The age branches

Curriculum

Life is essentially periodic, and includes daily, seasonal and yearly periods; education should follow that rhythm.

Paraphrase of A. N. Whitehead, The Rhythm of Education

Age is not grade

• A nine-year-old can hold the energetic grade and a fifteen-year-old may not; nobody moves up a grade by getting older. What age decides is the branch: the band in which a member shares a circle with their peers and in which the four grades are worked with a depth of reading fit for their moment in life.
• The four branches are a Daturoman reading of the rhythm Whitehead described —a time of romance, one of precision and one of generalization—: each takes as its unit of reading a larger scale of Kosmagest —the pole, the edge, the landa, the systence—, and within each one that cycle begins again.

The four branches

Age

Unit of reading

What is learned of the Daturoma

Dominant teaching form

Branch of the Pole

7–10 years

The pole and its opposite

The eight names, lived in the body; that every pole has its contrary; that you can go and come back.

Play, story, song, nearby nature.

Branch of the Edge

11–13 years

The edge: what wraps what

The wrapper; affinity and opposition; the characteristic graph; the hemispheres.

Building, exploring, maps, crafts.

Branch of the Landa

14–17 years

The whole landa

Landas of one to four dimensions; bias, equilibrium and absence; reading real situations.

Full custodies, projects, expeditions, council.

Branch of the Systence

18–21 years

The chaining of landas

Systences and cycles; the year as a systence; the Crossing; guiding and transmitting.

Service, guide training, leading rites.

The Branch of the Pole (7–10 years)

• The Branch of the Pole is the time of romance. Children do not read landas: they live poles. Each week of the cycle offers a pole as a bodily and narrative experience —on the day of the Congregant they play at forming a single body; on that of the Singular, each one builds their island—, and the only thing taught explicitly is that every pole has its contrary and that you can go back and forth between the two.
• The eight poles are introduced with the names of Kosmahara: the Congregant, the Singular, the Opener, the Guardian, the Ardent, the Silent, the Magnifier and the Balancer.

Moving up a branch

The ages are a guide. Moving up a branch is not automatic: the guides propose it, talk it over with the member and their family, and it is celebrated with a short rite at the bridge festival of the Door. A member may move up a year early or late if their moment calls for it, but does not stay outside their age band for long: the circle of peers is itself part of what is learned.