Little Foot Academy
(A home school)
The masculine aspect of The Indigo Healing House
Because the government won't do it right.
We are going to stop asking others to behave differently & take matters into our own hands.
Because free men don't ask for permission.
Will be starting with children age 8 who are living below poverty level, whose parents can't afford private school because their child is failing public school even though they gave the correct answer to a question but it was not the teacher's answer (those who show signs of free thinking) and who are not in or interested in gang membership.
Who We Are
We are looking for retirees who have been places and done things, who know things first hand from experience not from text books and class rooms who love to watch children grow. We are looking for folks who won't demand compliance, but those who can teach the children where to look and then get out of the way and allow for their own creativity to shine through. We seek to create a group of well seasoned fully trained free thinkers for that is the mark of a well educated mind.
Corporate Sponsers
What I learned from the movie, Billy Lynn’s Longest Half Time Walk. What I found disturbing is why the boys join. Some (older solders) were drafted, they had no choice in the matter, their lives were “stolen” from them. Lots go in for the enlistment money, they felt that they need to sacrifice their lives for money to help their family out of poverty, or because there are no jobs and that is the only place they can get “hired” and paid to support their family because they had no skills. Some are sent in as a means to avoid jail time as they lack the education to behave better. Some to earn citizenship in the country they serve for themselves and their family.
None of these reasons makes one a “bad” person, just a desperate one.
Know that one's intent is what is most important, and things done from the intent
of desperation usually don’t work out well, our aim is to change this.
This is unacceptable
What We Do
Looking for children like this.
Instruction like life will run all year long, every day; so the children will live "at home" till they "graduate". This will "break the cycle of poverty" & any get them away from any abuse, neglect or depravity they might have at their original home. This will also ease the burden of the family they leave behind.
The long term benefit of this will be a child who 10 years later can come home and help his / her family out without trading their lives for cash and painting a target on their backs.
For the child, it will create a new family.
Public school curriculum has gotten so bad that collages won't even give the ACT or SAT tests to public school children. only home school children.
There will be no "public funding" accepted, all funding will be either donated by corporations, companies and private individuals or earned by the children themselves as we don't want any "public official" to dictate what we "have to" teach or how.
Since it is "their home" it is a home school and as such we will set the curriculum bar high.
For the first year of Little Foot Academy, we will start out with a smaller number of children between 30 - 50 children and only 2nd Grade, they will be our first graduating class 10 year latter. We will grow the grades as the first children "grows up" into them (this will allow us to work the kinks out of one grade at a time).
Each year we will increase the number of children till we feel we have either reached our goal or maximum capacity of where we are working at will hold.
[That way were not not biting off more than we can chew at one time. Thus we are in need of a "mansion estate" as hope is to take in as many as 440 - 450 children per year. So we will need to house some 4,500 children plus the "Parents/Teachers" in a homeschool friendly state.
Furthermore the first few who graduate I would like them to return to their community and start their own schools to teach others in that community Thus bringing that community out of poverty.
Then next wave of class can go into the community as either employees or as business men.
The children will be chosen on an individual bases as we see fit.
If we are going to dream, might as well dream big!
How We Do It
Well Rounded Education
The school is 24/7/340 days a year for 10 years. The curriculum will be set, there will be no choices in the matter. But once the lessons have been accomplished for the day /week, the child will be free to delve deeper into that which interests them the most and putting it into Community Service - taking what they learn to help improve the local community.
Courses taught using in part Ron Paul's Curriculum & Montessori methods with cooperation over competition being stressed. Every child will have a very rounded out education where there will be little that they can't do or at least know something about. The end goal is a curiosity that can't be quenched, they will learn how to think and find out more about what they want to know about.
There will be three courses that must be studied; Reading & Writing, Arithmetic & Science. Each lesson will be built upon the one prior to, and all will be hands on.
- Language Arts; reading social history, writing (printing, cursive, calligraphy, letters, at least one book in print), spelling & grammar, in 7 languages (English, Greek, Latin, High German, Celtic, Mandarin Chinese & French, maybe Russian). Constitutional Law. Critical, analytic, logical & deep thinking, meditation.
