What is VISTA's goal?

Today’s high schools are not preparing students to succeed in jobs or universities. There are numerous problems with the way that schools attempt to teach students in the United States and many other countries. The most central problems relate to both what is taught and how it is taught. Many have tried to solve these problems by introducing new ideas into the existing school structure, but educational systems are resistant to change, and layering new ideas on top of the problematic old ones does not fix anything.

We at Engines for Education propose to develop alternative curricula, namely, Story-Centered Curricula (SCC), for the high-school-age audience.

VISTA's Story-Centered Curricula will provide a much-needed alternative course of study, giving students in the U.S. and other places around the world the opportunity to:

• Practice working in fields that are personally interesting and motivating
• Practice both the academic and soft skills needed in today’s workforce
• Be evaluated based on their performance of relevant skills in meaningful contexts (rather than on how much information they memorized at a given point in time)
• Have experts in their fields of study serve as their mentors
• Have realistic experiences working as scientists, applying scientific principles to solve problems
• Operate in realistic contexts and gain hands-on practice in jobs they might actually pursue after graduation

We ultimately plan to develop a wide range of these curricula to offer real choice to students so they graduate with a better sense of what they do and do not want to pursue as future careers; are immediately employable in a variety of job areas; and for some, are prepared to enter college to further develop their skills and abilities in a particular field of practice.