Have You Heard of “Plantifa”?

Welcome back, boys and girls, to “WTF Wednesdays!”

We’re gonna go ahead and dive right into this peach of a curriculum proposal put forward by a couple of blockhead grad students. They’ve cleverly dubbed their curriculum “Plantifa.”

From The College Fix:

“The world is facing a looming existential threat caused by exploitative habits and intentional
human negligence.”

That is how Brandon Edwards-Schuth and Marco Cerqueira, a pair of graduate students at Washington State University, describe the pending global crisis as they see it in their recent Northwest Journal of Teacher Education article.

Their solution to combat this dystopian future? “Plantifa.”

Plantifa is situated “at the intersections of anti-fascism, eco-justice, decolonization, and arts-based curriculum theories,” the scholars write.

“We feel that education rooted in a Plantifa curriculum can be one potential way for both teachers and communities to use a diversity of tactics to fight climate change and subvert power structures working against environmental justice,” the scholars state in their November 2022 paper.

If adopted, the authors note, they envision Plantifa being carried out by communities, as well as incorporated into current classroom lesson plans, perhaps as a final class assignment.

For that assignment, the scholars suggest students engage in the practice of guerrilla gardening, “a subversive and communal eco-justice approach to environmental degradation and inequity.”

Unlike traditional gardening, which the duo describe as taking place in “designated flower beds or defined community gardens,” guerrilla gardening, they write, entails intentionally “gardening without borders,” for example on somebody else’s land.

Anti-fascist guerrilla gardeners, they write, assist “nature in breaking trespassing laws, where it is really the insatiable consumption inherent under capitalism which has trespassed Earth.”

Upon completion of their Plantifa assignments, students would then reflect on their Plantifa experience, the scholars state. The following are some of the suggested questions for students to ponder:

“Why is ‘democracy’ as we understand and practice limited to humans, and who, what, or where ought to be included in a democracy?”

“Why are spaces ‘owned,’ ‘private,’ or possess value (or none)?”

“What is your local flora, and is it legally and/or ethically wrong to plant without boundaries…”

“Why is anti-fascism important to our community, our eco-system?”

“We are nature,” they declare to the world. “We are the yarning tracing ways of common guerrilla gardeners. We are the planet. We are plants. As we plant seeds, we become the seeds. We all are Plantifa!”

Being a liberal academic has to be the easiest job ever. You can make up the most random, batsh*t idea, base the argument on your feelings, and people eat it up. The fact that there’s even a market for something like this is beyond disturbing. Not surprising, but disturbing…

I’m sure that no one reading this would be bold enough to argue that schools are equipping children with the tools necessary to navigate life. Our education system is broken, and instead of fixing it we’re focused on bullsh*t like this.

Math? No… guerrilla gardening. WTF…

Math seems to be an especially weak area. I actually got into an argument with a cashier a few months ago, who was in her mid-20s, over whether 4×3=12. Not kidding…

She actually went and got her manager so he could correct me. After she explained the situation, he shot her the most dumbfounded look I’ve ever seen, and then apologized to me… The look on his face almost made the whole experience worth it.

The whole world’s laughing at the dumpster fire we’ve created in the name of “progress.” Ironically, we’re setting ourselves back by generations in this pursuit of unattainable moral superiority.

Rejecting the injection of identity politics into every facet of society is the only way to move forward. Rejecting the narrative also acts as a middle finger to those who think we’re too dumb to realize that we’re being led to our own demise by the very people who claim to be acting in our best interests.

It’s a win-win.