ONLINE EXCLUSIVE
American Farm School Succeeds in Greece
By Yehuda Bayme
The American Farm School is a non-for-profit educational leader in contemporary agriculture, the environment, and life sciences. It serves the populations of Greece, the Balkans, other European countries, the Americas and elsewhere around the world starting from pre-K through primary school, secondary school, and Perrotis College. Its courses are given in Greek and English.
Starting from a young age, the students at the American Farm School are exposed to a “learning by doing” pedagogy. This involves hands on investigation provided by teachers who are sensitive to young people’s personal creative connection to nature. As they develop, the school introduces step-by-step advances including, digging with shovels and buckets, use of measuring tools, tweezers, magnifying glasses, animal feeding, and produce picking. As the students get older and enter its secondary school system, the students get more accustomed to the fusion of theory and practice, learning farming and business practices that are most effective in a economical and socially responsible manner.
The Perrotis College is the highest education given at the American Farm School. In it the students learn to enter the work world as leaders in their field. Perrotis offers degrees in International Business, Environmental Systems Management, and Food Science and Technology. In addition, Perrotis College offers adult learning in the Center for Agricultural Entrepreneurship. With these degrees, the students understand everything from microbiology and food safety, understanding the environmental systems, technologies that optimize growth and provide for attractively marketable products, and international business practices. Using the knowledge they get from Perrotis, students go on to be professionals in food science, marketing management in the food industry, international food and agribusiness management, agrotourism, precision agriculture, and livestock management. The American Farm School takes pride in creating “stewards of the land”; people who seek to better advance our world in the field of farming.#
