Three Reasons to Support Paideia

Your donation to the NPC will help us promote civil dialogue, reinvigorate the school experience for students and teachers, and create schools that educate children for the future.

CULTURE OF DIALOGUE

The culture of dialogue is one of intellectual collaboration, a place where important ideas are discussed openly and with civility. It is an environment in which each learns from each, where all grow in their ability to read, speak, listen, write, and think about the questions that concern us all. Dialogue nurtures both critical and creative thinking. When the culture of dialogue subsumes a school, students master ideas as well as facts and core skills. Collaboration replaces contempt and competition for both teachers and students. Children and adolescents become fluent in the citizenship and life skills that contemporary adulthood requires. The Paideia (or Socratic) Seminar is over 2000 years old, and yet it has never lost its civilizing power. Support the work of the National Paideia Center as we work tirelessly to infuse our children’s schools with the culture of dialogue that will prepare them for their future.

AUTHENTIC LEARNING EXPERIENCES

Students have long reported that the most common experience of school is boredom. This malaise is most common in middle and high school, but it can even creep into the rock candy halls of the local elementary school. Children and adolescents are more interested and engaged in what they do away from school than what they experience in school. The answer for this profound disconnect is to reconnect the life of the classroom with the world outside school, refreshing and reinvigorating the school experience for students as well as teachers. Support the work of the National Paideia Center as we strive to bring passion back to the classrooms where our children spend so much of their lives.

SCHOOLS OF & FOR THE FUTURE

Too often, our schools teach for the present and not for the future. We should be preparing ourselves and our students for the year 2050, a landscape that will be vastly different from the current world. We are in the unfortunate habit of responding in lockstep to the standardized demands of a contemporary educational culture while the world around us is already vastly different. The National Paideia Center is dedicated to creating the schools of the future, with the clear goal of preparing our students to thrive in the last half of this century! These schools—Paideia Schools for Creative Thinking—are changing the landscape of public and private education for all students. Support us now as we prepare for then!