I’m exploring ideas for education and building common mental spaces, and I’d like some real world data to keep improving them. In this exercise I’m going to give a prompt and a description of format for the response, and I want you do write down your response and post here or pm me. Try not to read other’s responses first.
There are no right or wrong answers, and a limited answer is as good an answer as a “complete one”.
So here goes:
Imagine a village
Now give me five core facts/descriptions about/of this village. Just the first that pop up in your mind.
If you feel that this didn’t do your imagination justice feel free to add additional prose, but the core data I analyze will be that list of five.
The village is constructed almost entirely on one bank of a large river with the opposite bank being treated as no-man’s land/wilderness. Few people live on the opposite side and they are viewed by the residents of the main village as foolhardy and not entirely trustworthy.
A well maintained road flows several miles from the village up into the hills to a much larger city.
Fishing boats ply the river but most of the vessels at the large docks carry goods meant to transported by cart to or from the city. Most of the citizens are employed in the transportation of goods.
There is a small but extraordinarily busy village square, constantly bustling at all hours with travelers and cargo but you won’t find much beyond the basic village services. This is a place to help travelers on their way, not a place to live.
The locals are not unfriendly but they don’t tolerate the foolishness of outsiders. If you’re here to do honest business or if you’re passing through on your way to/from the city, all is well. This is a safe rest stop. If you’re looking for trouble, they’re more than willing to give you all you can handle.
To me, “village” is a subset of a city and brings to mind brick or cobblestone streets. Lots of pedestrian traffic. Majority residential with the main businesses being located centrally (akin to a “downtown” but not overly commercial)
The village is about 45 minutes from a larger city.
It shares a school district with a neighboring village.
It has a population of about 12,000.
The village has an incredible bakery that people will drive to from the larger city because it is so amazing.
The village is largely Scandinavian in ancestry.
There is a central town square, with a gazebo where band concerts are played. Lemonade and cotton candy are sold. There is also a baseball diamond.
Surrounding the square are a church, schoolhouse, fire house, livery stable, general store, candy store, saloon and other stores. Further out are farms and light manufacturing, plus a railroad station.
The streets are cobblestone, and generally clean. Produce and other goods are sold from pushcarts.
You can almost always hear children playing, and the gentle clop-clop of horses’ hooves, and sometimes piano music from the saloon.
It sits at the intersection of a two lane state highway and a county road. There are just a few scattered houses, maybe 15 or 20 spaced irregularly along the two roads. All of the houses look to be in some state of disrepair. At the intersection there is a gas station/auto repair and machine shop that looks deserted but for the one old man sitting in a chair near the door and a small grocery store. The doors to the store are boarded up with plywood and a locked chain is thresded through the handles, giving the lie to the help wanted and open signs in the window next to the door. Next to the grocery store is a bar, the only business with any signs of prosperity in the form of a brightly lit neon open sign.
Cobblestone street
No sidewalks, homes open to a small dooryard.
A book store and market are busy.
A sleepy dog sits under a bench by the village center.
naita, I’d love to hear your feedback on what you see (once the experiment’s over). I’m an educator, too.
Very interesting exercise! But I’d like to know more about its goals and any underlying pedagogical theory.
It has a small number of round, thatched huts, dotted around in haphazard locations
It is in a fairly dry, arid, flat landscape
There aren’t many people walking about in the middle of the day
There are mountains in the distance
There is no running water, or pump
It was just an intersection, until the beginning of the twentieth century. A road from here, to there, and one for two other places.
Some guy opened a store, on the corner. His name, followed by Corner Store was the name everyone used to designate it to strangers. The sign said “Grocery.”
The farmer on the opposite corner from the grocer sold his place to a developer. The developer build a bunch of very small houses, in the peach orchard. The small houses were on half acre lots. The neighborhood was named Peach Orchard estates. There were no more peach trees, after about thirty years.
The grocer passed away, and his family moved out of the now fairly busy village. The people who lived nearby still called the intersection Tyson’s Corner. The store had closed a few years after Mr. Tyson died
Another farmer sold his farm to a developer, who built a shopping center there. It was called Tyson’s Corner. It wasn’t where the original corner was. There was no village anymore.
It is a village of grass roof huts.
The surrounds are lush and green, somewhere like Polynesia.
Dirt roads.
Only about 15 huts.
Washing hanging out to dry.
A small coastal community at a river mouth, made up of both permanent and holiday homes.
Surrounded by farmland with rolling hills, sheep and cattle roam fields bordered by hedgerows.
It lies off the main highway, so traffic is sparse and quiet, averaging one car passing through every fifteen minutes.
Fishing boats are anchored in the river mouth. When the tide is out they sit tilted on the sand bar.
A single shop serves the whole village, providing groceries, mail, and all the basics.
Children and their dogs play down at the estuary playground, kayak across the river, where they can fish from the wharf.
Population less than 200.
No building more than 2 stories.
Only one stop sign and no other traffic control devices.
Surrounded by forest and an occasional farm field.
Topography flat.
