Our Mission
To create a space where we can explore the origins and evolutions of education through the arts & humanities; and to inspire participation and creative thinking around schooling. We seek to legitimize (and expand) all ways of knowing.
How We Will Do It
The Winter School is a *community center where people can gather to think about (and exchange ideas about) the origins and evolutions of our school system. Through exhibitions and curriculum, we introduce educational concepts such as pedagogy, curriculum and the dynamic nature of knowledge. We engage people by sharing perspectives from both the past and the present.
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We do not offer solutions as much as we tell stories and ask questions. What is the goal of school? Can it be neutral? Who can express knowledge? And who is expected to absorb it? We hope to provide more questions than answers while creating an atmosphere of play, inclusion and curiosity.
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*Physical & virtual. The physical Winter School is a historic one room schoolhouse that sits on a patch of remnant prairie in Lecompton, Kansas. We also host a virtual community where people interact with our arts-based curriculum through YouTube and Instagram.
The Problem to Solve
Although schooling is the most pervasive social institution in our lives we know very little about it. With democracy as a guiding concept, we explore what part our schools play in themes, such as: Inquiry, Equality, Perspective, Reciprocity, Time, Relationships, History, Pedagogy, Curriculum, Standardization, Expression, Mystery, Plurality and Emergence.
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If there is a problem with our current school system and the way we conceptualize knowledge, we want to encourage people to name it, express it and participate in the problem solving.
The Change We Seek
The education system suffers from a lack of stakeholder involvement. This is, perhaps, caused by a lack clarity about its goals, lack of philosophical debates and its historical residues of marginalization. Because of its influence on our lives, schooling has the opportunity to be an incredibly flexible and gratifying service if it engaged with greater transparency and reciprocity with stakeholders, which is all of us.
At the Winter School we want to help build a community that is curious about how educational issues influence society and ourselves as individuals; to build a community who can inquire and discuss educational issues, and eventually, to grow a community who participates in decision-making so schooling can maximize its contributions to democracy and full human potential.
Why It Matters
Schooling has a tremendous effect on how we situate ourselves in the world. At its best, it can expand freedoms by giving us access to different perspectives and by revealing our unique intelligences. At its worst, it can control us with rigidity and confine us with grand narratives.
How we conceptualize education has repercussions beyond the classroom. Learning (or growth) is our perpetual nature. Our health as individuals, a community and as a species depends on how we respond to this essence of constant change. At the Winter School this means constantly learning about ourselves through the joy of curiosity, inquiry and listening. It requires openness in the face of uncertainty and ambiguity; and an empathetic acceptance to those who appear different than us. This commitment to our nature of perpetual growth can help increase not only our freedoms but our feelings of self-worth, vitality, interconnection and peace.