PAIDEIA
"Paideia provides a fertile soil for those interested in slow, bespoke learning and reconnects the best teachers with the incorrigibly curious."
ABOUT US
THE PROBLEM
Further education is often used for the credentials it bestows. These have historically enabled students to “level-up” in the “real world” i.e. the job market. After years of qualification inflation, however, in financial terms they are rarely worth the paper.
Sensing the mechanism is broken, students fall into the trap of accumulating degrees, turning universities into clogged industries. Accreditations, meanwhile, become a flawed form of currency, increasingly obsolete and sensitive to ideological sleights of hand by cultural gatekeepers.
THE SOLUTION
Paideia goes back to basics. Now that modern governments attempt to “upskill” their populations in order to tailor them to job markets, knowledge is perceived as compensational, not a good in itself. Paideia provides a fertile soil for those interested in slow, bespoke learning and reconnects the best teachers with the incorrigibly curious.
We believe that education has its roots in mentorship, discipleship. In other words, personal relationships. Some of us come from the best universities, others have accrued experience in the most challenging professions. Each of our teachers is unique. The knowledge conveyed is anything but textbook, and the relationship between tutor and student anything but mercantile. Mentors and students walk the same path, pursuing truth together in a spirit of collegiality that has vanished from universities. In order to grant this opportunity to the greatest number, Paideia offers its services online, ready to be accessed by those who feel time poor and knowledge starved.
JOINING OUR COMMUNITY
In the Paideia Forum students can follow collective live lecture series and/or one-to-one tutorials with mentors. The former presents original content and authoritative opinion whilst the latter allows for greater depth in knowledge and a broadening of horizons. Our offer changes regularly during the year.
Students can purchase lectures in sets of 4, 6 or 8 sessions. Schedules are fixed. Each lecturer gives one lecture per week for eight consecutive weeks. In the event that students miss a lecture, they’ll be sent a recorded file. If timings don’t match a student’s schedule, it will be possible to purchase at a lower price the recorded videos of the lecture series.
Tutorials are more flexible. Once you book a session with a teacher, you will be put in touch with them in order to set up a time that suits both of you.
WHAT DOES PAIDEIA MEAN?
Paideia, a system of education in classical Greek, formed the spine of the polis. It sought to refine not only the intellectual faculties of a student but their moral and physical ones. In an Age of specialisation, too much knowledge is sacrificed on the altar of utility so that the spirit of eros (wonder) is lost. At Paideia, we recover the holistic approach to learning and encourage people to reconnect with their propensity to enquire, as children do naturally, “what, why, how and where?” It recalls that knowledge is a gift, rarely a burden, and is unafraid to place God at the centre of the kosmos where He belongs.
