Andreas Salcher Projects

The AKRON-Group supports the CURRICULUM PROJECT within the scope of their program focusing on "The school of the future".

After the fourth Waldzell Meeting in 2007, which also met with a very positive reception at international level, Andreas Salcher decided to launch a new project with the working title „THE CURRICULUM PROJECT - Creating the Schools of Tomorrow“.

Goals

As impressive as the technical-economic progress of the past century might have been, the majority of schools in the world did not really profit from it. There is no other part in our lives where we find the gap between scientific progress and its actual benefit to the well-being of man to be as wide as in our schools. All children have a multitude of talents. Why are these opportunities for life being destroyed systematically in our schools?

The goal of this project is to launch, together with pupils, parents, teachers, and interested individuals, a global movement that realizes already today the school of tomorrow. Perhaps, even to make the unthinkable come true, to turn our schools into places where children learn with enjoyment to comprehend the world.

Since the project declares for a global scope, it will aspire to take both the cultural differences and the national challenges into consideration. The focus of attention is on the birthright of every single child to develop their talents.

„THE CURRICULUM PROJECT“ is founded on three pillars:

A global network of the schools of the future

A network of pupils, parents, teachers, and any interested individuals is supposed to put positive pressure on the schools to deal with the necessary changes. The vision is to narrow the gap between the contents children all over the world learn everyday at school and those they would actually need for their future. And this challenge can only be met where people learn together. Thus, the point is that at every school every day should be a little better. For this, we need a new movement that effectuates both inside and outside the schools.

The implementation of existing knowledge

The main aim of the school of the future will be to enliven the process of learning. Until we are 3 years of age, our passion for discovering new things allows us to learn an incredible abundance of skills. In the lives of many children this stream of energy is cut off precisely at a point when actually the formal phase of learning should become the focus of attention–i.e. when they enter school. While many mysteries of mankind have not yet been resolved, the question of the best way for young people to learn has long been answered—thus there is no need to reinvent the wheel. A “brain trust” of the best scientists will shape the knowledge of the future schools into a viable configuration and make it available to the CURRICULUM network. Furthermore, the scientists will ask questions which will then be introduced in all schools by the movement, with the aim to spark off a process of development there.

The counsel of the brightest minds

The UNESCO estimated that in the next 30 years to come more people will finish some school education than in the entire history of mankind. This is where the future behavior of soon over ten billion people on earth will be molded. A selected group of moral authorities and experts from all disciplines will establish the values and contents which the next generation should learn in order to obtain the best possible preparation for their lives.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, discoverer of the principle of flow and leading researcher on happiness, suggests a preliminary direction this catalog of values of the CURRICULUM PROJECT will take. Asked what he would want to hand down to his own child in order to prepare him for the challenges of the future, he answers:

1. Interpersonal skills: In the future, much greater importance will be attached to learning in teams, understanding one’s own feelings and those of others, and working in groups.
2. Responsibility: It is not admonition he refers to but the task of teaching children at an early age that every action has a consequence. So when they do something to their brother or sister they have to face the consequences, just like the parents, and any interference in nature has consequences, too.
3. We are not the only ones on this planet: He refers to imparting a systemic understanding that we all belong to a common whole on earth. Here, too, he calls for a concept based on reason which is to make children fathom that we all are able to survive but jointly.

Let us give the children the opportunity to find out on their own what the world’s future will be like. If we teach them responsibility and social empathy with their fellow men it will be easy to have them learn to understand correctly the facts and the consequences of their behavior.

Andreas Salcher
www.andreassalcher.com