The Liberal Schools will be knowledge-society schools, the ‘4IR schools,’ with one curricular goal – routinize and rigourise polymathic thinking. Technology would be an intensive component of the education, but, wholly as something that is an input, a substrate, to be extensively ‘humanised’ through personal mastery, and then presented as a personal contribution. There would be no teaching, all adults would be peers, and, the best qualified model learners! And, the best paid too; also because, there would just be one adult academic peer per ‘subject’. To start with, The Liberal Schools may be accessible to the most financially privileged families. I hope sooner than later, a new generation of ‘teachers’ (the model learners) would be available to mass-scale The Liberal Schools.
The Liberal Schools will be essentially 5-year formal education, instead of the current 12 years, equivalent of Grades IV – VIII years. The entry qualification in Grade IV would just be reading ability; for reading would be the first source of exploration of all of academics, followed by conversation, experiments, observations, experiences. Children may also be enrolled from Grade I, but they would spend the years till Grade IV on reading, play, sports, play, dance, art, music, etc. By the end of Grade VIII, all children would have transacted up to the best of the current Grade XII curricula.
They are expected to read nearly 500 books, on top of our private ‘A-Z’, domain-threaded curricula, world’s first of its kind. While ‘The Liberal School by Saloni and Sandeep’ is already open for enrolment, the license and start of The Liberal School will follow new entrepreneurial ventures in education. We hope to have the first such school ready to welcome families by April, 2025, somewhere in the world.
Please do write to us, in case you are passionate about education, and awaiting the next-gen school model, or the unschool model. To me, home-schooling communities will immeasurably benefit from turning into Liberal Schools.