To understand schools, we must view them in historical perspective.

When we see that children everywhere are required by law to go to school, that almost all schools are structured in the same way, and that our society goes to a great deal of trouble and expense to provide such schools, we tend naturally to assume that there must be some good, logical reason for all this. Perhaps if we didn't force children to go to school, or if schools operated much differently, children would not grow up to be competent adults. Perhaps some really smart people have figured all this out and have proven it in some way, or perhaps alternative ways of thinking about child development and education have been tested and have failed.

Studies on Self Directed Education (SDE) schools and its graduates show that normal, average children become educated through their own play and exploration, without adult direction or prodding, and go on to be fulfilled, effective adults in the larger culture. Instead of providing direction and prodding, the SDE schools provide a rich setting within which to play, explore, and experience democracy first hand; and it does that at lower expense and with less trouble for all involved than is required to operate standard schools. So why aren't most schools like that?

If we want to understand why standard schools are what they are, we have to abandon the idea that they are products of logical necessity or scientific insight. They are, instead, products of history. Schooling, as it exists today, only makes sense if we view it from a historical perspective. And so, as a first step toward explaining why schools are what they are, I present here, in a nutshell, an outline of the history of education, from the beginning of humankind until now. Most scholars of educational history would use different terms than I use here, but I doubt that they would deny the overall accuracy of the sketch. In fact, I have used the writings of such scholars to help me develop the sketch.

In the beginning, for hundreds of thousands of years, children educated themselves through self-directed play and exploration.

In relation to the biological history of our species, schools are very recent institutions. For hundreds of thousands of years, before the advent of agriculture, we lived as hunter-gatherers. The evidence from anthropology is that children in hunter-gatherer cultures learned what they needed to know to become effective adults through their own play and exploration. The strong drives in children to play and explore presumably came about, during our evolution as hunter-gatherers, to serve the needs of education. Adults in hunter-gatherer cultures allowed children almost unlimited freedom to play and explore on their own because they recognized that those activities are children's natural ways of learning.

With the rise of agriculture, and later of industry, children became forced laborers. Play and exploration were suppressed. Wilfulness, which had been a virtue, became a vice that had to be beaten out of children.

The invention of agriculture, beginning 10,000 years ago in some parts of the world and later in other parts, set in motion a whirlwind of change in people's ways of living. The hunter-gatherer way of life had been skill-intensive and knowledge-intensive, but not labour-intensive. To be effective hunters and gatherers, people had to acquire a vast knowledge of the plants and animals on which they depended and of the landscapes within which they foraged. They also had to develop great skill in crafting and using the tools of hunting and gathering. They had to be able to take initiative and be creative in finding foods and tracking game. However, they did not have to work long hours; and the work they did was exciting, not dreary. Anthropologists have reported that the hunter-gatherer groups they studied did not distinguish between work and play--essentially all of life was understood as play.

Agriculture gradually changed all that. With agriculture, people could produce more food, which allowed them to have more children. Agriculture also allowed people (or forced people) to live in permanent dwellings, where their crops were planted, rather than live a nomadic life, and this in turn allowed people to accumulate property. But these changes occurred at a great cost in labour. While hunter-gatherers skilfully harvested what nature had grown, farmers had to plough, plant, cultivate, tend their flocks, and so on. Successful farming required long hours of relatively unskilled, repetitive labour, much of which could be done by children. With larger families, children had to work in the fields to help feed their younger siblings, or they had to work at home to help care for those siblings. Children's lives changed gradually from the free pursuit of their own interests to increasingly more time spent at work that was required to serve the rest of the family.

Agriculture and the associated ownership of land and accumulation of property also created, for the first time in history, clear status differences. People who did not own land became dependent on those who did. Also, landowners discovered that they could increase their own wealth by getting other people to work for them. Systems of slavery and other forms of servitude developed. Those with wealth could become even wealthier with the help of others who depended on them for survival. All this culminated with feudalism in the Middle Ages, when society became steeply hierarchical, with a few kings and lords at the top and masses of slaves and serfs at the bottom. Now the lot of most people, children included, was servitude. The principal lessons that children had to learn were obedience, suppression of their own will, and the show of reverence toward lords and masters. A rebellious spirit could well result in death.

