Buckminster College is reimagining international education for ages 10-18. The general idea is that cognitive development in adolescence must be supported (and indeed boldly inspired!) along accelerating, asynchronous, and divergent learning trajectories. The aim is good attunement to complexity: the complexity of the world — and the complexity of the mind. The underlying theoretical and philosophical approaches are sourced from interdisciplinary research in the domain of pedagogy of individuation and thriving in the complex, uncertain, open-ended universe. Behind the project is an international group of academics affiliated with the Center Leo Apostel (CLEA) of the Free University in Brussels (VUB) and instructors and alumni of the Postgraduate School of Thinking VUB.
Our activities started in November 2021, with an adventure and enrichment programme, The Ravens’ Bead Theorem (now completed). For 2023-24 we are offering a Springbok Trajectory: an interdisciplinary part-time secondment to be combined with a regular school (ages 11-15). Our major initiative, an independent, international full-time school for ages 10-18, operating within the International Baccalaureate framework, will start a year later. All our programmes combine remote education at Buckminster’s Flying Castle with recurrent 3-day or 4-day residential get-away sessions in the magical city of Bruges (Belgium).
From the 2023-24 school year, Buckminster College is offering the Springbok programme for children aged 11-15. This programme is designed to be taken alongside regular school enrolment at another institution, and is extendable semester by semester as long as the student remains within the Springbok age range.
‘There is one outstandingly important fact regarding Spaceship Earth’, writes Buckminster Fuller, ‘and that is that no instruction book came with it.’ Nevertheless, generation after generation, young Earthians join the crew with no choice other than to trust the orientation classes received from those who arrived here just a few decades earlier…
The teams of Buckminster Students and Players are formed in movement: between the residential and the online mode, between one Space and another–and in kilometers made along the cobbled streets and picturesque walkways in Bruges. Why Bruges, one might ask…
There is a high probability that Mars colonization is going to take place during the lifetime of our children. And this is only one example. These children will have to navigate their way in a world where intelligent machines, many of which already exceed human capabilities, become part of everyday life, where jobs, even hi-level ones become progressively automated…