The core task of students of The Virtue School: "Know Thyself."
... To inspire kids to trust their Hearts, Minds and Visions to CREATE a new world...
The core of the "Virtue School" will be education related - the main task being to "know thyself": questioning who you are to find depth and meaning - within a supportive communal framework. Secondly, it will be about creating community. Actually, the "students" will be designing, constructing and maintaining everything in their community (including the school) themselves. At first I was only plan
ning small-scale - a "permaculture farm school" where the "school" would be kind of an extra-curricular thing - and a community could gradually develop around it. After going to Peru, however, I have the message that I am going to build an entirely new school system: one that creates and maintains its own self-sufficient community -- and gradually expands to build a network of such communities. Once it becomes successful, the network of communities will expand and go global. I have the feeling that this is what people are longing for today, but they don't know how to go about it. My goal is to bring those creative energies together and let them go...
One of the main curricula will be Permaculture. From the beginning the students will follow a Permaculture Design Course and the designing will start from there. I have also been thinking that in the beginning we could start with an essential survival course: learning to get your own safe water, build temporary shelters, start fire, get food, etc. Eventually, that can expand to conserving food, building storage areas for water and grain; also shelters for animals can be built; while also building permanent housing & developing the garden areas. Another, task will be designing self-sustainable energy for the community. The goal is to be off-grid. The school will allow the students to shape and create their own curriculum. I would love to have something like this happen (a school in Russia - though I don't like everything about it): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ratyoUnzHb8
"[...] Schetinin developed a model school for the future where ordinary pupils, without much help from adult teachers, cover the whole 11-year curriculum of the compulsory school system in just two years and get official bachelor’s and master’s degrees from accredited universities by the time they are seventeen. During their education, these children have designed, built and decorated their campus all by themselves. Here even a ten-year-old girl is capable of building a house, doing splendid drawings and cooking meals, not to mention knowing ballroom dance steps and mastering the fundamentals of Russian martial arts. Without any advertisement, there is already a waiting list of over 2,500 hopefuls for an unexpected opening. "Schetinin points out that the standard compulsory school system intends to prepare children for their social roles in life. His school is not preparing anyone for anything, because life happens every moment that we are alive. So instead of preparing children for something, they are allowed to live in each present moment. When you ask Principal Schetinin about what his secret is, his only answer is: “I do not have any secrets! The only thing that is different at my school is the approach we treat Human beings.” As a professional educator Shchetinin never took anything for granted, and asked himself the question: How come children are so inspired to learn and absorb all information like sponges when they start in the first grade and then by the ages of eleven and older learning becomes much more difficult for them within the compulsory school system, while their creative abilities tend to be extinguished by that time? During his pursuit to find answers to his reflective question he stared experimenting with different approaches for education and schooling. By trial and error over two decades, he derived this extremely powerful concept for this school:
There is no distinction between teacher and pupils
There is no division into age groups
There is no distinction between intellectual learning and the development of creative abilities
The phrase “you are wrong” is not part of their vocabulary
And no distinction between schooling and real life
[...]"
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Also, like this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDerGT5wskU
(ignore the song)
It's an international school at an ecovillage - "Tamera" - in Portugal. You can find more info on Tamera here: http://www.tamera.org
I don't like everything about it (Tamera, the school), but I like that the kids are learning practical things and learning how to survive - how to be autonomous/self-sufficient within their community: in ecology, food production, technology and building their own houses from readily available, natural materials. It kind of brings together a lot of ideas of Permaculture....
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Here"s another example...
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I'd like to integrate art, architecture, music, science and gymnastics (dance), theater, performance; together with healing: the earth and society... (bring in healing methods like shamanism, Chinese medicine (Tao, acupuncture, martial arts), Indian medicine, herbalism, homeopathy,...)... And lots of meditation...
Right now, I"m just looking for support, like-minded people. I have the feeling everything is going to come by itself once the message gets out there...