- Arithmetic; will include sacred geometry / proportional drawing, sewing / quilting, weaving, economics, bookkeeping, accounting & business management. Music; which will include reading, composition & learning how to play at least two instruments (either guitar or piano and one other). Art; painting, drafting (on paper and computer), sculpture, knot tying / macramé, bead work, sewing, weaving. Wood working; construction of play house, furniture, home repair & remodeling and building homes, bridges, fences and towers. Mechanics; small engines, lifts, auto, farm equipment, large truck, aviation, & ships.
- Science; will include chemistry, cooking from scratch, food preservation. Electricity. Soldering to military standards & welding to oil field standards. Electronics; build a radio, television, computer & robotics, and then program the computer / robot. Metallurgy & Black smiting; making nails, shoes for horses, a sword making & gun smiting, bridge building and “skin” for their robot. Animal Husbandry; farming & ranching (each child having their own animals one pet, one livestock), animal training (riding, plow and cart pulling), (as well as breading, milking & butchering). Gardening; agronomy, growing own food for school & livestock, herbs & herbology, composting. Refrigeration and air conditioning. Anatomy & physiology. Health; body care, diet, nutrition, food safety, child care and home cleaning. Exercise; swimming, martial arts, archery / marksmanship, gymnastics & mallakhamb dance (ballet, ballroom, square dancing & waltz …) Environmental; Electrocoagulation (cleaning water),and waste treatment to clean up after all that. "Everything in oil & minerals" garbage disposal.
As you can tell by the curriculum load, this is not a school for low IQ or underachiever, but those who are "hungry" for more than what the public educational system offers. When we are done with these children, they won't have to "find a job" as companies will be begging them to come work for them. With a population like this, there will be no limit to can be accomplish.
There are a lots of things that small towns lack, so some of this time will be spent visiting areas of historical or environmental “interest” learning and “filling in” (repairing broken cars or small engines or home repair for sick, elderly or impoverished).
Why we do what we do.
Because I can't say it better than this.
Creative by Nature
Glimpses of a Creative Universe
by Christopher Chase
Educational Malpractice – The Child Manufacturing Process
“Asking kids to meet target on standardized tests is like making them meet a sales quota. Our kids are not commodities.” ~K.L. Nielsen
In many nations around the world there is a struggle currently going on between two very different paradigms for educating children. The dominant system has been in place for over a hundred years. It is sometimes called the “factory model.” This is where schools are set up to administer “essential knowledge” to large batches of same-age children simultaneously. After instruction has been completed the children are tested, to see how much of the knowledge they were able to understand and remember.
This system is based on the way factories and scientific experiments were designed at the beginning of the last century. While on the surface this approach seems to be about transmitting “knowledge” to children there is also an unspoken “hidden curriculum” being taught. As John Taylor Gatto has written, such schooling teaches youth to obey authority, to comply with instructions, to be willing to engage in difficult activities that often seem meaningless, and to accept that society is comprised of people with different levels of talent and social status.
Over the last decades, research in education and child development indicates that the factory model is based on several faulty assumptions. It assumes that learning can be measured by standardized tests, and that all children will learn at the same rate and in the same manner. This is just not true. The fact that children learn best when something is meaningful, enjoyable and interesting for them is ignored. The importance of learning in groups and from slightly older children is also not considered relevant.
As Ken Robinson has described in his TED talk “Changing Education Paradigms“ (with over 12 million views) the industrial model of education is a form of social engineering that has created many problems in our world. It does not fit with the natural way children actually learn. It does not reward creativity, innovation, independence, compassion, intuition, confidence, cooperation and many other essential character strengths, instead fostering social dysfunction, alienation and (for countless people over the last hundred years) a sense of personal failure and incompetence.
In a somewhat subversive way, the love of learning and natural curiosity that children bring into this world is being re-programmed, so that they can be taught to work hard in order to please others, and to do things for utilitarian reasons, to obtain external rewards and status, rather than intrinsic happiness.
