Over 1,000 years ago, in Japan’s Heian (which translates to “peace and tranquility”) Court, a lady-in-waiting to the retired Empress received a gift of paper… The story goes that the Empress had no need of this “bundle of notebooks” and asked this lady-in-waiting what she should do with them. Her response? “This should be a pillow, then…” Historians have dismissed literal translations of “makura” as “pillow” – at least in the way we know a pillow to be. But Japanese head rest

Forgive me, but I was a bit tricksy in the title of this post. I’ve been thinking about this for years, probably, but as I see society seemingly crumbling before us in recent months it’s become more of a nagging preoccupation. I’m a big fan of simplification…abstraction…distillation – of getting to the “ness” of something. What if our curriculum  – any curriculum in any school – was based on just two domains…lenses through which one can peer and prod at everything? PHILOSOPHY