Key beliefs

Although students try hard for the most part in achieving as good a grade as possible, 12 years of receiving an "average" shapes the way you think about how much you know about a subject.  With Pinnacle Scholars, accumulating knowledge is built in blocks of learning and proceeding to the next block.  The formation of knowledge in a field of study is constructed.  There's no average for one area, then an average for another area.  There is learning - one block at a time - moving from complete knowledge of one block, then moving to the next.  Every field of study is made of blocks.  And you will know a lot of blocks when you're done.

Learning has to be connected.  In isolation, random bits of knowledge tend to detach from the brain's associative method of how it stores its bits of knowledge.  If a person takes studies a subject and retains information long enough for some event like a test, without connecting that information to a broader store of information, then it is more likely than not for that information not to be stored for the long term.  Therefore, each block of knowledge in a field of study at Pinnacle Scholars is concentrated and directed to the broader store.  Association within its own field and to interdisciplinary fields help people learn for the long term.

How to demonstrate what you know has been debated over the last 50 years in numerous educational journals and conferences.  Models for learning have come and gone as the educational landscape has changed. A person would think that testing has won the day by the way American Education has adopted it wholesale.  The truth is that the testing model is one of the least effective ways for charting knowledge.  Pinnacle Scholars uses the best of the methods brought up over the years from Montessori learning to product learning.  Showing your knowledge to teachers, parents, friends, and community is always best.

Learning from direct teaching  is still used, of course.  But, the amount of information a teacher doesn't know compared to what can be presented by machine collection is vast.  Students need directed instruction and direction in learning, sure.  But, no longer is it necessary to stay in a classroom with only one teacher at a time showering students with knowledge, even when the knowledge is outstanding.  Students need more and want more.  Classes now should direct one's interests and attention to the world students will grow up in - the greater world, the global community because they will have to deal with a globl connections, a metaverse in the virtual world, and communication from other worlds.

You probably went to a school with a curriculum.  Even home schools have adopted most of the same ideas about what is good to study to prepare you for the world you graduate into.  But now it is different.  There are some core principles to any field of study, yes.  But, what about the limits on how far you want to take your study or which ideas you are presented with to learn about?  Pinnacle Scholars gives the core ideas without fail, but it allows students to take off in different directions, go as far down a path as they want to go, and to choose a special interest in the course being taken.  The world is a big place, and to put too many parameters around it would be holding you back from your potetial.

Learning can happen anywhere, anytime.  Four walls and a teacher serve as the current shape for learning.  But, that kind of learning has been superceded for quite some time now.  Educational institutions are notoriously slow to change.  They are the last to initiate innovations in both learning and technology.  For example, are you still forbidden to use calculators, spreadsheets, or AI in math class?  Thought so.  What would happen to learning if allowed to use the tools fo the present, not the tools from the past.  Correct!  Quantum leaps would be made.  Learning would end up further down the path.  The new shape takes place on screens, in homes, and in liquid worlds and holographic air screens