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Wild School Awards |
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What are the Wild School Awards?
The Wild School Awards have been created to call
attention to the many types of genius that exist within us all. These awards
have been established to encourage educators, parents, and students to
follow their authentic calling; to inspire all humans to hear the still,
small voice emanating from within that guides us to be of service in the
world in the most profound way possible. The recipients of these awards are
models of what is humanly possible when we are true to that voice. Our hope
is that the achievements, vision, and inspiration that these award
recipients embody will inspire each of us to identify and manifest our true
calling.
The Wild School Awards are an acknowledgement of individuals who have
stepped outside the boundaries of convention. These individuals have
followed a path, their own unique journey, with dedication and commitment.
They have created their own path to fulfillment, and, in some instances,
have overcome the challenges of failure and rejection. It is our hope to
call attention to the value of a wild approach to education and life,
inspiring others to take risks with courage, and to acknowledge and then
live to the full extent of their calling.
"The definitions of the word wild that inspired tonight are, ‘free and
expressive, unusual, and outside the boundaries of convention’."
Phil Moore introduces The Wild School Awards Event....
"This evening is our creative response to a world out of balance. It is
dedicated to the wild part in each of you, the part connected to moving
water and forests and deserts, to our Great Lakes and the shifting sand
dunes, to the elephants of Africa and the wolves of Isle Royale. It is
dedicated to the people who stand behind the people that we will acknowledge
tonight. It is dedicated to our teachers, to our family and our friends, and
most importantly, it is dedicated to every child on Spaceship Planet Earth."
"Our Upland Hills community gives you our heartfelt thanks and hopes that
your work creates the kind of consciousness necessary to bring us closer to
a world that celebrates diversity and practices sustainability."
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Wild School Award Recipients |
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John Marks & Susan Collin Marks
 S usan
Collin Marks is executive vice president of Search for Common Ground, a
Washington, DC based nonprofit nongovernmental organization working in
conflict resolution internationally, with offices in the Middle East,
Balkans, Africa, Europe and the former Soviet Union. She is a South African
who worked as a conflict resolution practitioner and peacemaker under the
auspices of the National Peace Accord during South Africa’s transition from
apartheid to democracy. In 1992, she founded the quarterly publication on
community and political conflict resolution, Track Two. In 1994, she
was awarded a Jennings Randolph Peace Fellowship to the United States
Institute of Peace. She is co-founder and board chair of The Coexistence
Initiative, executive board member of Women in International Security, and
Senior Associate of the International Conflict Resolution Program at
Columbia University. She speaks, teaches, writes, facilitates, and supports
conflict resolution programs internationally. Her recent book on the South
African peace process: Watching the Wind: Conflict Resolution During
South Africa’s Transition to Democracy, was published in the United
States and South Africa in 2000.
Mr. Marks founded Search for Common Ground in 1982 and the European
Centre for Common Ground in 1995 and serves as their president. In 1987, he
started Common Ground Productions to produce TV and radio programming that
promotes conflict prevention and resolution. These organizations currently
carry out projects in the Middle East, Burundi, Angola, Liberia,
Sierra Leone, Macedonia, Ukraine, the United States, and
between Iran and the US.
Mr. Marks served as a Foreign Service Officer in Washington, DC and
Vietnam, as executive assistant for foreign policy to the late Senator
Clifford Case, as a fellow at Harvard's Institute of Politics, and as a
visiting scholar at Harvard Law School. He is co-author of the best-selling
The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence, author of the award-winning
Search for the "Manchurian Candidate," and author of numerous articles.
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| R. Buckminster
Fuller "Bucky"
Bucky
has often been refereed to as the "Leonardo da Vinci" of the twentieth
century. He was a poet, a cartographer, an engineer, an architect, an
author, a lecturer, a comprehensive anticipatory design scientist, a
philosopher, an entertainer, an inventor, and above all, a teacher. He loved
to talk. He called it "thinking out loud". He would stand in front of an
audience for what seemed like a long time with his hands on his head
receiving brain waves from his audience before launching into his lecture.
Than he would take us on a journey that might include; his near suicide
attempt on the shores of Lake Michigan, the history of the first boat
builders, synergetic geometry, solutions to the housing problem, and ways to
make the world work for 100% humanity.
Bucky was born on July 12, 1895, and his ancestors included the
transcendentalist Margaret Fuller, the first publisher of Ralph Waldo
Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. At the age of six, he designed the
tetrahedronal octet truss, using toothpicks and dried peas. In 1917 Bucky
married Anne Hewlett. The couple’s first child, Alexandra, was born in 1918.
Alexandra became Bucky’s teacher. He was captivated by her curiosity, her
joy, and her vitality and by her perfection. When she died of spinal
meningitis at the age of four, Bucky entered into the darkest period of his
life. On a windy winter night on the shores of Lake Michigan Bucky went from
contemplating suicide to reinventing himself. With the birth of his daughter
Allegra, Bucky decided to finally do his own thinking and to do only those
things that made sense to him. It was in 1927 that the 4D house was
unveiled. This invention which became the Dymaxion House was the result of
years of dedicated research and design. The house was Bucky’s response to
what he perceived as the design inadequacies that helped cause Alexandra’s
death.
