About the school
Ambiguity is everywhere in our lives. We encounter it in practically every waking moment of our days yet we rarely talk about it explicitly. It is much easier to measure and grade factual knowledge but increasingly our world is becoming more ambiguous and values the skills required to manage ambiguity more and more.
We believe that, while understanding or memorizing known facts is incredibly valuable, most schools do not effectively support young people in developing a quality relationship with ambiguity. The world is an incredibly ambiguous environment and is becoming more ambiguous every day. Our lives, our work, our communities, and our societies are all increasingly ambiguous and we need to better support young people in this challenge.
This does demean more traditional learning. In fact learning itself is an exercise in navigating ambiguity. We believe that by creating a foundation around ambiguity and how we recognize it, live with it, and navigate it, we can improve the learning experience as well. Ambiguity goes well beyond learning, though, so we hope this foundation will help young people understand themselves better, respect each others differences, collaborate more effectively, feel more confident in their creativity, approach the world with a sense of curiosity, and much more.
Puzzles are a high quality distillation of an ambiguous challenge. The Puzzle School not only focuses on navigating ambiguity. It’s also about recognizing and living with ambiguity. For example, art is ambiguous in a manner that can not be resolved. Many people struggle to live with ambiguity and many societal issues arise from people being uncomfortable with ambiguity.
Those considerations aside, learning is fundamentally an ambiguous challenge, and The Puzzle School wants to support as much learning in each student as possible. The puzzle metaphor helps students approach their learning not as an exercise in memorization but in navigating ambiguity. Much like a scientist, detective, entrepreneur, politician, writer, or mathematician might describe their work like they are trying to solve a puzzle, we want young people to feel comfortable recognizing, living with, and navigating ambiguity.
Please contact us if you are interested in learning more about the effort.
“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald