Renerra uploads: #1
I'm not sure if anyone but Sfé and Jenny will want to read these (and Jenny has already read what will be the first four posts), but I've decided to start doing this for those two and anyone else who may be interested. "This" refers to posting Renerra (a story I've been kicking around for 7 years now, including two aborted drafts) bit by bit as I write it. My Creative Writing Capstone requires me to write 40 pages of novel by the end of the semester, and I have now committed to using Renerra for that project, so I will have no choice but to be 40 pages in by the end of April.
This was the kind of kick in the pants I needed, and it will hopefully give me the momentum I need to see this through a full draft. I've been very inspired by Sfé's progress on Entropy and Jenny's on Eli's Dragon (even though I've not been privy to the latter), and also by the fact that I now have drafts of all my thesis stories complete, so I think I can do this. The first four entries will be fairly short (300-500 words each), and they make up the prologue of this story. Note: the style in which the prologue is written in no way reflects everything thereafter. After the prologue is complete, I'll probably post longer segments of around 600-900 words. I plan to post 1-2 a week, depending on the length of each post.
To those wondering what the story is about (if somehow you've missed me talking about it off and on for years) . . . well, these four prologue segments will more or less tell you just that. Without further ado . . .
Prologue (part 1/4)
Chicago Tribune
Experimental Boarding School enters a new era, but no one is watching
May 17, 2010 8:42 AM | No Comments
Six years ago, if you mentioned Renerra to any reasonably informed adult, you were likely to get an impassioned response.
“I think it’s a fantastic idea,” Montana resident Tammy Mills stated at the height of the media frenzy. “Kids these days have no sense of responsibility, no ambition. They just expect everything to be handed to them. If some billionaire’s willing to put in the time and effort to help students achieve their potential, then I say more power to him. We need more people like Reginald Hainley in our education system. There aren’t enough free thinkers.”
Will Grayson, a New York stockbroker, had other ideas. “I give it six months,” he told a reporter three weeks after Renerra opened its doors. “It’ll never work. These are kids we’re talking about. I don’t care how ‘exceptional’ they are, you can’t have teenagers running a school. It’s unethical. These children are given little to no adult guidance. It’s only a matter of time before the whole thing goes down in flames.”
Billionaire and educational maverick Reginald Hainley has been called many things: visionary, madman, idealist, radical. When he first announced his plans to open a student-run boarding school for the gifted and talented, everyone had an opinion, but no one could deny his ambition. Hainley, a long time critic of the American education system, believed he had the solution to our nation’s problems.
“It’s simple, really,” he told 60 Minutes four years back. “Today’s schools and society at large foster an environment of passivity and ease. People complain about today’s youth, but they aren’t the problem. We are. If we never give them the opportunity to take an active role in what’s happening around them, they’ll never learn to take initiative. We are producing a generation that’s unprepared to handle the challenges that an increasingly complex global society will demand of them. There’s no use sugar coating it: we are setting them up for failure.”
When asked about the idea behind his Renerra Academy, Hainley had this to say: “Renerra is the educational equivalent of democracy. In other schools, the students are subjects of a ruling class of teachers and administrators that holds itself separate and above; here, they have the power to control their own destinies. Order rests in the hands of the community, and in representatives chosen from among their peers. This is what our country is built on. I’m just giving them a head start.”
This was the kind of kick in the pants I needed, and it will hopefully give me the momentum I need to see this through a full draft. I've been very inspired by Sfé's progress on Entropy and Jenny's on Eli's Dragon (even though I've not been privy to the latter), and also by the fact that I now have drafts of all my thesis stories complete, so I think I can do this. The first four entries will be fairly short (300-500 words each), and they make up the prologue of this story. Note: the style in which the prologue is written in no way reflects everything thereafter. After the prologue is complete, I'll probably post longer segments of around 600-900 words. I plan to post 1-2 a week, depending on the length of each post.
To those wondering what the story is about (if somehow you've missed me talking about it off and on for years) . . . well, these four prologue segments will more or less tell you just that. Without further ado . . .
Prologue (part 1/4)
Chicago Tribune
Experimental Boarding School enters a new era, but no one is watching
May 17, 2010 8:42 AM | No Comments
Six years ago, if you mentioned Renerra to any reasonably informed adult, you were likely to get an impassioned response.
“I think it’s a fantastic idea,” Montana resident Tammy Mills stated at the height of the media frenzy. “Kids these days have no sense of responsibility, no ambition. They just expect everything to be handed to them. If some billionaire’s willing to put in the time and effort to help students achieve their potential, then I say more power to him. We need more people like Reginald Hainley in our education system. There aren’t enough free thinkers.”
Will Grayson, a New York stockbroker, had other ideas. “I give it six months,” he told a reporter three weeks after Renerra opened its doors. “It’ll never work. These are kids we’re talking about. I don’t care how ‘exceptional’ they are, you can’t have teenagers running a school. It’s unethical. These children are given little to no adult guidance. It’s only a matter of time before the whole thing goes down in flames.”
Billionaire and educational maverick Reginald Hainley has been called many things: visionary, madman, idealist, radical. When he first announced his plans to open a student-run boarding school for the gifted and talented, everyone had an opinion, but no one could deny his ambition. Hainley, a long time critic of the American education system, believed he had the solution to our nation’s problems.
“It’s simple, really,” he told 60 Minutes four years back. “Today’s schools and society at large foster an environment of passivity and ease. People complain about today’s youth, but they aren’t the problem. We are. If we never give them the opportunity to take an active role in what’s happening around them, they’ll never learn to take initiative. We are producing a generation that’s unprepared to handle the challenges that an increasingly complex global society will demand of them. There’s no use sugar coating it: we are setting them up for failure.”
When asked about the idea behind his Renerra Academy, Hainley had this to say: “Renerra is the educational equivalent of democracy. In other schools, the students are subjects of a ruling class of teachers and administrators that holds itself separate and above; here, they have the power to control their own destinies. Order rests in the hands of the community, and in representatives chosen from among their peers. This is what our country is built on. I’m just giving them a head start.”