I Know My Onions ...

... which, according to the saying, means I am very knowledgeable about something, but what, exactly? Not onions, that's for sure. Growing onions is not in the curriculum of subjects I teach, although I do know that they are an essential ingredient in onion soup and risotto. 

I planted a clutch of seed onions back in May during the time I was looking after my cousins' garden. To do this I followed onion-planting instructions I'd been given. After that initial digging and setting the onions with their tips just above the soil's surface, they grew of their own accord. 

I watched over them on my daily turns around the garden, was pleased not to lose any to onion predators, but did little else. Even in the long summer heat and drought, I watered them only occasionally. I was too busy focussing on the thirsty hydrangeas. That they flourished makes me think there isn't that much to know about growing onions.

I had finished my garden-sitting before the onions matured. It was my cousin who watched over their last growth spurt and harvested them. Last weekend, she kindly presented them to me in a long braid. I didn't recognise them at first.

I think this onion story may be a metaphor of some sort about knowledge: about how it is part of the fabric - the soil and air, the rain and sunshine - of our environments and communities. About how it is held in common. My teaching (though it doesn't always) has felt like that this week. I've been able to set up the contexts in which learning can happen - I've gathered groups of students in communities, set them, gently as I can, with some patting of the soil, into place: watched as they went about their own growth potential. I've tended and encouraged when I've noticed a root reaching down, or a shoot heading up. 

It's not always like this. There are times when knowledge within education institutions seems to get stuck in thick books, or choked by bureaucracies, by power and personality, and, recently, by the tension and challenge of enforced social isolation, and by the sterilisation of communication in technology. But then again, when the natural inclination towards growth is enabled, it feels great: it feels like I know these onions. 

And look, here they are grown, and full of potential.