowledge and evidence which supported their decision to kill the army worms.

Just as passionate though was the argument to let them live.

"Don't you know, they won't eat all the leaves? Soon they'll make a cocoon and then they'll stop eating the leaves. Besides there aren't as many this year. Remember last year, how many nests there were? Look! There are only a few nests this year."

"Yeah, but there are still a lot of army worms and they eat a lot of leaves. It might take longer but they can eat all those leaves. It will kill our tree."

The children continued to present their views emphatically.

"It might hurt them to be drowned. They have feelings just like us."

Finally someone suggested that they vote about what to do. There was a decision to save the army worms. The children cheered and returned to their activities, except for a few who milled around, discussing the decision. That was when I heard the sobbing behind the hill.

It was not over. We had spent a good portion of our outside time discussing the matter but for some of the children the final decision was not satisfactory, even though it had been reached democratically. The conversation had been intense and emotional. This sobbing child, Michael, who had made a vehement argument for killing the worms to save the tree, had been defeated by another just as passionate argument to save the worms. He was overcome by his emotions. It was draining and I could see no conclusion. Feeling the need to move on without closing the door, I suggested that we write a letter to Michael's mother, a forester, to get more information before we decided what to do next.

Anyone who wanted to help write the letter was invited to meet in the story corner after lunch. This gave us time to gather our thoughts and re-compose. Several children met to write the following letter together.

Dear Kathy,

We have an army worm problem. Most of the children want to keep the army worms in our playground. Some children, like Jeremy and Michael, want to drown them in a river in our sand box. Amy wants to keep the army worms and so does Robin, James, Nigel and Katherine. Please write to us and tell us why they should be drowned or kept. We thought of writing to you because you work in our forests.

From,

The children at U.N.B.

Kathy, P.S. If you have time, please come to our group time.

P.P.S. Some of us just don't understand why we should kill them. Others think we should kill them so they won't kill our tree. Some are concerned about the feelings of the army worms.

From,

Pam

Michael was the mail carrier and delivered the letter to his mother for us. The next day we received a response. We gathered together and I read the letter that Michael's mom had written to us. It was very thoughtful and provided us with a lot of information to support both sides of the issue.

Informing ecological deliberations

(Forester/mother, Kathy (insert surname after review), writes . . .)

June 11

Dear Children at U.N.B.:

I read with great interest your dilemma about what to do with the army worms on your playground. To make the best decision about a subject you need to find out as much information about the subject as you can. I will tell you what I know about the relationship that army worms have with trees and maybe that will help you make the best decision about what to do with the army worms.

Army worms are a natural part of the forests and trees around us. They have been here for many, many years, much longer than you or I. The hardwood trees (those that lose their leaves each fall) that the army worm feeds on, have the ability to grow a second set of leaves if something happens to the first set. The army worms hatch out at the same time that the leaves first come out or "flush". Army worms will eat the first set of leaves. When the army worms spin their cocoons to turn into moths, the trees' second set of leaves flush. Trees are able to survive losing their first set of leaves (but not their second set) for one or two years in a row, but it does weaken the tree. Some trees, often those that were unhealthy before the army worm ate its leaves, will die. There is a stand of poplar trees in a part of the forest where I have an experiment that have lost their leaves for 3 years in a row to the army worm. Even though the trees lost almost all their first set of leaves for several years, they are still alive and healthy today.

The army worm population cycles, that is there are large numbers everywhere one year and then gradually over a few years there are fewer and fewer until you hardly notice them at all and then they increase to great numbers again. This year the army worm population is low. That is the way nature balances things. It would not be good for a lot of animals, including the army worm, if all the hardwood trees died. If all the hardwood trees died, so would all the army worm. Nature has it so that the hardwood trees are able to have their first set of leaves eaten and grow a second set. Nature also has it so that the army worm population does not stay high year after year and therefore not kill all the hardwood trees. Since the population is low this year, if any tree you are concerned about has lots of leaves now and very few army worms on it, it will probably not die.

