A model for high school education

Four general planks, themes to focus a high school curriculum:

*Artisanal skill. This is conducive to learning that has real economic value in the world. A high school education should at the same time function as a minor apprenticeship in a skilled trade, allowing the graduate tremendous relative economic freedom and allowing more academic learning to be integrated into practical and artistic work. Formal learning is better received with direct application and experimentation.

*Design. This plank would give students a firm grounding in design principles. Again, there is a practical and a more subtle advantage here. Practically, education for design will allow students to pursue higher level professions or develop solid reputations in skilled fields. More subtly, it gives students a basic understanding of the construction of the world around them and how various elements of the world they encounter may be reconsidered and adapted to new needs. This again roots formal learning in lived experience.
Examples:
-principles of design
-sustainable design
-architecture
-industrial design
-philosophy of design and technology
-project management
-basic engineering
-aesthetics and arts
-etc.

*Small business education. Students will leave the program able to provide for their own livelihood, and basic skills in small business development and management will assure this. A focus on social enterpreneurship and cooperative workplaces will allow the students to put civic values into practice in their working lives.

*Liberal arts and sciences.

We could consider this style of education as embodying a sort of 21st century Jeffersonianism, adapting the ideal of decentralized economic democracy to contemporary labor markets.

Other major theme, not sure how to integrate it: civic learning- responsbility to community, world. environmentalism, basic civic organizing, etc.