PRESS RELEASE

The Terra Nova Project

The Well School is launching a new prototype of high school education called The Terra Nova Project in September of this year. While the new school will maintain high academic standards and prepare students to compete for places in colleges, it will also offer significant new dimensions of experience, study, and work.

“Terra Nova education is an alternative school for pioneers,” says its new headmaster, Jay Garland. “It’s a school for people who want to take charge of their own education and who want to learn more about who they truly are through experiential learning. It’s a school that empowers students to follow their interests. It’s a school that grants adolescents lots of responsibilities in return for lots of independence and freedom.” 

Jay Garland and his wife Toni founded The Well School in 1967 as an independent, alternative school in Peterborough, New Hampshire based on the principles of Holistic Education. Their son, Akhil, became director of The Well when they retired in 2002 and moved to New Mexico to write about their educational experiences and ideas. They have published The Challenge Authentic Education: Joyful Learning in a School Community in 2004. Their second book The Challenge of Authentic Education: Consciousness as the Key to Learning awaits publication.

Under the Garlands direction, The Well has maintained a sound reputation. “High schools and competitive prep schools are eager to get Well graduates because they are articulate and well versed in the classics and in the creative arts,” said Jay Garland. “They are eager learners who can think for themselves, comprehend advanced texts and write coherently.” 

“What is innovative about Terra Nova from my point of view,” stated Garland, “is that we balance objective knowledge with subjective experience. Terra Nova maintains that subjectivity (our experience of thoughts, feelings, body sensations, and intuitions) deserves an honored place at the educational table. If you think about it, you will see that subjectivity is the basis of meaning, of significance, of relevance, of relationships, and of connections to all of life. The integration of subjective knowing and objective knowing unleashes creative genius as it propels tremendous personal growth. Memorizing a ton of facts while dismissing first-hand experiences can produces alienation and hostility. It’s the story of modern man entrapped in a 19th century education that prepared kids for brutal factory life.”

Terra Nova, situated on the sixty-acre campus at The Well School, will combine regular classes with individual and group projects. “At The Well we always devoted three or four weeks a year to projects and everybody loved it. Here at Terra Nova, two to four hours a day is spent doing projects. All-school projects will include growing our own food, raising animals, building structures, producing plays, and starting and running a Terra Nova business.”

Depending on their interests, students will chose their own individual and small group projects. They are responsible for getting a proposal approved, developing a time line with deadlines, presenting the project, and documenting the entire process. They can study electronics or Egyptians, build a shed or a kayak, study the stars, write a play or novel, learn to identify trees, train a dog for a blind person, study robotics, research a trip to Nicaragua, study an musical instrument or any style of music, including jazz, rock, or popular music. The sky’s the limit at Terra Nova.

Terra Nova also provides students with experiences involving new technologies and teaches techniques and practices for gaining self-knowledge.

The design of The Terra Nova Project calls for a four-day school week (either Monday through Thursday or Tuesday through Friday) and a 153-day academic year that includes one Saturday per month. Two long school days each week will insure that the hours of instruction will exceed NH Department of Education standards for high schools.