Last week’s 4^th –5^th grade Gardening Club was dismal. Students were scared of dirt and worms, refusing to handle either and taking an interest only when I unwisely mentioned the monetary value of compost. Then they wanted to strip-mine the world. 

This week, I introduced a classroom currency. Purple bills were worth $10 and screws $5. Half the students got varying amounts of money. Half got varying amounts of snacks. I told them we’d see who had the most money at the end of class. The fury of the stock market promptly possessed our classroom.  

They got several minutes of transactions before I shepherded them out into the unseasonable February sun. On the arboretum rocks, I asked them to help me understand their fear of dirt. 

“My hands are too clean.”

“I don’t like things that are disgusting.”

“I don’t like slimy things like worms.” 

There were dissenters. One girl told the others they could wash their hands, and her younger brother said that though he didn’t like dirty hands, he didn’t mind dirt. 

I thanked them and switched course, asking them to think of their favorite food. 

“Jet’s pizza!”

“Chicken drumsticks!”

“Do you know that everything you’ve ever eaten has come from the soil?” I asked them? We worked a bacon burger backwards to see how that was true. The bread is made of grain, soil-grown. Bacon comes from pigs and beef from cows, both of which are raised on grain in commercial operations. Soil again. 

I told them to breathe as that sunk in. The air is a gift of soil too, as the earth holds and nurtures the oxygen-weaving trees. Several students jumped in with an explanation of photosynthesis. 

“Exactly! These are things that even our parents can’t give us. They can’t make food. They work to get money to buy it, and they may prepare or even grow some of it. But no human makes food exist. It’s not a power we have.” 

“So there’s just little people under the soil pushing the food up?” 

The incredulity told me we were getting somewhere. I told them that this is the priceless work of soil: calling forth life from death, feeding us and putting the air in our lungs. We depend on it every second of our lives. If it gives us so many gifts, it makes sense for us to treat it with respect and care. But that’s hard to do if you’re growing up in America. 

“Why?” the students wanted to know. 

“Well, because greedy, powerful people want you to fear and hate soil.”

“Why? So they can steal it and sell it?” 

“Maybe. But if you’re afraid, you won’t learn to care for the soil. If you don’t learn to care for soil, you won’t learn how it cares for you by feeding you. And if you don’t know how soil feeds you, if you can’t grow food, then you’ll always be dependent on people who want to sell you food.”

Resentful mutterings ensued. 

“Personally, when I learn someone wants to manipulate me, I want to resist. And the best way to resist here is by learning to love and care for soil.” 

Then I took them by twos and threes to help me dig a hole in a raised garden bed for the outdoor worm farm. This farm is a lidded box with lots of holes, sunk into the soil. Food scraps and worm bedding will go into the box. The worms will be free to move between box and garden bed, revitalizing our tired soil. 

My students fought over our lone shovel. They caught and relocated worms disturbed by digging. They sifted earth in their hands. The ones who didn’t get a chance to help before snack time were disappointed. 

Usually, snack is squeezed into the last possible minute of club, but this week I had them sit down earlier. “Everyone who still has food, you can eat it.”

“Are we going to find out who won with the most money?” one of the most entrepreneurial girls asked. It turned out to be her and her friend, with $45 in classroom cash. A few students marveled at how much the two of them had accumulated. 

I repeated my instruction for those who had snacks to eat them. A few granola bars and bananas appeared. The monied students’ faces grew longer as they took in their own lack of food. 

“We thought this would be worth something!” the entrepreneur protested, gesturing to her bills and screws. 

I told them that money was a tool for trading. If I didn’t have any more bananas and bars to exchange for it, then the money was just scrap metal and paper. 

A girl who has refused to touch soil in the two years I’ve known her pulled up a grass tuft and nibbled the roots experimentally. “If all our food comes from dirt…”

“Those greedy, powerful people we talked about want you to believe that money is worth a lot,” I told them. “They want you to believe it’s the highest good—that bananas and granola bars and worms are only valuable when they can be turned into money and sold. But the banana will actually fill you up when you’re hungry. The worms will actually make fertile soil where bananas or a hundred other good things can grow. Money might help you get some of those things. But the minute you start destroying the real goods for money—digging up and selling the worms in your yard, taking and taking from the garden without ever giving back to the soil—if you do that, you’re trading the things that actually support your life for pieces of metal and paper.” 

My radio was squawking at me to bring the students inside for pickup. Their morose faces told me they’d grasped the bad trade. 

But we live in a world where gift supersedes even the capitalist economy. By that logic, I’d saved snacks for even the monied students. Bananas and granola bars disappeared into eager hands. Class dismissed.