>[!Warning] Worldview Masterclass is the new name for the School of Understanding ![[banner-worldview-masterclass.png]] This site is in development as the [[Central hub of the Worldview Masterclass]] It is made with the publish feature of [www.obsidian.md](app://obsidian.md/www.obsidian.md) more about Obsidian [[#Obsidian|here]]. | **The masterclass** | **Nova Academia** | | :------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------: | :-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------: | | ![[Worldview Masterclass definition\|Worldview Masterclass]] | ![[Nova Academia]] | # What is a Worldview Masterclass? - A Worldview Masterclass is an alternative or part of a much longer university program. <br> It focuses on adolescent intellectual development and allows you - the adolescent - to self-decide on what you think is worth including in your [[Worldview]] - It has no ideological preferences other than favoring the most empowering, nuanced, precise, and productive knowledge humanity has created (often, but by no means exclusively, by [[Academic|academics]]). - The teacher's role is to help you bring every aspect of **your** worldview under **your** control. <br>He helps you learn to develop and trust your [[Trusting your knowledge-construction skills|knowledge-construction skills]] by assisting you to become more precise and nuanced and to weed out inconsistencies: *he performs quality control, not content control* - This teaching concept aims to develop into a viable, highly efficient, small-scale alternative to university education that can be [[Copy the concept|copied everywhere]]. Hence all its methods and most of its material are public and in English. This site is a working example. # Worldviews: undeveloped versus developed The aim of the Worldview Masterclass is to assist you in developing your worldview. This is important because the [European Qualifications Framework](https://europa.eu/europass/en/description-eight-eqf-levels) that underlies most EU (and beyond) education only provides general basic knowledge in its first level: the first years of primary school. Towards the bachelor and master (levels 6 & 7, respectively), the focus has been limited to a field of study or work on the forefront of knowledge. *Within this system, you will never learn basic knowledge of the highest quality our cultures can create.* This leads to a knowledge structure as depicted on the left in the figure below for a psychology student: a strong (light blue) competence in Psychology, and some in Biology and Sociology, but for the rest, basic primary school knowledge. The big problem is the black hole in the middle. ![[Educational-outcome-fragmented-versus-interconnacted.png]] The more favorable situation (in the figure right) is with broad discipline surpassing basic knowledge of the best quality our societies can produce: here referred to as ‘generalized domain narratives’. Because professional disciplines are ways to produce a focused and specialized outlook on reality, they are often barely aware that structures in their discipline occur (sometimes more clearly) in other disciplines. The highest quality knowledge has the broadest and most effective applicability (light green): per definition, this is not discipline-specific knowledge. And because it is not, it facilitates connecting cross-disciplinary insights, which on the one hand, erodes disciplinary boundaries and, on the other hand, empowers you with knowledge not only suitable for work or study but suitable for every waking hour and every purpose. The networked knowledge on the right is not just facts to memorize or skills to perform at exam time. Instead, it is the knowledge you have actively incorporated into **your** worldview in **your** own way. The way to do this most effectively is via your [[Interest|interests]]. Something is interesting when it is close enough to your current worldview and far enough away to be novel. This is Vygotskii’s [[Zone of proximal development]]. Learning here is almost effortless because it is based on structured playing with interesting stuff and doesn’t involve memorization. What you have incorporated in your worldview, for better or worse, you will not forget because it is part of a self-maintaining network of knowledge that – with critical thinking about your **own** thoughts – tends to become progressively more consistent. It is important to learn to prefer the incorporation of the most empowering knowledge and insights to accelerate this process. By gradually replacing less empowering knowledge and skills with more empowering variants, you continually improve the effectiveness of your worldview. This is the main skill to learn at the Worldview Masterclass. # What do you do at a "Worldview Masterclass"? - [[Worldviews and worldview development|You construct your worldview]] - You decide what is worth [[Worldview worthiness|remembering]] and important to [[Understanding|understand]] - You study by making connections that you have made sensible and consistent - You *never* just memorize stuff you are likely to forget anyway - Instead, you [[Note making rules|(re)construct knowledge]] first and use [[Spaced repetition learning]] to store what empowers your long-term memory. - Step by step, you construct a consistent and realistic [[Worldviews and worldview development|Worldview]] - The [[Course content.canvas|Course content]] ([[course-content-canvas.png|png]]) is designed to empower your future self through: * [[Self-development MOC|Self-development]]: learning [[Trusting your knowledge-construction skills|to trust your Knowledge-construction skills]] * [[Academic development MOC|Academic development]]: develop knowledge acquisition and use * [[Scientific content MOC|Scientific content]]: mostly approached from [[The systems theory viewpoint]]. * [[World event knowledge MOC|World event knowledge]]: to make sense of global developments * [[Predicting the future MOC|Predicting the future]]: what to ready for? * Many topics will be revisited in the second half of the year. - Your development is central: the system serves you; you do not serve the system - Universities care less about individual