Gardening Practices of Education

Arts education discourse is full of metaphors coming from the botanical world. We have been interested in understanding how these metaphors (the child as a seed or as a plant) have moral and political implications in terms of the government of children. But not only: these metaphors start from a developmental approach in terms of conceiving the child [[child development]]. The educator as a gardener has the task of conducting the 'right' development of the child, as a botanical tutor to plants. The idea of growth was precisely first applied to plants, progressively being applied also to animals and the human person. The idea of development, on the other hand, has a more recent use, but since the end of the 18th century, it has been associated with a gradual process of unfolding and an advance through progressive stages. As Kathryn Stockton puts it, the idea of growth presupposes verticality, the idea of development presupposes linearity. The child grows not only in stature but according to a linear behaviour. The willful child (Ahmed, Sara (2014): Wilfull Subjects) would be the one that queerized the idea of a 'natural' gradual and linear development. Developmental theories of the child seek to nullify the child who ‘grows sideways’ and in different directions.