2 minute read
Dave Meyer & The Good Life
For the past 15 years, Dave Meyer’s 10th-grade class, “History and Crisis and the Creation of Social Change,” a history/philosophy/political science hybrid, finishes the year with a capstone project, “The Good Life,” the culmination of a year-long exploration that is central to the course.
The project asks students to contemplate the essential question of the class: How do we solve the current crises of the world based on historical examples? “If I just teach history as the march of time, kids aren’t going to care about it,” Dave says. “Instead, we look at critical historical decisions and examine the values that inform them. The goal is to acquire the knowledge and decision-making tools to skillfully cope with crises that come up in their lives, whether it’s personal, communal, or global.”
The students must create guidelines based on philosophical and historical evidence for themselves, and by proxy, their community. “To live a Good Life, we must hold values that are morally defensible, make a life worthwhile, and prioritize happiness,” writes one student. “The values or tools that promote this are compassion, relationships and community, reason, and grit.”
Students can write an essay or make a video, and then must apply these guidelines over the summer in their home communities. When they return, they write about their experience at the start of their 11th-grade literature class. “Within the context of the CRMS education, we’re trying to create skilled, thoughtful, and informed citizens of the world. These are the same principles I teach in the climbing program,” Dave says.
“The project forces reflection and synthesis of the course material, plus their own ideas and life experience,” Dave says. “I hope kids learn to live their lives intentionally and to understand their actions always have consequences. I also want them to think about how their values translate into action, and how those actions impact the world.”
