The Ross School "spiral" curriculum is an educational curriculum designed by Lindisfarne founder William Irwin Thompson in the 1990s. It is fascinating example of a "teal / integral" educational curricula -- and one way ahead of its time.
The Ross Spiral Curriculum is a literary narrative of the evolution of human consciousness. It is taught chronologically through the grades as a dynamic system expanding in complexity. Cultural History is at the core of the Ross Curriculum, interwoven with all of the other domains. While each discipline offers its own rigorous curriculum, integration between domains creates a dynamic choreography of learning. Using this interdisciplinary approach, each grade focuses on a particular historical period and theme. The Spiral provides a cohesive architecture for analysis of the past as a dynamical system and enables students to more fully understand the present while envisioning the future.
Developed by legendary William Irwin Thompson in 90s for the Ross School. The Ross school is a private school founded in 1991 by Courtney Ross, wife of billionaire Stephen Ross.
Tags: teal-school-curriculum ontological-development-guide
- Extract curriculum content
- See if there is access to raw data - site is a bit of a [shiny frontend] ✅2023-04-24 A bit of browser network inspection reveals the data is actually stored in nice CSVs e.g. https://spiral.ross.org/ross_api/static/ecologies.csv
- Get list of files ✅2023-05-02 see below
- Retrieve the files (script if possible)
- SpiralRLSMapping.csv
- ecologies.csv
- mentalities.csv
- bifurcations.csv
- grades.csv
- domains.csv
- courses.csv
- units.csv
- les.csv
- integrations.csv
- threads.csv
- Reverse engineer the data model
- See how much it covers cultural evolution and ontological development and in what way
https://spiral.ross.org/ross_api/static/ecologies.csv
Aside: spiral.ross.org whilst really cool suffers from "shiny frontend syndrome" a bit - e.g. no easy way to get a single list of e.g. all the units or key reading etc