Every living thing on this earth has a purpose even if we do not know right now what that purpose is. Right now we know that the army worm provides food for many birds and insects. There are probably many more beneficial things that the army worm does but someone will have to study it to find those things out.

Some of you were concerned about the army worms' feelings. We don't know a lot about what worms feel. We don't believe they have the same sort of feelings that people have. If they do have feelings, drowning them would be a slow, painful way to kill them.

I hope you find this information helpful in deciding whether or not to kill the army worms in your playground. I would have loved to come and talk with you about it on Wednesday, but I am at a seminar all day that day. If you have more questions, I could come to talk with you on Friday.

Sincerely,

Kathy

Making the decision

(The classroom teacher, Pam (insert surname after review), writes . . . )

We still had to make a decision together. I wondered how that would ever happen, considering that the children had presented their views with such power and passion. We discussed the letter briefly. One child reiterated his observations made on the playground, and supported by Kathy: "See, there aren't as many army worms this year, so they won't eat as many leaves. Our tree won't die." Then someone said, "Well, I guess that's that. We won't kill the army worms." Everyone agreed.

A few days later another mother presented us with a poem by Christina Rossetti 'Kill no living thing.' We read it respectfully, but we didn't dwell on it. None of the children made any explicit connection to our dilemma, and neither did I. For the time being, at least, we let the topic rest.

Pedagogical thoughtfulness and preparedness: cultivating a democratic classroom community

(Education Professor, Pam (insert surname after review), writes . . . )

In the current climate of reform which valorises what Elliot Eisner (1991) refers to as 'the merely measurable,' primary school teachers are increasingly pressured to 'deliver' and test a narrowly defined academic curriculum, one in which pre-formed outcomes are imposed from above. In such a curriculum, bureaucratic accountability threatens to overshadow participatory democracy in schools and classrooms, giving only lip service to teachers as professionals, to parents as partners and to children as active agents in their own learning.

Pam (insert surname after review)'s account of the army worm episode exemplifies another possibility: that of teaching as morally coherent practice, wherein democracy is enacted in the context of an emergent and co-constructed curriculum. As such it demands closer examination by teachers who would strive to articulate teaching as more than just a set of technical skills with clear, predetermined outcomes.

The spontaneous way in which the army worm dilemma unfolded in this classroom community works as a perfect example of how it is possible to cultivate ecological thoughtfulness and moral responsibility in a classroom community of primary school children. It demonstrates how letter writing for authentic purposes can bear fruit, and how democratic decision making in the classroom can be informed by parental expertise. Both teacher and mother reveal themselves to be acutely sensitive adults: the tone of their teaching shines through their writing with great clarity. They understand that when children are faced with a moral dilemma, they have to weigh the evidence themselves and come to their own decisions. In these respects, the story tells itself: its truths are self evident. However, to leave it at that would be to miss an important point. This story unfolds, as good stories often do, as though this were the only possible way for these events to have unfolded. This, of course, is not the case. At many critical junctures along the way both teacher and parent made decisions, some of them snap decisions in the heat of the teachable moment, but nevertheless decisions which led to the unfolding of events in this particular way and not some other way. In this respect, the linear narrative is deceptive in its simplicity. It belies the pedagogical thoughtfulness and preparedness which informed both teacher's and parent's actions. It is this pedagogical thoughtfulness and preparedness which I find remarkable and which I want to make more explicit.