In 1970 Bucky held the first "World Game" in New York City. World Game
was the culmination of every invention, idea and understanding that he had
investigated since 1927. His words: "The World Game is a scientific means
for exploring expeditious ways of employing the World’s resources so
efficiently and omniconsiderately as to be able to provide a higher standard
of living for all of humanity-and on a continually sustainable basis for all
generations to come, while enabling all of humanity to enjoy the whole
planet Earth without interference with one another, while also rediverting
and conserving the wild resources and antiquities. "
In 1971 the second World Game was held at Southern Illinois University.
It was there that I met Howard Brown and Meddard Gabel. During those six
weeks we explored Bucky’s ideas and tried to apply them towards making the
world work. In other words, we started playing "World Game" and we’ve been
playing it ever since. When Bucky died on July 1st, 1983 he
handed the World Game over to Meddard and Howard. They have continued to
refine and innovate ideas that gather around the central theme of making the
world work for all of humanity with endangering the natural world.
In Bucky’s essay, "Ten proposals For Improving The World," he identifies
education as the highest priority of all. Upland Hills School has evolved
over these thirty years exploring and incorporating many of Bucky’s ideas
into the foundation of our curriculum. We have embraced the whole systems
approach to education. This unifying approach focuses on ‘the whole’ by
considering all subject matter in relationship to it, and treating it as a
subject worthy of study in it’s own right. Our comprehensive units and our
renaissance program represent the structural underpinnings of our school.
In 1980 Bucky, came to the opening of the Upland Hills Ecological
Awareness Center. His talk that evening encouraged us to continue to develop
the leading edge strategies that we were employing at our school and at our
awareness center. He was deeply impressed by our commitment to our ideals
and by the youthful exuberance of our children. He concluded his remarks
that evening by placing his arms around two children and declaring that
‘this is our hope for the future’.
Buckminster Fuller took part in a video documentary of Upland Hills
School called "Learning As A Journey". During the course of a conversation
with him he made it emphatically clear that our children would be the ones
who could lead the way to a new tomorrow. He believed that "Every child is
born a genius." And he went on to say that; "it is my conviction, from
having watched a great many babies grow up, that all humanity is born a
genius and then becomes de-geniused very rapidly by unfavorable
circumstances and by the frustration of all their built-in capabilities."
Bucky played the game so far outside of the box and so far ahead of his
time that he is the perfect choice for "the wild school award". He was
convinced that we needed to do our own thinking, wild thinking. He also
believed that he was just an average human being who instead of dedicating
his life to making money he would dedicate himself to making sense. Nearly
twenty years after his death his ideas, books, tapes, vidoes, maps, and
inventions are as popular as ever. His work is being carried on in many
ways. Howard Brown, and Meddard Gabel have dedicated their life’s energy to
bringing the vision of spontaneous world co-operation into existence.
"Humans are coming swiftly to understand they must now consciously begin to
operate their space vehicle Earth with total planetary cooperation,
competence,and integrity." Now, more than ever we need to take actions
consistent with the ideals of the "world game". Phil Moore |
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Click on the picture above or here to see a clip of
Bucky speaking with Phillip Moore at UHS.
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| Paul Winter
 If
there is such a thing as wild music then Paul would have to be one of the
founding fathers. His record label "Living Music" includes music that was
produced by George Martin (often known as the 'fifth Beatle", music that was
taken to the moon, music that is used to open the NPR program "New
Dimensions", music that is used as theme music on the TV show Survivor, and
music that has won several Grammy Awards. Paul's genius has always been to
innovate new ways for the universal language to be used to create a better
world. We are honored and pleased that Paul will be receiving the Wild
School Award for his extraordinary body of work. We are especially grateful
to Eugene Friesen, who will introduce Paul and present him with his award. |
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| Elizabeth Grossman
 Beth
attended Upland Hills School in the early years. She went on to the Cranbrook/Kingswood
School during her high school years and then to the University of Michigan
where she majored in Women's Studies. During college, Elizabeth was very
involved in the Women's Crisis Center, where she served on the committee
that ran the center, engaged in phone counseling, and helped women prepare
their own divorce papers. While a student of U of M's law school she was a
case supervisor for three years with Family Law Project, a non-profit
student organization, which provided divorces and restraining orders to
indigent survivors of domestic violence. In recognition of all her work,
Elizabeth was given the law school's 1991 Jane L. Mixer Award for
Outstanding Contributions to Social Justice. The opportunity to similarly
acknowledge her on April 13th will give us great pleasure. an Upland Hills
School Alumna who is doing what she loves on behalf of others is a perfect
match for the wild School Awards. |
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