ETI’s The Creative World is a 2-year deep initation into human history, culture, psyche, and literary arts for motivated youth between 14 and 18 years of age.

The three pillars of the curriculum are Global Studies, Humanities, and Student Projects.

This is fundamentally intended to root emerging minds and souls into an ancient human heritage while orienting them regarding contemporary realities and possibilities.

In parallel to this, we prepare students for AP exams in Literature and World History.

What Do We Cover?

The following overview is written as a series of 4 arcs. Typically, each arc describes a period of 5 months of dedicated study.  Literary study and historical study are integrated and progress hand-in-hand, with student-directed projects radiating from that shared foundation. 

The corpus here is focused on literary texts, though many also have historical value. There are no history textbooks because our historical investigations are inquiry-driven rather than textbook-driven. Students work in teams to prepare detailed answers to complex historical questions based on their own research, and present what they find for discussion. You can find an example of our historical riddles here.

Besides subject area mastery, students in our program develop productive and discursive skills including both advanced speaking and writing. Individual projects lead to the development of a creative portfolio emerging from the humanities but directed by each student’s own interests and curiosities. We mentor but do not determine. Projects can be completed individually or in groups. For example, one student may decide to create a calligraphed book of original poems inspired by the medieval Sufis while another group creates a podcast of book reviews for teens based on our readings and discussions. These are just two examples.

Arc 1: Roots, Identity, and the Ancient World

History:

  • Pre-History and Mythic Lineage

  • Early World Religions, Beliefs, and Lifeways

  • Classical Periods Worldwide

  • The Early Medieval Period

Literature:

    • Hesse’s “Siddhartha”

    • Le Guin’s "Wizard of Earthsea”  and “Tombs of Atuan”

    • Daniel Quinn’s “Ishmael”

    • The Epic of Gilgamesh

    • Euripides’ The Bacchae

    • Shakespeare’s Hamlet

Evening Storytime:

    • Films: "Dead Poet’s Society," “The Great Debaters,” “Good Will Hunting,” “Finding Forester,” “Freedom Writers”

    • Audiobook: “Long Life, Honey in the Heart”

Poetry:

    • Li Bai

    • Laozi’s Tao te Ching

    • Rumi and Hafez

    • Khalil Gibran’s “The Prophet”

Lenses:

    • Myths and “dreamtime”

    • Archetypes and "“the imaginal world”

    • Literary theory and “the craft”

Student-Directed Projects: 

Arc 2: Colonialism, Imperialism, Tradition, and the Global Economy

History:

  • The Early Modern Period (1450-1750)

  • The Modern Period (1750-1900)

Literature:

  • The European Renaissance:

    • Retelling: Perceval and the Grail

    • Excerpts of Cervantes “Don Quixote”

    • Film: “Man of La Mancha”

    • Dumas’ "Three Musketeers"

  • The “New World”:

    • Le Guin’s "Left Hand of Darkness"

    • Russell’s "The Sparrow"

    • Film: "The Mission"

  • Suppression of Old Ways:

    • Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”

    • Miller’s "The Crucible"

    • Le Guin’s "The Telling"

    • Introduction to movements of Enlightenment and Romanticism

  • Liberty and Revolution:

    • Excerpts of Hugo’s “Les Miserables”

    • Films: "Les Miserables," "Hamilton," and “Fiddler on the Roof”

  • Imperialism’s March:

    • Conrad’s "Heart of Darkness"

    • Achebe’s "Things Fall Apart"

  • Poems of:

    • Dickinson, Wilde, Yeats, Tagore

Evening Storytime:

    • Audiobook: “Stealing Benefacio’s Roses”

Student-Directed Projects: 

Arc 3: Modernity, World War, Critique, and the Open Society

History:

  • The Contemporary Period (1900-2015)

Literature:

  • Great Powers, World Wars, and Changing Cultures:

    • Kuang’s "The Poppy War"

    • Orwell’s “Animal Farm”