Factory schools are designed to divide children into the categories of winners and losers, thereby creating a social “underclass” of potentially bright learners, who become unmotivated and unskilled. Those with low skills, status and self-esteem are then drawn toward harmful activities, such as gangs, crime and illegal drugs. Just as troublesome, “approved” drugs are now being given to children to force compliance and attentiveness in schools, the future consequences of which are unknown.
It’s a model of education that seems straight out of George Orwell’s 1984 or Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, designed to produce obedient workers for the modern industrial economy of the last century. In effect, its more like a method for manufacturing future robot workers then for nurturing true creativity, independence, skillfulness and learning.
Interestingly, alongside the creation of the factory model a very different educational paradigm has also co-existed. This is sometimes called learner-centered education, or the mastery model. Maria Montessori‘s schools were set up this way, beginning with the assumption that children must be in control of their own learning, and that the happiness of the child is a sign that education is effective. Adults shape the learning environment, but in a way that encourages exploration, curiosity, creativity, autonomy and skill mastery.
Similar approaches have arisen over the last decades, proving themselves to be successful with previously unmotivated learners. Since the late 1980s, Stanford Prof. Hank Levin’s Accelerated Schools implemented a learner-centered model. There is also Project Zero, developed by Howard Gardner at Harvard, and Yale’s Dr. James Comer’s School Development Program, which has proven its effectiveness since the late 1960s. Most well-known, the learner-centered paradigm has been implemented successfully in Finland, a nation respected by educators around the world.
The question then arises, if the learner-centered model has proven itself to be so effective, and the high-stakes testing approach of the factory model has not, why is this model still dominant in many “leading” nations around the world? Why are so many business and government leaders in nations like the United States, Japan, Britain and Korea obsessed with test scores and international rankings? Are they not aware of the social consequences of this approach?
As a long-time educator living in Japan, I have seen the effect of the factory model first-hand. Students in Asia do very well on standardized tests, but at what cost? As Yale lecturer Se-Woong Koo described in the NY Times, in South Korea, there are high rates of suicide, physical illness and depression associated with education pressures. In China, (see this CNN news video), some students are being given medical drips in their classrooms, to help them study all day without passing out.
Here in Japan my sons and their friends have gone to cram schools to memorize volumes of “facts,” only to forget most of the information within a year or so. Even in the “top” high schools, the students are expected to cram English grammar and vocabulary into their heads, without being given any opportunity to actually develop the communication skills that would allow them to use it.
When asked why schools continue to teach English this way the answer given by Japanese teachers is always the same, “There is no time to practice actual communication with the language, they need to learn it for exams.”
While observing this for the past twenty years, I have also implemented the learner-centered model both in my classrooms and at home with my sons. I think most parents are familiar with this approach, for this is how we have encouraged our children to master skills outside of school. Although they went through the Japanese system, both of my sons are bilingual because we gave them opportunities to practice and enjoy the language during trips abroad to the U.S., by watching movies together, reading books, listening to music and communicating with me at home.
Self-direction, collaboration with others and enjoyment are keys to learner-centered education and skill mastery. Children have to be interested in what they are learning and have ample opportunities to practice and apply an area of knowledge in order to deeply comprehend what they are learning and develop real skills and competence.
I think we’ve all seen this with sports, crafts, hobbies and art forms we and our children have mastered. Tests had little to do with our success, it was the love of learning and the desire to master something that encouraged us to develop our skills.
To emphasize a successful learning approach at home and an ineffective system in schools is foolish. The research evidence is there. We know what we have all observed in our own lives. We’ve seen the success of Montessori schools, Finland’s approach, the programs of educational leaders like James Comer, Hank Levin, Howard Gardner and others.
What then is the problem? To continue with high-stakes testing and the socially dysfunctional approaches of the factory model borders on educational malpractice, in my opinion. While corporate leaders, test-making companies and government leaders want to update and maintain this model, the majority of parents and teachers know better.
With it’s authoritarian emphasis on compliance, competition and testing the factory model is obsolete, undemocratic and de-humanizing. It’s a relic of our past, that needs to be dismantled and retired as we move into the 21st century.
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Thank you,
It has been an honor to be of service to you.
The Crystalline Gate Lion