ATLANTIS
INITIATIVES:
MISSION
STATEMENT
Our mission is to implement the Oxford-style system of tutorial education in universities, colleges and high schools throughout North America.
What is an Oxford-style tutorial? Instead of the normal lecture-based system of education, in which the student is the passive recipient of information, the Oxford-style tutorial makes the student into an active participant in his own education.
Tutorials consist of an instructor and four students. Each week one student presents a paper on a subject of his own choosing. Then he defends his work in a spirited session in which the other three students and the instructor — having been prepared by their own readings on the subject — explore his ideas and critique them. Operating in this way, the class establishes conditions favorable to Socratic dialogue and a very high level of student participation.
Because this form of education is so much more efficient than the typical lecture-based system, a four-year undergraduate program can be collapsed into three intense years. This enormous savings in time allows more funds to be directed towards increasing the quality of teaching, research and learning.
This student-centered approach to university teaching has a centuries-long history at Oxford and Cambridge. It also provided the basis for several very successful experimental colleges at U.C. Berkeley and McGill University. In an information-based society, where individual initiative has become essential to economic success, we feel that the tutorial is the new educational model for THE 21ST CENTURY.
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WELCOME TO ATLANTIS!
The Atlantis Initiative is based on a five century-old tradition of tutorial learning at Oxford and Cambridge. This tradition was adapted to the American university environment by Professor Paul Piehler, in the heat of the Berkeley disturbances of the 1960’s. His efforts soon grew into an educational movement. This movement eventually saw over ten thousand U.C. Berkeley students enrolled in tutorial classes, as well as the establishment of two very successful experimental colleges.
The Atlantis Initiative is an extension of Professor Piehler’s early work. It offers a radically different educational system, designed and proven to dramatically enhance the effectiveness of American colleges and universities. How effective? Using the Atlantis approach, seven years of college and university work can be accomplished in just three years!
The pages that follow will show you how the Atlantis methods can be implemented on a national level. We are making American education better, stronger, and faster.
Atlantis Now!
ATLANTIS CAN IMPROVE EDUCATION
Atlantis Initiatives, Inc. stands ready to make a profound difference in American education. To this end, we've developed both short term and long term goals.
SHORT TERM:
▪ Establish an experimental college at a major Florida educational institution. This college will serve as an model for the Atlantis approach.
▪ Aid in introducing Atlantis directly into the schools.
▪ Assist educators in becoming become effective tutors and mentor, and help students become the next generation of colleagues and mentors.
LONG TERM
▪ Create better citizens
▪ Create future leaders
▪ Create a society based on mutual respect, that overcomes the barriers of race, color, class and cultural boundaries.
▪ Raise the current American standard of education to a higher and more efficient standard.
WHAT ARE THE ECONOMIC BENEFITS?
▪ The Atlantis Method reduces by half the time required to train undergraduates.
▪ The Atlantis Method costs half as much lecture-based system of teaching.
▪ The Atlantis Method creates a cost savings which benefits parents, students,schools, governments, and ultimately, every tax payer.
▪ The Atlantis Method offers an even larger economic bonus to society. It givesevery college graduate an three or four extra years to pursue his career before retirement. These extra years will result in increased tax revenues for the government and decreased Social Security expenditures.
▪ The Atlantis Method radically decreases college costs. In so doing, it offers parents the possibility of providing more and better education for their children.
THE ATLANTIS INITIATIVE: TABLE OF CONTENTS
T
1. Atlantis – The Seven Pillars
2. The Atlantis Project
3. Atlantis and Ecology: Greening Education
4. An Afterword by Professor Paul Piehler: How I became An Atlantean
1. THE ATLANTIS INITIATIVES: THE SEVEN PILLARS
In 1623 Sir Francis Bacon wrote his visionary work, The New Atlantis, an astonishingly accurate prophecy of today’s research-impelled, techno-society. The Atlantis Initiatives is a much needed attempt at updating Bacon’s vision.
Atlantis is envisioned as the name for “a new College.” It's based on Francis Bacon’s notion of merging instruction with practical research, with that work directly benefiting the community. It is also based on the romantic sense of the legendary Atlantis as a place of ancient wisdom and harmony, and of open endedness and creativity.
Finally, Atlantis merges educational insights and practices from both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.
THE ATLANTIS INITIATIVE IS GUIDED BY SEVEN PRINCIPLES:
1. Ethics and practicality are ultimately just two sides of a the same coin.
2. Effective personal contact. or mutual respect, is the neglected element in almost all institutions. This principle underlies everything do.
3. Atlantis starts in the schools. Why? Get education right, and all else follows.
4. Never ask, “What has posterity ever done for me?” If our ancestors had followed that line of thinking, we would still be scratching for grubs in the African Rift.
5. Instead ask, “What have my ancestors done for me?” They’ve given us the principles to live our lives, and the prosperity to enjoyer lives. Consequently, we have an obligation to pass on those principles and that prosperity to the next generation.
6. A glance at history confirms that a hostile ideology can often be disarmed through dialog and reconciliation. Let’s start that dialog now!
7. Man’s natural aggressiveness has to be diverted away from warfare and directed towards economic, educational and medical endeavors, to the exploration of space, and ultimately, to inner quests, both psychological and spiritual.
What follows are the plans for the practical implementation of these principles, along with the record of Atlantis Initiatives to date.
2. THE ATLANTIS PROJECT
Our goal is to reach a benchmark level of operation which surpasses the best colleges and universities in America. In practice this would mean:
▪ A 96% graduation rate among undergraduates in the program.