In the Middle Ages, lords and masters had no qualms about physically beating children into submission. For example, in one document from the late 14th or early 15th century, a French count advised that nobles' huntsmen should "choose a boy servant as young as seven or eight" and that "...this boy should be beaten until he has a proper dread of failing to carry out his masters orders."[1] The document went on to list a prodigious number of chores that the boy would perform daily and noted that he would sleep in a loft above the hounds at night in order to attend to the dogs' needs.

With the rise of industry and of a new bourgeoisie class, feudalism gradually subsided, but this did not immediately improve the lives of most children. Business owners, like landowners, needed laborers and could profit by extracting as much work from them as possible with as little compensation as possible. Everyone knows of the exploitation that followed and still exists in many parts of the world. People, including young children, worked most of their waking hours, seven days a week, in beastly conditions, just to survive. The labour of children was moved from fields, where there had at least been sunshine, fresh air, and some opportunities to play, into dark, crowded, dirty factories. In England, overseers of the poor commonly farmed out paupers' children to factories, where they were treated as slaves. Many thousands of them died each year of diseases, starvation, and exhaustion. Not until the 19th century did England pass laws limiting child labour. In 1883, for example, new legislation forbade textile manufacturers from employing children under the age of 9 and limited the maximum weekly work hours to 48 for 10- to 12-year-olds and to 69 for 13- to 17-year-olds [2].

In sum, for several thousand years after the advent of agriculture, the education of children was, to a considerable degree, a matter squashing their wilfulness in order to make them good laborers. A good child was an obedient child, who suppressed his or her urge to play and explore and dutifully carried out the orders of adult masters. Such education, fortunately, was never fully successful. The human instincts to play and explore are so powerful that they can never be fully beaten out of a child. But certainly, the philosophy of education throughout that period, to the degree that it could be articulated, was the opposite of the philosophy that hunter-gatherers had held for hundreds of thousands of years earlier.

For various reasons, some religious and some secular, the idea of universal, compulsory education arose and gradually spread. Education was understood as inculcation.

As industry progressed and became somewhat more automated, the need for child labour declined in some parts of the world. The idea began to spread that childhood should be a time for learning, and schools for children were developed as places of learning. The idea and practice of universal, compulsory public education developed gradually in Europe, from the early 16th century on into the 19th. It was an idea that had many supporters, who all had their own agendas concerning the lessons that children should learn.

Much of the impetus for universal education came from the emerging Protestant religions. Martin Luther declared that salvation depends on each person's own reading of the Scriptures. A corollary, not lost on Luther, was that each person must learn to read and must also learn that the Scriptures represent absolute truths and that salvation depends on understanding those truths. Luther and other leaders of the Reformation promoted public education as Christian duty, to save souls from eternal damnation. By the end of the 17th century, Germany, which was the leader in the development of schooling, had laws in most of its states requiring that children attend school; but the Lutheran church, not the state, ran the schools [3].

In America, in the mid 17th century, Massachusetts became the first colony to mandate schooling, the clearly stated purpose of which was to turn children into good Puritans. Beginning in 1690, children in Massachusetts and adjacent colonies learned to read from the New England Primer, known colloquially as "The Little Bible of New England" [4]. It included a set of short rhymes to help children learn the alphabet, beginning with, "In Adam's Fall, We sinned all," and ending with, "Zacchaeus he, Did climb the tree, His Lord to see." The Primer also included the Lord's Prayer, the Creed, the Ten Commandments, and various lessons designed to instil in children a fear of God and a sense of duty to their elders.

Employers in industry saw schooling as a way to create better workers. To them, the most crucial lessons were punctuality, following directions, tolerance for long hours of tedious work, and a minimal ability to read and write. From their point of view (though they may not have put it this way), the duller the subjects taught in schools the better.

As nations gelled and became more centralized, national leaders saw schooling as means of creating good patriots and future soldiers. To them, the crucial lessons were about the glories of the fatherland, the wondrous achievements and moral virtues of the nation's founders and leaders, and the necessity to defend the nation from evil forces elsewhere.