To readers who have the advantage of having just read how the teacher, Pam (insert surname after review), actually responded to the children's playground argument, it may not seem at all remarkable that in their argument she immediately discerned a serious dilemma, one which required more discussion and thoughtful deliberation. This may seem as obvious to the reader now, as it did to Pam (insert surname after review) in the heat of the moment. But to me, a professor of Early childhood education, Pam's response is remarkable. Having watched countless such heated arguments summarily 'broken up' by teachers obliged to supervise literally hundreds of elementary children at recess, or 'resolved' by the peer-conflict-resolution squads which increasingly police the playgrounds in our province, I am aware that argument on school playgrounds is frequently construed as interpersonal conflict, in need of nothing more than speedy resolution to restore the "safe and orderly environment" which is presumed by the effective schools movement to be pre-requisite for teaching and learning in schools. Pam construes argument quite differently. Defining outdoor playtime as an integral part of the curriculum, as opposed to a 'recess' from it, she understands dispute not as an obstacle to teaching and learning but as an opportunity: an opportunity for students, teachers and parents to articulate the viewpoints, discern the differences, generate the questions, initiate the investigations and prompt the ongoing discussions which are the very lifeblood of education in and for a democratic society. In the curriculum Pam co-constructs with her children, "[t]he moral is not a separate idealised domain [but] present in and a part of everyday living" (Cuffaro, 1995, p.52). Mindful "that [democracy] has to be enacted anew in every generation, in every year, in every day, in the living relations of person to person" (Dewey, 1940 cited in Goodman, 1995 p.7), Pam strives to cultivate a classroom community which is, as Dewey (1940) put it, "the constant [my emphasis] nurse of democracy" (p. 358). There is no 'recess' from it. And, having practised this pedagogical stance over the course of her career, Pam has developed a habit of heart and mind which she is able to sustain over the fluid and fast moving events in the playground, and throughout the dispute, even when things get so "intense and emotional" that she finds it "draining" and can "see no conclusion."

This pedagogical stance is still as evident after the vote, when Pam recognises the cry of a lone minority voice as a sign that "it was not over." It is evident when she suggests that the children 'get more information before [they] decide what to do next,' and when she invites them to become active agents in obtaining that information. Perhaps most poignantly, it is evident in the degree of support and counsel that both Pam and Kathy offer, whilst having the wisdom to leave the decision - from the children's perspective, quite literally a life and death decision - in the children's hands. Recognising, as Cuffaro (1995) put it, that "Over time, through experience and continued reflection on experience, values and standards emerge from deliberation." (p.53), Pam and Kathy both have the extraordinary courage and insight to actually entrust 5,6 and 7 year old children to dwell in it.

Having reflected on this episode as the "everyday enactment of democracy" of which Dewey spoke, I presented it to a small group of education students, asking them what it was they found 'remarkable.' One of them, Susan, said that it was the death by drowning that the children had chosen to get rid of the army worms. She was rather disturbed to think that the children had even thought of such a slow and possibly painful death. We wondered what this choice might mean. Another student, Mary, offered the insight that: 'considering crushing and drowning were probably the only means the children had at their immediate disposal, drowning did enable more emotional distance from the act of killing.' This comment provoked us to ask why the children might feel the need for such 'emotional distance' and led us back into Pam's text where we found clues as to how she had cultivated in the children what Rachael Carson calls 'the sense of wonder.' "Once the emotions have been aroused," says Carson, " - a sense of the beautiful, the excitement of the new and unknown, a feeling of sympathy, pity, admiration and love - then we wish for knowledge about the object of our emotional response." Pam had encouraged the children to seek knowledge about the army worms, not with an objective and objectifying scientific gaze, but with an intimate one which 'admired them' 'marvelled at how they spun their yellowish cocoons' 'let them tickle our skin' and even, 'welcomed them into our classroom.' And, they had 'never seen the apple tree so beautiful as it was this year' (emphasis added). No dispassionate gaze this: knowledge and empathy developed in concert, and, along with them, stewardship - for both the apple tree and the army worms. We began to appreciate that it may have been precisely because the children felt such a strong sense of emotional attachment that they had to distance themselves from the act of killing the army worms, an act they were contemplating only because they cared for and felt it their responsibility to save the tree. Indeed, had they not learned to care so passionately for both the tree and the army worms, there would have been no moral dilemma at all. As the children understood it, caring about both involved choosing between them. Thus they, and we, began to get a glimpse of Irshad Manji's (1997) "new democracy," a complicated, messy democracy, an "alchemy of democracy" where passion and empathy enrich and muddy the waters of agency and accountability.

