Infopedia

Education

Education is a highly valued aspect of growing up in the Forwardist confederation. There are expectations for students as they are growing up, but there aren't rigid requirements for them. Most students begin education in some form by age 5, whether it be in a school environment or at home. This education is continued typically until the student is around 18 years old.


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Curriculum

This is an image depicting a diagram. At the center it says “Core Curriculum” beneath the Forwardist “f.” There are 5 branches from the center, each depicting a different subject. Directly below the center, the bottom branch is labelled “Science,” and has a drawing of a flask containing a green liquid. Moving clockwise around the center, the next branch is labelled “Technology,” and is represented by a drawing of an illuminated lightbulb. The next branch is labelled as “History,” and the drawing is of a book with a clock on it. The next branch is labelled as “Linguistics,” and it's represented by a drawing of a person speaking. The next and final branch is labelled as “Mathematics,” and the image representing it is a plus over a minus. ^ Back to table of contents ^

The core curriculum for students is determined by the confederation. The aim of this core curriculum is to keep as many students as possible at a baseline literacy level. This includes subjects such as mathematics, history, language(s), science, and technology. These are the cores of the educational programs in each community, and it is intended for the other organizational levels to contribute additional educational materials.

For instance, if there is a shortage of a particular resource or specialized labor force in an aggregate, association, collective, or commmunity, then schools in the appropriate boundary would be encouraged to educate students more on the topic. This could encourage more students to specialize into the field, or provide more knowledge of how to collect/produce scarce resources. Another instance of the lower levels influencing education is communities passing down local histories, providing classes about local plants and how they're prepared, and other various local aspects of life in this particular settlement.

To supplement basic primary education, communities will often host community courses covering a wide array of topics. These courses are freely available to all. Any community member has the right to teach courses about anything they have skills or knowledge to share. So long as there are community members who will sign up to take the course, it can be taught to anyone interested. The courses that are offered vary based on the season, the people available to teach, and the interests of the community members. Examples of commonly taught classes are woodworking, cooking, foraging, blacksmithing, public speaking, housework skills, and gardening- among others. Sometimes there are other types of interests taught, such as programming, medical skills, acting, and even specific science topics, such as epidemiology.

Student Housing

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Student housing is available to students from the time they turn 12 years old. Students are allowed to move into student housing whenever they feel comfortable doing so. Some students never do, but most students will have moved into student housing by the time they've turned 16. Student housing is typically located near the community's education center, giving students easy access to the resources they need for their classes.

Students that are between the ages of 12 and 16 live in dormitory-style housing, typically with a roommate. At this age, students are usually each given assigned chores. To aid the transition, students have a residence assistant (RA) who can help students learn to cooperate with other students to maintain their rooms. If any students have objections to the ways the chores have been divided, they are encouraged to cooperate with their roommate (with the RA's assistance whenever necessary) to redistribute the chores in a way that satisfies everyone.

When students turn 16, they can move into independent student housing, which is apartment-style. They are typically housed with a roommate of their choosing. Chores are no longer assigned, but RAs are still available to students whenever issues arise. Students are still expected to keep their housing in clean condition (if not neat and tidy), and their RA will check in every 3 months or so to make sure the students aren't having trouble keeping up with the housework. If they are, the RA (and sometimes other students) with help with cleaning the apartment, and then the students living in it are given instructions for how to keep it maintained.

When students graduate from high school (typically when they're around 18 years old) they are moved from student housing to general housing. They are given options for where they'd like to move to based on current housing options available. Many students choose to live independently or with friends at this point, but others choose to move back in with their families. This is especially common while they are completing their mandatory labor rotations.

Labor Rotation Cycle

This image is a diagram showing several of the different roles that are a part of the Forwardist labor rotation. There are a total of nine wedges around the center, which says "Labor Rotation," encircled by an arrow. Starting below the center, the first section is labelled as "Community Special Interest." There are five different symbols drawn in this section to represent the special interests of communities. The first from the left is some sort of circuitry chip. Next is a view of bacteria underneath a microscope. Next is a bright yellow barrel that holds nuclear waste. The next symbol is crystals and stones, while the final symbol is of a bunch of grapes sitting beside three bottles of wine. The next section of the image is labelled as "Food Growth and Processing." This is depicted by two people working in front of a field of wheat. Both are standing in front of a large bin, with one dumping wheat from a basket into it, and the other helping to redistribute the wheat in the bin to ensure that it reaches the conveyor that grabs the wheat and brings it up into a silo. The next section is "Water Treatment," depicted by a scene of a person standing in front of a control panel on a large tank of water. There is a pipe from the bottom of the tank, and another at the top of the tank, pumping in from a water treatmet vat. In the background, there is a water tower. The next section is "Waste Management," depicted by a scene showing a person standing over a vat of wastewater. The person is wearing a full-body suit, a rubber apron, gloves, and boots, along with a face-mask. The water vat they're standing in front of is full of wastewater, with a large metal apparatus stirring around the center. The next section is labelled as "Recycling." This is depicted by one person standing on a platform, dumping a box of paper products into a recycling maching that condenses it. There is another person near the bottom of the machine to help sort the products. The next section is "Power Production," represented by a person standing on a path with a clipboard in front of a collection of solar panels and wind turbines. The next section is "Manufacturing." This is represented by two people working on sewing together. One is using a sewing machine to sew up pillow forms. The other is sitting on a chair, adding stuffing into a sewn pillow form. The next section is labelled as "Construction," and is represented by a train carrying beams to extend the track onward. There is a person standing near the train and another standing in the train, controlling the crane on its front car. The crane is lifting a metal beam from the train to lay in front of the train in order to lay more tracks down. The final section is "Civic Service," represented by a person standing on a stage with a pointer pointed up at a projected screen. ^ Back to table of contents ^

When students graduate from high school, they are ushered into a transitory period where they spend two years learning the important details of how a community is kept running. Rather than going directly into a specialized field or any kind of career, as was customary for many Americans before the collapse, instead they focus on integration into the community and its workforce. This period is spent working at each of the essential labor tasks that must be filled in each community. This includes jobs ranging from food growth and processing to waste collection and treatment, and everything in between. Any resource or service that is vital to the community must be included in the rotation so as to ensure that every member of the community is capable of carrying on these crucial tasks.