Into this mix we must add reformers who truly cared about children, whose messages may ring sympathetically in our ears today. These are people who saw schools as places for protecting children from the damaging forces of the outside world and for providing children with the moral and intellectual grounding needed to develop into upstanding, competent adults. But they too had their agenda for what children should learn. Children should learn moral lessons and disciplines, such as Latin and mathematics, that would exercise their minds and turn them into scholars.

So, everyone involved in the founding and support of schools had a clear view about what lessons children should learn in school. Quite correctly, nobody believed that children left to their own devices, even in a rich setting for learning, would all learn just exactly the lessons that they (the adults) deemed to be so important. All of them saw schooling as inculcation, the implanting of certain truths and ways of thinking into children's minds. The only known method of inculcation, then as well as now, is forced repetition and testing for memory of what was repeated.

With the rise of schooling, people began to think of learning as children's work. The same power-assertive methods that had been used to make children work in fields and factories were quite naturally transferred to the classroom.

Repetition and memorization of lessons is tedious work for children, whose instincts urge them constantly to play freely and explore the world on their own. Just as children did not adapt readily to labouring in fields and factories, they did not adapt readily to schooling. This was no surprise to the adults involved. By this point in history, the idea that children's own wilfulness had any value was pretty well forgotten. Everyone assumed that to make children learn in school the children's wilfulness would have to be beaten out of them. Punishments of all sorts were understood as intrinsic to the educational process. In some schools, children were permitted certain periods of play (recess), to allow them to let off steam; but play was not considered to be a vehicle of learning. In the classroom, play was the enemy of learning.

A prominent attitude of eighteenth century school authorities toward play is reflected in John Wesley's rules for Wesleyan schools, which included the statement: "As we have no play days, so neither do we allow any time for play on any day; for he that plays as a child will play as a man."[5]

The brute force methods long used to keep children on task on the farm or in the factory were transported into schools to make children learn. Some of the underpaid, ill-prepared schoolmasters were clearly sadistic. One master in Germany kept records of the punishments he meted out in 51 years of teaching, a partial list of which included: "911,527 blows with a rod, 124,010 blows with a cane, 20,989 taps with a ruler, 136,715 blows with the hand, 10,235 blows to the mouth, 7,905 boxes on the ear, and 1,118,800 blows on the head"[6]. Clearly, that master was proud of all the educating he had done.

In his autobiography, John Bernard, a prominent eighteenth-century Massachusetts minister, described approvingly how he himself, as a child, was beaten regularly by his schoolmaster [7]. He was beaten because of his irresistible drive to play; he was beaten when he failed to learn; he was even beaten when his classmates failed to learn. Because he was a bright boy, he was put in charge of helping the others learn, and when they failed to recite a lesson properly he was beaten for that. His only complaint was that one classmate deliberately flubbed his lessons in order to see him beaten. He solved that problem, finally, by giving the classmate "a good drubbing" when the school day was over and threatening more drubbings in the future. Those were the good old days.

In recent times, the methods of schooling have become less harsh, but basic assumptions have not changed. Learning continues to be defined as children's work, and power assertive means are used to make children do that work.

In the 19th and 20th centuries, public schooling gradually evolved toward what we all recognize today as conventional schooling. The methods of discipline became more humane, or at least less corporal; the lessons became more secular; the curriculum expanded, as knowledge expanded, to include an ever-growing list of subjects; and the number of hours, days, and years of compulsory schooling increased continuously. School gradually replaced fieldwork, factory work, and domestic chores as the child's primary job. Just as adults put in their 8-hour day at their place of employment, children today put in their 6-hour day at school, plus another hour or more of homework, and often more hours of lessons outside of school. Over time, children's lives have become increasingly defined and structured by the school curriculum. Children now are almost universally identified by their grade in school, much as adults are identified by their job or career.

Schools today are much less harsh than they were, but certain premises about the nature of learning remain unchanged: Learning is hard work; it is something that children must be forced to do, not something that will happen naturally through children's self-chosen activities. The specific lessons that children must learn are determined by professional educators, not by children, so education today is still, as much as ever, a matter of inculcation (though educators tend to avoid that term and use, falsely, terms like "discovery").

