About This Journal
The Green Revolution (GR) became the title of the School of Living newsletter in 1963. It succeeded The Interpreter, founded in 1945, and ran as a consecutive series through 75 volumes between 1945 and 2018 when the Green Revolution was discontinued.
The School of Living was founded in 1934 by Ralph Borsodi. Mildred Loomis was Director of Education and editor in chief of the School’s publications from 1945 when the School of Living headquarters was moved to her homestead near Brookville, Ohio.
The idea of a green revolution goes to the roots of the founding of the School of Living. It represents a back-to-the-land, back to nature theme, which is to say green. The GR was produced just as a new wave of youth sought an alternative life on the land. The new format and content were developed primarily for homesteaders. It was “for stories, news, first-hand reader experiences.”
The GR was designed to both help people learn the skills needed for homesteading self-sufficiency and also to achieve their potential as a human being. The GR served as the platform for Borsodi’s problem-centered framework of adult education. Borsodi wrote four volumes about his system and was honored with a doctorate by the University of New Hampshire in recognition of his contribution to adult education.
Borsodi first proposed an alternative, adult education program in his book This Ugly Civilization. The problem-centered framework was formalized in his Education and Living (1948, two volumes). Both The Interpreter and Green Revolution were organized according to this system and an editorial board was established for each of the then 13 universal problems. Borsodi completed The Education of the Whole Man (1963), which provided the philosophy behind the system, and Seventeen Problems of Man and Society (1968) which cataloged a vast range of approaches to the then 17 problem framework. Digital copies of these books are included in the archive.
Also included are related educational materials, conference reports, and correspondence as located. These materials include Borsodi pioneering work in land trust and local currencies.