In the previous post, we outlined three phases that students would go through, where each student matriculated through them at their own speed.

Phase 1 was literacy and numeracy.

Phase 2 was core civilizational requirements and survey courses.

Phase 3 was core adulting requirements and self-study.

There are two specific curricula involved in these phases: core civilizational requirements and core adulting requirements.

In this post, we’ll go into more detail about the core civilizational requirements.

Core Civilizational Requirements

What does it mean to live in this day and age?

Where does the material abundance we take for granted come from?

What was life actually like for most of human history, and why is it so much better now?

These are questions that everyone ought to be able to answer, and the fact that most students - and most people, I suspect - can’t is an indictment of our educational system.

The context in which we live and the forces that shape it are core to our understanding of our place in history and the systems, tools, and structures that got us here.

This curriculum draws heavily from the field of progress studies.

We mentioned six classes in the previous post: basic economics, basic statistics, basic industrial history, basic civics/governance, basic scientific method, and basic information (previously media) literacy. We don’t expect this list to be exhaustive, but it’s a good starting point.

Basic Economics

Motivation

I am far from an expert on economics, but I can tell you what supply and demand are, and why they matter. I can talk about the elasticity of supply and demand, and how that generally determines where the burden of a tax falls. I can tell you what price floors and ceilings do to markets.

I can tell you why markets work, and why it matters.

This should not be some kind of elite knowledge. It shouldn’t be hidden behind a college course. It is literally the framework within which our entire economy functions.

This should be taught to every child in every school.

The curriculum will center around this diagram:

There are already plenty of basic economics courses, so it shouldn’t be too difficult to adapt these courses to a level suitable to those in phase 2 (around 10-13). Keep in mind that students are not matriculated by age as well - if they need to be older to grasp these concepts, that’s fine. There’s no need for a whole lot of math - in fact, a...

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