Millennium School: An Experiment in Transpersonal Education for Early Adolescents

This article describes the design, curriculum, culture, and values of an experiment in transpersonal education for young adolescents, the Millennium middle school in San Francisco, CA. The overarching design of the school was to help children exiting the latency period of child development, who exhibit the rudiments of Wade’s Authentic consciousness or Maslow’s Self-actualization motive stage, consolidate that level rather than losing it, as the vast majority do, because of social pressures that make earlier stages of development more adaptable in most contemporary societies. Early adolescence is a time when peer pressure, individuation from the family, and puberty are strong influences driving ego development, but it is also a time when existential questions about self, reality, meaning, and purpose open up possibilities for transpersonal development. Millennium is an attempt to further that development.