About the project
About Students Beyond Grades
A few words of warning first. Students Beyond Grades (SBG) is a work in progress, a bit like a child: stumbling, dribbling, accidentally putting car keys in its mouth. For that reason, trying to summarise exactly what SBG is and why it is useful is an ambitious task.
Honestly, we intuitively feel that SBG is an idea with significance for understanding a special type of potential within education systems, a potential to catalyse advanced, ethically considerate development that otherwise would not occur.
If the following attempt to convince you of that significance fails, then perhaps you would not mind assisting us in teaching this baby to walk and talk.
What
Students Beyond Grades is an online record of a particular type of student work.
Type of student work: the research and development of products, services and tools which improve health, community, waste reduction, education and sustainability.
In more general terms: student research and development that addresses issues outside of economic growth.
An acronym attempt: SRDBEG, Student Research and Development Beyond Economic Growth.
How
Students Beyond Grades publishes 500 word summary reports on SRDBEG from around the world, accessible for all of the online world to see.
Why
Extremely important outcomes are emerging through SRDBEG which would not have happened otherwise.
For example, SRDBEG will give birth to a technology that, in 2020, will start the largest clean up of pollution in human history.
However, there exists no dedicated, easily accessible media coverage of the range of this type of specialised work.
Currently, reports on the topic come and go via the mass media, passing quickly in and out of mass consciousness, presented primarily as stories of young genius.
The truth is that when many of these works are viewed together, they reveal a special potential for ethically considerate development within education system environments.
Grouping examples of SRDBEG together for the first time, and using this to argue for the significance of the work, hopes to act as a guide for those optimising education in line with ethically correct development beyond economic growth.
The wider movement this work belongs to is often described as education for sustainable development.