    • Vonegut’s “Slaughterhouse-Five”

    • Films: The Book Thief, Schindler’s List, Oppenheimer

  • Absurdism, Critique, Multiculturalism, and the Open Society:

    • Potok’s "The Chosen"

    • Arundhati Roy’s “The God of Small Things”

    • Stoppard’s "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead"

    • Beckett’s "Waiting for Godot"

    • Film: Life of Pi, White Tiger

  • Neo-Tribalism and Remembrance:

    • Abram’s “Spell of the Sensuous”

    • Shepard’s “Nature and Madness”

    Poems of:

    • Rilke, Lorca, Plath, Neruda, Gibran, Tolkien, Wendell Berry, Adrienne Rich, Gary Snyder, Mary Oliver, Seamus Heaney, Jane Hirschfield, Louise Gluck, Oriah Mountain Dreamer, Joy Harjo, Maya Angelou, David Whyte

Evening Storytime:

    • Audiobook: “The Unlikely Peace at Cuchumaquic”

Student-Directed Projects:

Arc 4: Current Events and Imagining the Future

History:

  • Study of Contemporary Historical Situation and Trends

  • Review and Practice

Literature:

  • Dystopia:

    • Orwell’s "1984"

    • Atwood’s "Oryx and Crake"

  • Mid-Topias?

    • Lowry’s “The Giver”

    • Herbert’s "Dune"

    • Le Guin’s "The Dispossessed"

  • Human Potential:

    • Heinlein’s "Stranger in a Strange Land"

    • Hesse’s “Narcissus and Goldmund”

    • Films: The Man from Earth, Cloud Atlas, Paprika, Arrival, Waking Life

  • Emerging and Current Poetic Movements:

    • Dialectics of Modernity: Secular universalism? Sectarianism traditionalism? Neo-Romanticism?

    • Jungian “shadow-work” and Hillman: “Alchemical Psychology”

    • What will your verse be?

Evening Storytime:

    • Audiobook: “The Disobedience of the Daughter of the Sun”

Student-Directed Projects: 

Summary and Analysis

Total Number of Texts by Arc

  • Arc 1: 13 texts (11 books + 2 films)

  • Arc 2: 13 texts (10 books + 3 films)

  • Arc 3: 16 texts (11 books + 5 films)

  • Arc 4: 11 texts (8 books + 2 films)

  • Total: 52 texts (40 books + 12 films)

Total Pages: 9734 pages

Reading Pace Analysis

  • Daily Reading for 2 Years: 9534 pages / 730 days ≈ 13 pages/day


Additional Considerations:

  • Flexibility: Students will have varying reading periods. Some weeks may involve intensive reading, while others focus on projects, essays, and reviews.

  • Research and History: Allocate equal time to historical research and literature. While they often complement each other, each requires dedicated time and engagement.

  • Projects and Skill Mastery: These activities demand additional time and effort beyond reading, which should be factored into the overall workload.

Overall Time Commitments: For a full-time program, students will ideally spend at least three hours of focused self or group study daily (beyond class sessions):

  • 1 hour on literary reading

  • 1 hour on history study

  • 1 hour on creative projects

Student Schedules: Structuring schedules can be helpful, especially for younger students, but one advantage of this approach is immersion in particular inquiries and projects. Rather than thinking in terms of a set daily schedule, one can shift toward thinking in terms of targets for students’ endeavors each week, such as:

  • Completing a novel with annotations in their reading journal

  • Preparing a historical inquiry brief

  • Advancing a creative project (individualized and mentored)

This is a closer match to what is required at the university level and also what is needed for self-directed professional or creative work in the world beyond school. It also tends to be highly rewarding for students who are able to make this kind of adjustment toward self-directed learning. Our students might immerse themselves intensively in a novel for a couple of days, then shift to historical study for the next couple of days, and finally focus on personal creative projects before preparing to return to class sessions. This allows for intensive absorption into subjects and cultivates the development of self-direction, organization, and creative autonomy.