We have created a Star Wars civilization, with Stone Age emotions, medieval institutions, and god-like technology. We thrash about. We are terribly confused by the mere fact of our existence, and a danger to ourselves and to the rest of life.– E.O. Wilson
We are all part of an epic, unfolding, story! Our world is congealed history — of brilliant ideas and terrible mistakes, of beautiful works and villainous schemes. We're daily affected by the millennia-old works of humanity: philosophies and religions, migrations and cultures, social and economic systems, politics and technology.
We don't really know where we're going.
We live inside of this human mystery, and have the chance to influence it. And yet schools wall children off from the world, and present it to them as facts in a textbook.
What if a new kind of school could re-connect children with the real, epic world?
Our schools prepare students to understand, and play their part in, the world of adults. We —
- engage kids in the big stories of human history, and prehistory, from an early age.
- prompt kids to wrestle with the Big Questions — like Where do we come from? Who are we? Where are we going?
- help kids explore (and internalize) the shape of the world — from continents all the way down to local streets.
- put kids into conversation with local adults for authentic conversations.
- embrace a diversity of world cultures through stories, food, music, art, and dance.
Our hope is to bring students into intimate contact with the world of adults — religion, politics, philosophy, economics, psychology, and sociology — that most schools would love to do, but never quite manage to squeeze into their curriculum.