If you glance back through the years this blog has been written, you'll see a huge variety of villages, governments, businesses and laws. However, they've always been variations within familiar constraints. We begin every year with the same outlines sketched in - there will be a large piece of land that will be divided among the villagers, that land will be used as collateral for their bank accounts, with money in their banks, students build their houses, start businesses and begin to bring their world to life. The game has been played in this way since the early 1970s.
But not this year. This year, the center does not hold. There is no land for us gather on. There is no means of exchange. There is no locus of control. What does it mean for us to be a Village when we are apart?
We don't know. And so we are doing what we often do, we are asking the children. How do we want to be? Who do you want to be? What can we make? How can we share? Cia Iselin, the founder of Village, always believed that the children could build a better world than we adults could. Maybe this major disruption, this mandate to be apart, is exactly what will bring the villagers together.
On Thursday, we have our first town meetings. Students will find themselves in Village A, B, or C, based loosely on geography. They will scheme and dream about the worlds they want to create and we will begin to build together.
“The world is so empty if one thinks only of mountains, rivers & cities; but to know someone who thinks & feels with us, & who, though distant, is close to us in spirit, this makes the earth for us an inhabited garden.” -Goethe
Posted by: Ben Johnson | May 08, 2020 at 02:34 PM
I believe this is the first time that anyone has quoted Goethe in response to one of our blog posts, Ben. Thank you!
Posted by: Michelle Martin | May 08, 2020 at 02:51 PM