Smith, G. (1998). Rooting Children in Place. Encounter, 11(4), 13-24

Greg Smith teaches in the Graduate School of Education at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon. He also serves on the board of the Rural School and Community Trust, a national organization that sponsors place-based educational reforms throughout the United States.

This article begins with a discussion of the cultural and ecological benefits of being rooted in a place and includes examples from the author’s own life. One challenge to reestablishing a sense of place is that our education system is not set up to teach us how to do it. In life and in education, the focus is too often on getting out and not staying put. The author suggests that we can learn many lessons about connecting to place by observing other cultures. Looking closely at Ladakh, a province in northern India, the author shows how the land and culture of Ladakh help establish a sense of place in its children, then discusses how our society can apply lessons learned from the Ladakh experience to our own homes and schools. This discussion includes several examples from schools and communities around the United States. This article’s international perspective is unique among the literature reviewed here.