Philosophy

STEAM School and the New Renaissance

 

The discovery of the New World expanded geographical horizons and stimulated European imaginations and economies. Today we look to the heavens to discover new worlds and for the first time have chartered space travel. Space exploration may lead to the discovery of earthlike planets in other galaxies. The very thought stimulates the imagination and nurtures technological development.   

 

In education, parents are seeking alternatives to public schools, such as charter schools, Da Vinci homeschooling, and classical education schools. The Renaissance made way for the Enlightenment and for modern industrialization, modern sciences and the proliferation of scientific theories and ideologies.

 

Even with the advances we have today in many fields and areas of knowledge our children have become define by the needs of the markets and the blocks of specialization needed during the industrial revolution, rather than by their desire to learn and enjoy knowledge The Renaissance artists and thinkers had very few tools – pen and paper, paint and canvas, marble and chisel, and a few more. Today we have the Internet, vastly more versatile, almost infinite in its possibilities, still, the world of education has not been able to catch up with the world of innovations and technology, which is moving at different speeds.

 

The DaVinci STEAM school of Engineering founders are all engineers and have been involved in the process of education that adjusts to children's emotional and intellectual components while increasing critical thinking skills. Most schools, programs, and activities today keep copying each other in the system of independent learning modules. Just a few of them focus on the integration of soft and technical skills. The DaVinci STEAM School goes a step beyond by providing advanced technical and professional skills.

 

Our methodology resembles the renaissance schools where apprentices were taking into a journey of learning with masters and experts in their fields. Our school takes children from a young age and help them to navigate life through a process of fun and learning.

 

So imagine, a world, where our participants have access to this expanded canvas of human expression that technology has created. When everyone can live up to their maximum potential. When every Da Vinci can let their imagination fly, observe the world and draw knowledge from it, paint his Mona Lisa and have empathy towards a better world. Imagine a thousand new activities, discoveries, arts, none of which are even invented yet, each with a thousand new great masters.

 

The Renaissance

 

The essence of the Renaissance, which began in Italy in the 14th century and spread to northern European countries in the 15th and 16th centuries, was a revolt against the narrowness and otherworldliness of the Middle Ages. For inspiration, the early Renaissance humanists turned to the ideals expressed in the literature of ancient Greece. Like the Greeks, they wanted education to develop man's intellectual, spiritual, and physical powers for the enrichment of life.

 

Along with the changed attitudes toward the goals and the content of education, in a few innovative schools, came the first signs of a change in attitude toward educational methods. Rather than bitter medicine to be forced down the students' throats, education was to be exciting, pleasant, and fun.

 

The school that most closely embodied these early Renaissance ideals was founded in Mantua, Italy, in 1423 by Vittorino da Feltre. Even the name of his school, Casa Giocosa (Happy House), broke with the medieval tradition of cheerless institutions in which grammar--along with Holy Writ--was flogged into the learner's memory. The school served children from age six to participants in their mid-twenties. The pupils studied history, philosophy, arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. Physical development was encouraged through exercise and games.

 

The DaVinci STEAM school of engineering for youth was funded in 2008 as a pilot concept to test and evaluate methodologies and procedures, today some of our students are co-owners of the school as a testament to our success.