"We see nothing at first glance."–Milton Glaser
Observation is a basis for everything we want to achieve. Too bad we notice very little!
Understanding comes from noticing. So do all the skills we care about:
Mathematicians are people who notice patterns. Novelists, poets, and orators notice words. Physicists, chemists, and biologists notice the world around them. Designers, artists, and architects notice the built environment. Storytellers and psychologists notice what drives people, and Sociologists, political theorists, and historians notice how these drives tie together to create all our problems!
What we observe makes us who we are.
The trouble is that we're awful at observing the world! We take in only a slim fraction of what's right in front of our faces.
What if a new kind of school could cultivate people who noticed?
Our schools ground students in paying attention. We —
- teach kids to draw realistically, so they can pay attention to how things fit together.
- take kids into the smallest details of the biological world.
- lead kids to repeatly encounter what edible chemicals do as they cook lunch together each day.
- immerse kids in paintings and sculpture.
- help kids unpack the patterns in buildings and public spaces.
- instill in kids a mindset of craftsmanship as they dissect and build technology.
- practice mindfulness meditation to get a sense of what's going on inside us.
- guide kids to asking, and slowly processing, the big questions.
Our goal is to immerse children in the raw splendor of the worlds of numbers, of atoms, of stories, and of ideas.
We don't aim to just make abstract thinkers, but people who think, feel, and perceive together.