Atlas Of The Future identifies five schools that are teaching kids how to repair their societies and protect their planet

fixing_fitxa.jpg

We couldn’t resist this complete cross-post from our friends Atlas Of The Future, who do extraordinary (and kindred) work mapping change-makers and everyday visionaries, week on week.

Below is the Atlas’s selection of pathbreaking schools and educational experiments curated by David Price, an expert on collaboration and creativity (his intro quotes to each item are below).

What struck us about all of these initiatives is their focus on agency - the capacity of pupils to act, and to put their learning and knowledge into action, alongside a high awareness of the endemic challenges of their society and the world.

This will look different in different parts of the world, as the examples show. But it’s exciting to see educators and cultural entrepreneurs responding to the “youthquake” of post-Greta activism, with initiatives made from both “clicks” and “mortar”.

1. Cool school creates future leaders in Cambodia

Liger Leadership Academy, Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Liger-Leadership-Academy.jpg

“The Liger Leadership Academy is an astonishing secondary school set up by a couple of North American tech entrepreneurs to build the leaders of the future in Cambodia. Because of the Khmer Rouge, a whole generation was lost and so there’s a leadership vacuum in the country. It’s a selective school, but they scour the whole of Cambodia and are very sophisticated in how they judge these kids and see potential leadership talent. When I was there, they were working on an attempt to launch Cambodia’s first ever satellite.”

2. School’s out! This learning community is in

Learnlife, Barcelona, Catalonia

learn life barca.jpg

“In Barcelona, there’s a really fascinating initiative called LearnLife, which I think is the canary in the coal mine for how schools of the future could be: schools started by entrepreneurs, who have had kids and looked around at schools and thought ‘that’s not how school should be’. It places things like wellbeing and social justice at the heart of the community.”

 3. California’s school for young free thinkers

New Roads, Santa Monica, US

santa monica.jpg

New Roads in Santa Monica is an independent school that gives away almost half of its income in the form of scholarships to kids from deprived areas. They are conscious that a lot of their students come from places like Compton, where they’re just not getting a fair shake of the stick. What’s interesting is when you provide a space where very wealthy children can work and live alongside kids from much poorer backgrounds, there’s no question that it sparks the desire for social justice.” 

4. Expeditions pave the way to better learning

XP Schools, Doncaster, UK

xp .png

XP are a remarkable group of schools in northern England whose motto is: ‘Above all, compassion’.They’re getting extraordinary academic results, while also putting education right at the heart of the revival of their community. The school started in Doncaster where there was the collapse of the mining industry. There was the sense that somehow that history hadn’t been written, so the school kids wrote a book about the people who worked in it. They’ve just made a 30-minute film to highlight the lack of understanding of what economic refugees have to put up with.”

5. The school solving wicked problems

London Interdisciplinary School, UK

interdisciplinary.jpg

“The London Interdisciplinary School is a really interesting new university in the UK. They’ve decided that you won’t sign up for a particular degree subject, instead you will address a really wicked problem. like ‘How do we bring an end to malaria?’ or ‘What do we do about mass migration?’ That’s a great example of a kind of pedagogy and curriculum of agency – it’s people feeling like they can make change happen.”

***

More here. And enjoy AOTF’s rich wall of posted projects.