Understanding environmental generational amnesia through urban school garden learning experiences in Gimuy/Cairns, Australia

Abstract

This paper explores the potential role of school garden learning experiences in remediating Environmental Generational Amnesia (EGA). EGA is a generational type of environmental forgetting brought about by prolonged disconnection from “natural” landscapes, with symptoms manifesting as poor motor skills, deficient food origin knowledge, a lack of environmental moral affiliation and undeveloped connections to place. Drawing on interviews with teachers, parents, counsellors, groundskeepers, and administrators at a Far North Queensland primary school, this paper explores how school garden learning experiences foster interaction patterns that combat EGA’s symptoms. We find that urban school gardens offer new possibilities for reassembling students into more-than-human local ecologies in ways that can remediate the manifestation of EGA.