Even if a citizen goes on to specialize and doesn't work on the same essential jobs again, they have been provided knowledge and first-hand experience about how the community functions. It was discovered after the collapse that the compartmentalization of labor had left most if not all average american citizens struggling to survive when infrastructure was destroyed. People had been educated on many topics, but too many of the most important aspects of how things had been running were kept hidden away from the public eye, often kept as trade secrets. To combat the devastation that came from peoples' inability to organize and support themselves, the Forwardist confederation decided that it would prioritize ensuring every member is educated on all major aspects of community maintenance.

Placement Examination

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After completing their mandatory labor rotations, citizens take an examination that is designed to help identify where the individual would fit best into their community. Everyone typically takes the exam once after labor rotations, but it can be taken as many times as a citizen wants to, and it is available every 6 months. It measures various types of intelligences and affinities. For most graduates, the results of the exam are largely unimportant except as guidance for jobs they may thrive at. The results of the exam have no bearing on an individuals' ability to work at any of the essential jobs in the community. The only thing locked behind this exam is the ability to access specialized labor positions, such as medical or social work positions. If a citizen scores insufficiently for a position they want, they need only prepare and take the exam again. There are often tutoring sessions put on by social workers and social worker students to help people improve any profiencies necessary.

The exam is designed to test several of the primary types of intelligence that have been identified. Forwardists were looking for a way to measure intelligence, and realized that the previously-used "IQ" (or intelligence quotient), which measured only very specific types of intelligence, was largely unsatisfactory. After some research and conversations about what types of intelligences to measure, the Forwardists decided to include the following types of intelligences on their placement exam: spatial, linguistic, logical, kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, naturalistic, existential, and passions. Each of these was considered a common type of intelligence displayed in people. While it was acknowledged that there are other types of intelligences that can be shown, these were enough to cover the most important aspects of skills needed for specialized positions within the community.

Types of Intelligences

This is an image separated into 8 sections with three drawn images or symbols per section. The title in the center is “Types of Intelligence.” The first section in the upper left is labelled “Spatial.” Its first image on the left is a depiction of a 3-dimensional graph with a ball bouncing on it. In the center of the section is a pattern of squares and circles, representing pattern recognition. To the right is a depiction of two puzzle pieces fitting together. The section below is labelled “Kinesthetic.” The first image on the left is of sports equipment (sports balls and a baseball bat). The second image is of a flexing arm. The third image shows hands trying to tie a string into a knot based on a sample image. The next section below is labelled “Naturalistic.” The leftmost image is of a DNA strand beside a leaf, a fruit fly, and a human face. The central image shows two similar berries, one with rounded and the other with pointed leaves. One is marked with a check mark while the other has a skull next to it and is marked with a red x. The third image shows a hand reaching down to a dog, who expresses love in return. The last section on the left side of the image is labelled as “Interpersonal.” The image on the left shows two people conversing, one asking a question. The second image shows two people standing at lecterns, with one expressing an idea (represented by a light bulb). The last image is of two hands joined together. On the right side of the picture, the top section is labelled “Linguistic.” The first image in this section shows the text “apple =” beside a drawing of an apple. The next image shows the letter “a” above the japanese hiragana character for “a” with arrows circling between them, representative of translation between multiple languages. The image on the right shows multicolor wooden letter blocks. The next section is labelled as “Logical.” Its first image shows a 2-dimensional graph with a line plotted on it above the text “y = ax + b.” The second image shows the text “if: A, then: B.” The third image shows a scale comparing the masses of an orange and an apple. The section below is labelled “Existential.” The first image shows a person standing beside a telescope looking up at a falling comet in the sky. The next image depicts a person with their eyes closed, but they have a third eye open upon their forehead. The third image shows a person holding a skull. The final section is labelled “Intrapersonal.” The first image shows a person contemplating their reflection in a mirror. The next image shows a circle of faces representing different emotions. Clockwise from the top, the emotions shown are happiness, shock, fear, anger, disgust, and sadness. The third image shows a person with faces on both sides of their head; one side is smiling and giving a thumbs up while the other side is frowning. ^ Back to table of contents ^
Intelligence Description
Spatial A measure of ability to visualize things and recognize patterns
Linguistic A measure of skills with words, language, writing and speaking
Logical A measure of problem-solving and analysis skills
Kinesthetic A measure of one's motor control and ability to control their physical movement
Interpersonal A measure of ability to connect and relate to other people
Intrapersonal A measure of ability for self-reflection and introspection
Naturalistic A measure of one's affinity towards nature and connection to the earth
Existential A measure of ability to explore deep topics, ability to think beyond oneself, a long-term outlook, ability to see the bigger picture
Passions This is a broader category that has to do with skill displayed in a particular field that an individual is passionate about (such as music or art)