Here on Bowen we have a pretty funky little alternative school called Island Pacific School. Every year, the Grade 10 students there have an opportunity to create a Masterworks project, which is essentially a thesis developed over the course of the year with an academic advisory committee and community mentors. Every year the Undercurrent, our little local paper publishes a list of these theses as a call to community mentors to help students learn in their chosen fileds. Every year the community gets blown away by lists like this:

A Voyage Of Faith
Buddhism: A Cultural Study
An Analysis of Social Morality in Modern Society with Reference to Lawrence Kohlberg
Black Holes: Theories Then and Now
Britannia Mine: An Environmental Issue
An Overview of Developed World Automobile Emissions
Power to the People: A look at anarchy and it's implications in our lives
Mission Impossible
Messages in the Ice Cubes
Greek mythology in our world
Nationalistic views surrounding Israel
Haunted Heroes: The Reason for Military Ethics
Fractals and Chaos: Exploring Reality

Now how scary is it that we have 15 year olds running around studying these things AND community mentors who don't even bat an eyelash at the prospect of helping out?

File it away in the "Reasons I love this place" folder....

For a complete list of the IPS Masterworks projects, have a look at their site.

posted by Chris at 2:32 AM | |