It was into this 'alchemy of democracy' that Pam suggested the children invite an expert's voice. Again it may seem like rather an obvious choice to the reader who is in the privileged position of seeing this invitation in the light of Kathy's response. Clearly Kathy's letter did provide precisely the sort of information about army worms, trees and ecological interdependence that the children needed to 'help [them] make the best decision about what to do with the army worms.' Kathy made it clear from the outset that, although she recognised the complexity of the problem and was able to offer her expertise to inform the deliberations, she had no intention of appropriating the decision making: the decision, she reiterated, was the children's to deliberate upon. We can easily imagine that "out of [such] deliberation[s] that values and standards [will] emerge" (Cuffaro, 1995). Indeed, after reading Kathy's letter the children made their decision, by consensus, and with such ease that it is hard to imagine there could have been a less positive outcome. But of course that possibility did exist.

Kathy is not only a professional forester, she is also Michael's mother; that same Michael who, along with Jeremy and some other children, had wanted to drown the army worms to save the trees. So, when Pam suggested to the children that they should seek information from Kathy the forester, she was suggesting they invite not just any forester into an 'alchemy of democracy' which was extremely volatile, but Michael's mother. Teachers do not usually invite parents/voices into 'their' classrooms under such circumstances. In fact, even when things are running smoothly, teachers typically assume that parents' predominant motivation and strength in relation to schooling lies in their ability to support their own children, rather than 'the common good' which teachers uphold. Pam's decision to suggest the children invite Kathy goes against the grain of this assumption. It speaks to her trust that Kathy will act for the common good rather than out of simple interest in advocating for her own child. This trust in Kathy is not a blind trust, but a trust born of countless personal interactions Pam has had with parents over the course of her teaching career, interactions which have built her confidence in parents' capacities as co-educators in the classroom - to the extent that she is able to make a professional judgement in this particular instance. Such judgements stand upon philosophical bedrock which acknowledges the complementarity of teachers' and parents' expertise, and honours parents' fundamental right to have a voice in classroom communities, along with the children and teachers.

Committing to egalitarian relations in classroom communities increases uncertainty in decision making, and diminishes the probability of predictable outcomes. Even in a climate of trust and good will, it is a risky business. For those committed to participatory democracy it is, says Bastiani, (1995) 'a risk worth taking.'

Pam (insert surname after review) has many predecessors in Early Childhood Education, 'Dauntless Women' (Snyder, 1972) who have taken this risk, and steadfastly kept children, caring, community and democracy at the centre of their teaching. She has many contemporaries, who can add to 'the army worm story' with accounts of their own morally coherent practice. To ensure that she also has many successors, telling these stories is imperative. Thus we are able to counter the bureaucratic insistence on a narrowly construed outcomes based education, assert that 'practice is never just a set of technical skills with clear and predictable outcomes' (MacIntyre, 1984), and re-claim the practice of democracy, complicated and messy as it might be, for our classroom communities.

Works cited

Bastiani, John (1995) Taking a few risks: learning from each other; teachers, parents and pupils. London: RSA

Carson, Rachael (1990) The sense of wonder. Berkeley: The Nature Company

Cuffaro, Harriet. K. (1995) Experimenting with the World: John Dewey and the Early Childhood Classroom. New York and London: Teachers College Press.

Dewey, J. (1940) Education Today. New York: Greenword Press.

Eisner, Elliot W. (1991) What really counts in school. Educational Leadership, February, pages 10 - 17.

Goodman, Jesse (1995) Change without difference: School restructuring in historical perspective Harvard Educational Review 65(1).

manjii, irshad (1997) risking utopia on the edge of a new democracy. Vancouver/Toronto: Douglas and McIntyre.

MacIntyre, Alasdair (1984) After Virtue: A Study of Moral Theory. Notre Dame: University of Notra Dame Press.

Snyder, Agnes (1972) Dauntless Women in Childhood Education 1856 - 1931. Washington D.C,: Association for Childhood Education International

Copyright© Canadian Education Association 2000. ISSN 0013-1253 Education Canada, Vol. 40 (3). Reprinted with permission. If you wish to make additional copies of this article, please contact the publishers or ACCESS Copyright (1-800-893-5777).