Our Mission
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At FractalPast, we are committed to offering university-quality, deep history education at a fraction of the cost of college. We offer no degrees, credentials, or certificates. There are no tests, no exams, no papers, no assigned readings, no prerequisites, no mandatory curricula, and no major requirements. We focus on learning for learning’s sake, allowing people to choose an education unencumbered by technological straitjackets or gate-kept outcomes.
Useful knowledge about history, civics and government, literature and the arts, social relations, and political affairs are the common heritage and right of all people. Everyone should be empowered to enlarge the compass of their knowledge, expand their cultural literacy, and deepen their appreciation for our shared and complicated past. |
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Our Philosophy
"Knowledge of ourselves, of our politics, and of our culture is impossible without understanding the forces that have shaped our present-day realities. This is why history matters." |
Most of us understand instinctively that to know anything about ourselves – who we are, what makes us tick, why we are faced with the challenges we are – we have to know how we got here, what produced the circumstances of the present, and the challenges of the future. Knowledge of ourselves, of our politics, and of our culture is impossible without understanding the forces that have shaped our present-day realities. This is why history matters. And this is why FractalPast is committed to a robust and deep retelling of our shared history.
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There are many good reasons to know history better than we do. Perhaps we’ve grown curious about an issue or event about which we know little. Perhaps we want to learn more about ourselves by understanding the times that produced our region or our family. Perhaps we’ve grown tired of being manipulated by dubious historical claims made by unscrupulous politicians. Perhaps we wish that we had had the opportunity to take a class in college on a topic about which we want to know more.
We may want to know more, but Americans, in particular, also seem to face cultural barriers reckoning with their own history. Perhaps no other people has ever had such a fraught relation with history as Americans, who seem particularly adept at evading history, or preferring myth to reality. “What a wonderful thing it is to be an American,” observes the Rita Hayworth character, Irena, in the 1957 pot-boiler Fire Down Below, “You believe you can forget everything.” 1957 was a triumphal time to be an American, when forgetting about the past seemed to allow Americans to remake the future on a whim. But perhaps that is a luxury we can no longer afford.
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At the same time, our educational system seems ill-prepared to offer the history we need. Much education today focuses on credentials and certificates. American educational systems have gotten misaligned, with credentialing displacing learning as our central goal. Too many students go to college who need not, chasing a goal for which their studies are mismatched. Too many others find their desire to learn unsatisfied by needless requirements, overly-technologized classrooms, and systems of efficiency designed to churn out graduates rather than lifelong learners. We seem to be a society that is both under- and over-educated at the same time.
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"We seem to be a society that is both under- and over-educated at the same time." |
This project is native digital, but it is not an app. FractalPast is something rather the opposite: the subordination of the digital to human needs. There are no algorithms here, no technology designed to scale up revenue and scale down quality. I have purposefully designed FractalPast to NOT be scalable. Limited course enrollments are the crux of what I offer, and that will never change. We do not have unlimited sign-ups, and I do not lecture out into the internet void. At FractalPast you are not part of some corporate experiment in education efficiency. You are part of a small community of learners.
The greatest teachers – Socrates or Jesus or your favorite elementary school teacher -- do not need an algorithm or a “deliverable” or a “learning outcome” or a technological "disruption." Socrates had a tree and some thoughtful questions he posed to a small number of dedicated students. The fact is that the best education is, by definition, the least efficient: a student, a teacher, and a thirst for shared knowledge. The underlying presumption of FractalPast is the same: the best education is the least efficient education, the one that recognizes your personality, your curiosity, and answers your questions.