SSA’s Ford Elementary School seen as a Model for Neighborhood Engagement in MicroSociety Times
An innovative educational program, MicroSociety, is being followed by students attending the recently opened Ford Elementary School in Richmond, designed by Sally Swanson Architects. To better understand the connection between schoolwork and the outside world, students recreate their own ‘society’ becoming sellers of goods, electing officials, keeping crime down and arbitrating disputes, while earning wages in the school’s “Micro” currency that can be spent or invested.
The idea of creating, in an elementary school, a microcosm of the real world was developed by a Brooklyn teacher in the 1960s, and a nonprofit organization called MicroSociety, Inc. carries on his work, now run by Carolyn King. September’s issue of their magazine, the MicroSociety Times, includes an article on Ford.