BC School in Bruges (ages 12-18)

As of today the Buckminster School, is still –proudly– a vision, not yet fully materialised but already boldly alive. Goethe noted that ‘boldness has genius, power and magic in it’ and we could not agree more. Every day we can see this power at work: magnetising brilliant minds and valuable resources.

We are currently aiming at September 2023 as the starting date of the first school year, this plan, however, is still pending confirmation.

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The BC School is an independent, part-boarding/part-remote high school based in Bruges, Belgium, offering a multilingual, international curriculum for ages 12-18.

The programme is dedicated to fast and challenging learners: to students, whose unique learning styles and interests demand interdisciplinary big-picture thinking and require a psychologically savvy holding environment. The comprehensive BC School curriculum is academically highly demanding and designed to guide the cognitive development of our Students along accelerated, asynchronous, and divergent learning trajectories.

The key features of the BC School design are explained below:

Half-boarding/half-online

The 6-year-long curriculum is composed as a full-time blend of the following five integral components:

• • • immersive residential sessions in Bruges: one 4-day-long stay organised in every two weeks (18 residential sessions per year);
    • real-time online instruction: 4 school hours per day on all non-residential schooldays;
    • coordinated offline ‘Move&Make’ portfolio activities: 1 school hour per day on all non-residential schooldays;
    • coordinated offline ‘Write&Voice’ portfolio activities: 4 school hours per week in all non-residential weeks;
    • and intense individual reading assignment tracks: approximately 30-hours per week.

Comprehensive

The curriculum consistently addresses various dimensions of cognitive development in adolescence, integrating knowledge into big-picture, systems-thinking and complexity-science frameworks, and combining the academic instruction with extensive training in socio-psychological skills, physical wellbeing, character development, hands-on craftsmanship, and artistry.

Multilingual

The School adopts English as its working and instruction language while offering the French- and Dutch-speaking variants of all classes held in the Humanities-oriented Spaces (the Maze, the Village, and the Broadway), as well as in the individual reading assignment tracks.

The first year of the curriculum allows for an immersive language acquisition of English (if needed), combined with intense training of the socio-psychological capabilities and communication skills. From the second year onwards, classes in French, Dutch, and German as a second language are provided at all proficiency levels.

It is required that upon graduation all Buckminster Students are fluent in at least three out of four languages: English, Dutch, French, and German.

International

While remaining respectful and appreciative towards all identities and backgrounds, the curriculum is not oriented at the reinforcement of any national affiliation. The half-boarding formula of the School organisation allows for the enrollment of Students from all the Belgian language communities, as well as the Netherlands, France, UK, or any other country (or sailboat!) from which commuting to Bruges might be reasonably feasible on regular basis.

Intellectually demanding

The academic structure of the curriculum is designed to exceed the competency requirements foreseen by the International Baccalaureate Middle Years Programme and  the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme, allowing for a smooth transition to any Higher Education institution in the world.

However, the School is committed to refrain from treating the ‘frameworks compatibility’ aspects of its educational provisions as its end goal and its overarching raison d’être. We believe that human beings, and humanity at large, must grow up beyond the stage of being hypnotised by assessments, measures, and frameworks. These are of course valuable and necessary and they are there to facilitate and coordinate. But they must not be mistaken for the goal of human development at any stage of life. The BC School curriculum requires that each Student will be taking all the necessary partial International Baccalaureate assessments and exams not once, but at least twice (with no pre-set maximum number of attempts), with the first one taken minimum a year ahead of when it is actually due. This design of the curriculum aims not just at the satisfactory conclusion of the exams, but much more importantly, at the development of a constructive and confident attitude towards all kinds of thresholds of societal advancement awaiting our Graduates in their lives ahead.

Trajectory-based

The  curriculum is composed modularly, with multiple elective combinations and speeds, allowing for the maximal extension of the individual accelerated, asynchronous, and divergent trajectories of cognitive development.

Independent

The School is established as a private, non-subsidised, non-governmental activity, carried out in the legal form of a Flemish non-profit organisation (VZW – Vereniging Zonder Winstoogmerk).