Our Humanities Curriculum
We're each part of the epic, still-unfolding human story.
We're surrounded by the crystalized leftovers of thousands of years of experience — of brilliant ideas and terrible mistakes, of beautiful plans and villainous schemes.
Our heads run on the operating systesm of ancient philosophies and religions. The news overflows with the long-term results of migrations and cultural clashes. Our Facebook feeds seethe with fights between economic systems, politics, and technologies. We don't really know where we're going.
We live inside a deep human mystery, and we have the chance to understand it — and influence it. But schools wall off kids from the world, and allot it out in pieces as facts in a textbook.
The promises of the humanities are so great; the realities of the humanities are so trivial.
What if a new kind of school could re-connect children with the real, epic world?
Our schools will prepare students to delve into, and play a meaningful part in, the world of adults. To do that, we will —
- engage kids in the grand stories of human history, from kindergarten on — both as hearers, and as tellers.
- prompt kids to wrestle with the Big Questions — like Where do we come from? Who are we? Where are we going?
- help kids navigate the geography of the world — from continents all the way down to neighborhood bike paths.
- interweave the crucial subjects of world religions, politics, economics, and philosophy into all the curriculum.
- put kids in meaningful intergenerational conversations with their family and community members.
- 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 that most schools would love to do, but never quite manage to squeeze into the school day.
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