Other Education: The Journal of Educational Alternatives ISSN 2049-2162 Volume 9(2020), Issue 2 · pp. 44-61 Corresponding author: Oded Zipory Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Contact: oded.zipory@mail.huji.ac.il 44 Against Cultivation: On the Dark Side of the Gardening Metaphor for Teaching Oded Zipory Hebrew University of Jerusalem Abstract Perhaps no metaphor for teaching is more dominant than that of gardening. It is commonly associated with student-centeredness, individual flourishing, and a non- oppressive teaching approach. In this article, however, I argue that despite its seeming harmlessness, cultivation metaphors have a darker side that rarely gets attention. As such, educational cultivation is not simply open to various interpretations, but includes a deep, irreducible, and disturbing aspect within both agriculture and within the tradition of western education tradition, namely, that of centralized control in the service of the civilization process. Following mainly the recent book of anthropologist and political scientist James Scott Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Early States (2017), and applying it (metaphorically and not) to the question of educational cultivation, I suggest that cultivation excludes, or even eliminates with almost no trace, alternative modes of learning: those uncontrolled, not “domesticated” or which are “wild.” Instead or at least in addition to the long-standing educational metaphor of the garden, I propose the metaphor of the forest as a way to encourage freer, less controlled modes of learning. Keywords educational metaphors, cultivation, progress, civilization process The Importance of Metaphors In recent scholarship, metaphors are no longer considered just decorative devices but are acknowledged as indispensable tools of thought or even as the expressions of thinking itself (Felski, 2015; Lakoff & Johnson, 1980). Since the metaphor— articulating one thing in terms of another—is necessary for any analogy or comparison, the question “which are the metaphors we use in a certain context?” is of the utmost importance. Metaphors, including professional ones like the one that will be discussed here, are not just welcomed additions to a conversation and they are not simply representations, original and imaginative as they may be, of some kind of “non- metaphoric” reality. Lakoff and Johnson (1980) have shown that metaphors are much more like the building blocks of our language, thought, and action, than they are a kind of unnecessary ornament. The very fact that it is not easy articulating this point