students and more about the number of diplomas. - Universities work with learning outcomes; you must prove you satisfy these at exam time. - Satisfying the learning outcomes proves your intellectual obedience: Einstein refers to this as the "[[WM/well-trained dog]]" approach to education - Long-term memory retention is interest-based - ![[Interest#^4ffdf0]] - [[Interest]]-based learning leads to a gradual extension of your [[Comfort zone]], confidence, and skill - [[Spaced repetition learning]] of interesting facts and connections leads to maximally efficient learning ![[course-content-canvas.png]] # The Academy: [[School-of-understanding/Worldview-developement/Critical Thinking|Critical Thinking]] in a Garden - The starting year facts: - Costs: €4000 - Number of students: 8 - 12 per year - Start: September 2023 - Classes: each Monday, 40 weeks - Language: Dutch/English; most material is in English - Study hours: Full Monday + 16 hours of self-study per week - Sufficient time left for a part-time side job (recommended) - Information and sign-up: [email protected] - [[Testimonials of previous courses]]: many of the Worldview Masterclass concepts have been tested on first-year Liberal Arts students - [[Reflection Systems Track]] - [[Testimonials Systems track]] - [[Reflection Systems View on Life]] - [[Testimonials Systems View on Life]] - The teacher, Tjeerd Andringa, has a broad educational, research, and entrepreneurial background - He started [AI@RUG](https://www.rug.nl/bachelors/artificial-intelligence/) (1991) and the [University College Groningen](https://www.rug.nl/ucg/)(2014) - He was the director of education of AI and started the Auditory Cognition research group - He started two high-tech companies: [SoundIntelligence](https://soundintel.com) and [SoundAppraisal](https:/soundappraisal.eu) - Venue - The venue is basic but connected to a beautiful commercial vegetable [[venue|farm]] - ![[attachments/Stadsakker-in-the-morning.jpeg]] - It provides a great contrast to intellectual pursuits and a great break place. | ![[Motto Worldview Masterclass]] | ![[WM/Motto of the Academy]] | | :--: | :--: | # What does a study week look like? * Mondays: on-site activities * Lecture, homework and idea discussions, clarifications, presentations, guests, games, etc. * Assignments: both individual and group work * Individual coaching (also online during the week) and worldview development (e.g., [[flashcards]]) * Lectures & homework * Lectures: typically recorded to watch at home * Assignments based on interviews, documentaries, podcasts, reports, and (scientific) articles * These expose you to a wealth of new knowledge and perspectives * From which you create a synthesis [[Worldview worthiness|worth remembering]] * Idea development * This is where self-guided interest drives your learning. During the year, you are developing a few self-generated ideas from fragile and unformed to robust, broadly interconnected, and well-defendable * While it is yours, it grows fastest with the help of others. * [[Spaced repetition learning]] * Making 50 flashcards per week: deciding what has [[Worldview worthiness]]. The flashcards follow naturally from how you make sense of the content you encounter * Retrieval practice (ideally in otherwise lost moments, such as while waiting, traveling, or while you would check your socials) # What outcomes can a student expect? - Perspective change - You develop many new viewpoints on common and uncommon topics - Play with interacting viewpoints leads to integrative (meta)viewpoints - Knowledge integration promotes wisdom - Life path development - Change your life from something that happens to you into something that you actively shape - Discover what attracts your interests and how you can build on these - Develop a unique knowledge base as a foundation for one or more high-level expertise - Skill enhancement - Better observation: detect and process what is conveyed, not your expectations - Writing and thinking with much more clarity, precision, and nuance - Vastly improved knowledge acquisition and processing skills - No degree - A Worldview Masterclass does not fit current [[The goals of modern schooling|EU school quality control]] due to the focus on self-development instead of an economic role "in a specific field of study or work" - We have not decided if some form of "degree" or certificate might be useful and how to organize it | Logo | Rational | | --- | --- | | ![[logo-walnut.png]] | ![[Walnut]] | # For whom is this intended? Generally, a Worldview Masterclass is intended for pretty smart, open, alert, and broadly interested adolescents who want to self-develop their thinking. If this page makes sense, you are probably in the target group, even if you do not match perfectly. Typical groups are: - High school graduates (HAVO/VWO) who want to make the most of a gap year - Many feel too immature or otherwise not ready to start studying - A year Worldview Masterclass changes this and allows one to self-decide on a life path - It also provides an intellectual basis to make the most of a follow-up study - Adolescents who want to develop critical thinking but do not want to go to University - Being physically mature does not entail mental maturity - Solid (many are not) university programs contribute implicitly to this - A Worldview Masterclass puts intellectual and personal self-development central - High school pupils (HAVO/VWO) without a diploma - The Dutch school system is based on forcing pupils to follow proscribed paths and learn proscribed course material - Not all fit well in this system - A Worldview Masterclass is a way to realize many of the stated goals of Universities and more. - Students who want full control over how they spend their time learning - Many university studies (not all!) are stultifying, inefficient, superficial, and wasteful because they decide what, when, and how you should learn. - The goal is to provide the proper balance between being guided to novel and empowering insights and giving you full control over what you find insightful. # For whom is this *not* intended - If you believe that the opinions of others must be less valid then yours - If you