A Quaker Schools Network
As some of my readers already know, a represent a network of secluded boarding schools, doubling as Transcendentalist communities, hearkening back to experiments in community in New England, pre the USA Civil War. You may remember studying these folk in high school, as Emerson and Thoreau, Walt Whitman, serve to anchor this literary period.
The German language philosopher Nietzsche found lots to like in Emerson, looking back, and decided to use this diamond in the rough, this rustic American, as a model for his Zarathustra character. Did Nietzsche ever read Whitman? My search engine brings up comparisons only.
These boarding schools differ in what they offer and don’t. They’re all on the drawing board at the moment. Curriculum comes first and might be shared anywhere.
The curriculum “boots” the schools, by means of science fiction designed to roll forward in the direction of actual reality.
That’s the process of investment banking, of planning, of any process that starts with the imaginary but with the purpose of “making it real”. Curricula do that too.
In fact, my metaphor for the whole planet — because it helps to have an overarching metaphor — is Global University, or Global U for short. That U could resonate with the USA, as my teaching is when a nationalism is fully mature, it becomes a globalism, as one feels a responsibility for the whole earth, as a place, a country, one has love for and commitment to.
Whole Earth Patriotism may arise from any nationalism or regionalism. At that point, once the Global U is in focus, we may attribute unnecessarily poor living standards as a sign of curriculum weakness. “Needs improvement” is our grade.
What the curriculum lacks is a focused telling of history up through recent times, a telling which continues trends in the past, such as Transcendentalism. What happened to it? What happened to those values? In my book we go from Margaret Fuller to her grand nephew R. Buckminster Fuller.
The continuity is explicit in that the latter dedicates his Grunch of Giants (St. Martin’s Press) to the former, among three women. Both Fuller’s were concerned with the phenomenon of gender imbalance, one of those signs of curriculum weakness.
Although the specific ownership structure behind these schools is not yet fully hammered out, I’m projecting a Quaker influence, as the Religious of Society of Friends overlaps the Transcendentalists on several registers.
Chief among those shared concerns was a commitment to fight against slavery and imperialism (they go together). Would the US become another empire, like the one it fought against to gain independence? What did the institution of slavery, already deeply ingrained and made legal, portend for the future of this new Republic?
These questions were on the minds of all the deeper thinkers and curriculum architects, and put the Union on course for potential breakup.
Bucky Fuller’s globalism is reflected everywhere in his inventions, most especially in his nationless world map, but also in his way of playing World Game, in turn his own invention, and a way of using the map (called the Dymaxion, or Fuller, Projection).
Early participants in World Game, with Bucky presiding, focused on issues of food, shelter, energy, healthcare. The entire world played the role of Campus. Campus Earth was and is still in the process of growing its electrical system. Grids, pipelines, infrastructure at all levels, featured in a “game” to make the world work, for everyone. That rhetoric would inspire a game called est.
The latest planning involves coordination with military bases and experimenting with decals more. The world military has a lot of logistical know-how and world-awareness already. Admirals and generals are used to “thinking globally, acting locally”.
However, blood and guts war is a symptom of curriculum weakness. One could argue, as many martial arts trainers do, that the most highly trained will manage to keep things from getting too ugly. Having this subnetwork of high tech schools, partially overlapping world military circuits, would be a path towards upgrading.
The schools will feature environmental monitoring and data collection as an important function of any campus.
Another plan features “urban nomad” lifestyle training, with cities moving to make spaces hospitable to this new breed of eco-traveler. Nomads need only minimal gear as they’re able to access more tech at the destination. Have hammock, will travel. Abandoned malls beacon, as possible convergence spots.
Urban nomads have spaces they’re allowed to visit, encouraged to go. As a labor force, their expertise is environmental protection, including clean up. These activities are arranged and organized, for academic credit, by the schools themselves.