▪ Students receiving an equivalent of seven years of undergraduate and graduate instruction after four years in the program.
▪ Enhanced time and energy available for research, at all levels of the university.
▪ Reduced operating costs, for teaching, research, and administration.
HOW CAN THIS BE ACCOMPLISHED?
First, by giving students the same level of academic responsibility and privileges as the faculty. This change in the undergraduates’ status will follow organically from from their participation in a tutorial-based education. This type of instruction gives increased opportunity to the student to take charge of his/her own studies, and to develop intellectual responsibility and initiative.
The cooperative aspect of the tutorial gives students the opportunity to contribute to, and learn from, the work of others in the group. This emphasis on communication and teamwork is reinforced by the students’ constant participation in academic dialogue: first in preliminary discussions with other tutorial partners; then in the more formal presentations in the tutorial itself.
Increasingly, the student will find himself/herself an active member of the Atlantis academic community, treated more like a contributing scholar and teacher than part of a crowd in a large auditorium.
WHAT IS THE ROLE OF THE STUDENT?
The student is responsible for:
▪ his/her learning
▪ preparing all assigned reading before the tutorial course begins
▪ the preparation of papers for presentation to their tutorial group
▪ leading or participating in tutorial discussions
▪ revising prepared papers
▪ assisting tutorial partners in the preparation and editing of their presentations
▪ assisting in the research and tutorial role
▪ making a time contribution to the administration of the college and the program
▪ maintaining and revising a dossier of program work
This change to tutorial-based education will also benefit the faculty. The faculty will now find that they have increased opportunities for research and publication, because:
▪ Teaching loads would be limited to seven hours a week of tutorial instruction, and to a maximum of 24 students
▪ Tutorial students will be able to assist and collaborate in their tutor’s research, teaching, and administrative duties.
▪ As a result, tutors will have less trouble dealing with the conflicting demands of research, teaching, and administration.
WHAT IS THE ROLE OF THE TUTOR?
The tutor is responsible for:
▪ creating an environment conducive to student learning
▪ assisting the student in the design of the learning contract
▪ sharing his expertise and understanding of the field with the student
▪ guiding the program of study for the student
▪ monitoring and evaluating the student’s progress throughout the program
▪ facilitating student involvement in the research process
▪ creatively providing access to primary and secondary educational sources, such as video presentations
▪ engendering a sense of intellectual respect and academic collegiality
WHAT IS THE ROLE OF THE ADMINISTRATION?
The administration is responsible for:
▪ investing in the infrastructure to support the Atlantis approach
▪ ensuring that tutors are chosen for their teaching excellence, interpersonal skills and responsiveness to students, as well as their academic credentials
▪ training the faculty in the Atlantis approach
▪ fostering a sense of academic community, harmony, creativity and a merging of instruction with practical research
▪ giving funding priority to innovative teaching/learning programs
4. ATLANTIS AND ECOLOGY:
GREENING EDUCATION
Atlantis Initiatives always start with education. While the original impetus for the Atlantis tutorial emerged from the lavishly beautiful campuses of Oxford and Cambridge, Atlantis does not require any school or college building whatever, just the right people.
Once the Atlantis Initiatives are widely instituted, there will be much less need for the enormous infrastructure associated with education in America. Everything from classroom buildings to school buses will be less essential, because tutorials can meet primarily in private homes. Lectures and presentations can be televised into students’ apartments, and libraries are readily available on the internet.
Note, too, that in a tutorial based system, the teacher will be teaching fewer students more thoroughly. Teachers will therefore be able to do much of the work of school counselors and administrators. Schools and colleges will be chiefly places for libraries, gymnasium, science labs, sports fields and social centers. The need for expensive lecture halls and classrooms will be greatly reduced by using small group tutorials.
5. AN AFTERWORD BY PAUL PIEHLER:
OR, HOW I BECAME AN ATLANTEAN
This autobiographical intrusion into a work arguing a case for a more humane and effective mode of education is intended to answer several questions. While not relevant to the theory of these Initiatives, it might well occur to any reader how it was I stumbled upon this mode of teaching and why.
Further, it might also occur to the reader that if I had already developed the essentials of the Initiatives by the nineteen sixties, why are they not already more widely known and practiced today? Or, to put it more bluntly, how I can I claim to have insights into the educational process not yet apparent to those who have devoted their professional lives to the study of education?
The answer, it would seem, is that I had, and still have, the lonely duty of informing a largely unsympathetic America about the extraordinary merits of the tutorial, and that it's turned out to be a nearly impossible task. It's been a bit like trying to persuade medieval barons of the virtues of democracy-- like Mark Twain’s Yankee dealing with King Arthur’s Court-- or Benjamin Franklin attempting to enlighten George III on notion that Taxation implies Representation.
If, like most Americans, you’ve been brought up on a more authoritarian educational system -- which we largely inherited from Germany, you are very likely to find the idea of an increase in the liberties and responsibilities of your students alarming, and certainly bothersome. And so I’m afraid I have been bothering America for many, many years. My adventures in this not especially heroic but certainly picaresque journey, took me from Columbia to Dartmouth, Berkeley, and McGill, always the outsider, always pursuing the nearly impossible dream of creating a more humane form of education.
So welcome, Dear Reader, to the Atlantis Initiatives. Or, as an unreconstructed medievalist like myself might put it, Forward to the Fifteenth Century!