think that all opinions are equally valid, this is not for you - If your in-group has all the correct answers, this is also not for you - If you are not interested in learning from other viewpoints - If the viewpoints of others make you feel defensive rather than interested, this is not for you - Traditional universities become ever better at protecting you from potentially hurtful and hateful opinions. They will protect your feelings - If you are currently struggling with debilitating [[Mental health vs an unrealistic wordview|mental health]] problems in your life - Working on your worldview is exhilarating, time-consuming, and quite unsettling. If serious problems and negative emotions dominate your life, attend to them first. - If you cannot make the time or commit to a year of immersion learning - While the actual study burden is designed to be about 24 hours per week (of the 112 waking hours of a week), working on your worldview tends to impact many more hours. ---- ![[Flyer-school-of-understanding-English.png]] [[flyer-school-of-understanding-final.png|Dutch version]] --- # What to do after the Worldview Masterclass? - Become an entrepreneur or realize your dreams - Starting a company or realizing your dreams entails that you trust you can build on the consequences of your actions. Much of the Worldview Masterclass is aimed a developing the [[Understanding]] on which this trust is based - Truly new ventures require a unique body of competence for which you have developed a solid basis. - Start a University study - You have learned excellent learning, research, and communication skills that make (even) challenging University programs much easier. - You might use this advantage to engage with actual research early on in your study - Learn a trade, craft, or skill - Since you have learned to learn from and respect the knowledge of others, you will be able to learn anything quickly and with minimal guidance. - Highly skilled professionals will love to mentor you further. - Start a family or do other adult things - Adulthood comprises many responsibilities, and successfully raising children is only one of these - Society needs self-confident contributors who see and use the opportunities of a complex world # Obsidian - What is [Obsidian](https://obsidian.md)? - Obsidian is a private and flexible note‑taking app that you can adapt to how you learn and work. - It provides a combination of structure (via a file structure and tags) and flexibility (via links) that allow you to structure and explore information to taste. - Obsidian is hosted on your computer: no one has access unless you allow it - [[How do we use Obsidian?]] - ![[How do we use Obsidian?#^617896]] - Obsidian also allows many (personalized) ways to collect, structure, and search through information - Obsidian for learning - Obsidian is an ideal platform to structure your gradually developing understanding of a wide range of topics in an unordered process - Obsidian has a [plugin for spaced repetition](https://jeppeklitgaard.github.io/ObsidianAnkiBridge/) learning that can easily be integrated with the notes and spaced repetition learning tool ANKI - Spaced Repetition Learning - We use the (free) program ANKI for spaced repetition learning. - You make the [[flashcards in Obsidian]] - The plugin [AnkiBridge](https://jeppeklitgaard.github.io/ObsidianAnkiBridge/) transfers them to ANKI - You can study the flashcards in the desktop version of ANKI - Or you can study them (via ankiWeb) on your phone. # FAQ - This sounds a bit like Liberal Arts Education is supposed to be. - Yes. It is a modern manifestation informed by scientific insights - That focused on the Trivium: grammar (structuring data), logic (drawing valid conclusions), and rhetoric (producing convincing arguments). - What are the main scientific foundations? - Epistemological development: the study of how we learn to determine the truth - Vygotsky's zone of proximal development - [[WM/Andringa et al. (2013)]] "Learning Autonomy" - [Core Cognition](https://www.corecognition.com) - Are some study topics off-limits? - In principle, all legally allowed topics are open to study - However, you need to ground whatever you study on a solid intellectual foundation - Do you use [[ChatGPT]]? - Yes! ChatGPT is a way to discover a common core in online material. Much of it is valuable; some are BS—the same with all material on the Internet. - You can use ChatGPT to help you understand a topic. Only when you have (partially) understood it can you decide whether or not something has [[Worldview worthiness]] to you. Only then do you memorize --- - I'm not an adolescent; can I join? - The current effort is in part focused on developing a University alternative, which relies on the properties of the healthy adolescent mind (like an urge to connect and learn from other perspectives). - Eventually, the course might be adapted to a more general audience. - I'm interested in this concept and might even want to contribute or implement it where I live. <br>Or: I'm a journalist or influencer and want to promote this - By all means, contact: [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]) - Possibly a [Patreon](https://www.patreon.com)-account will be started where you can follow the developments and have priority access to the course materials. Contact us if you are interested. - I'm an investor and want to promote this type of learning - A Worldview Masterclass is intended to be inexpensive and easy to implement wherever suitable teachers and students can meet. Yet developing the concept requires a lot of time that can be sped up with investments in a few man-years. - Please email: [email protected] - The plan forward * Develop a simple and cheap ICT infrastructure that is easily maintainable * Develop a large amount of teaching material for all aspects of student development * Interest proficient academics to start their Worldview Masterclass * Develop training and some sort of quality control for these teachers * Start more Schools: take higher education back from bureaucrats # Contact General information and prospected students: [email protected] #### References ![[WM/Andringa et al. (2013)]]