Clever educators today might use "play" as a tool to get children to enjoy some of their lessons, and children might be allowed some free playtime at recess (though even this is decreasing in very recent times), but children's own play is certainly understood as inadequate as a foundation for education. Children whose drive to play is so strong that they can't sit still for lessons are no longer beaten; instead, they are medicated.

School today is the place where all children learn the distinction that hunter-gatherers never knew--the distinction between work and play. The teacher says, "you must do your work and then you can play." Clearly, according to this message, work, which encompasses all of school learning, is something that one does not want to do but must; and play, which is everything that one wants to do, has relatively little value. That, perhaps, is the leading lesson of our method of schooling. If children learn nothing else in school, they learn the difference between work and play and that learning is work, not play.

In this posting I have tried to explain how the history of humanity has led to the development of schools as we know them today. In my next posting I will discuss some reasons why modern attempts to reform schools in basic ways have been so ineffective.

By Peter Gray , Ph.D., research professor at Boston College and author of the book Free to Learn (Basic Books) and Psychology .

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Notes

1. Quoted by Orme, N. (2001), Medieval children, p 315.
2. Mulhern, J. (1959), A history of education: A social interpretation, 2nd edition.
3. Again, Mulhern (1959).
4. Gutek, G. L. (1991), An historical introduction to American education, 2nd edition.
5. Quoted by Mullhern (1959, p 383).
6. Again, in Mullhern (1959, p 383).
7. From “Autobiography of the Rev. John Bernard,” Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 3rd Ser., 5 [1836]: 178-182. Extracted in J. Martin (Ed.) (2007), Children in Colonial America.

As a kindergartener, I went to school because I didn’t know how to do anything but what the adults in my life commanded. As an elementary and middle schooler, I went to school because I’d never been presented with another option. As a high schooler, I go to school because I’m afraid that if I don’t, I’ll be a failure.

Never have I gone to school with the intent of being educated; anything learned at school is merely a byproduct, and any real passion is crushed into something that can fit in the bubbles of a Scantron test. The goal of the school system is not to produce innovative individuals. It is to churn out efficient, but not empowered, employees. John D. Rockefeller, creator of the General Education Board, once said, “I don’t want a nation of thinkers. I want a nation of workers.” ¹ Although this was stated well over a century ago, it may as well serve as the moral and intellectual compass of modern American schooling.

Students are discouraged from expressing any distaste for their schooling at a young age. Kids who berate the fact that they are forced into spending seven hours locked in a room with twenty other children, being taught how and what to think, are labelled trouble makers and treated as problems to be dealt with similarly to a rodent skirting across a clean kitchen floor.

Kids who go to school lose their passion for learning at a young age, and by the time they reach middle school, their curiosity and creativity has been graded into submission. There is no evidence supporting the claim that students need grades to learn efficiently; most children have learned to speak and walk before entering kindergarten, and they have done so without each minor accomplishment being given a letter grade. Many begin reading and writing by three, and four-year-olds can count, recognize different shapes, and add and subtract some numbers, yet they don’t begin kindergarten, and by extension, formal grading, until age five. However, 68 percent of students surveyed believed that grading was a necessary part of education.

What is the benefit of being graded? It doesn’t improve students’ ability to learn, and it certainly doesn’t impassion them, rather its purpose is to judge them: to weed out those who it deems subpar through failing them or through shoving them into under-funded special education programmes, to elevate those who conform by rewarding them with gold star stickers and A grades, and to streamline the youth into a hive mind so as to simplify it all.

If students went to class only when they wanted to, went to the restroom without asking, openly conversed without permission, and exercised their right to express themselves freely, most schools would ascend into unmanageability. Administrators would no longer be able to control the students; kids who sit quietly and do what they are told are more easily regulated than intelligent individuals who elect to govern themselves. Alexander Khost, a youth rights advocate and founder of Voice of the Children, highlights the primary issue with conventional schooling, saying, “It boils down to one issue that a man named Alexander Sutherland Neill stated about a hundred years ago. That is, that the school should fit the child rather than the child fit the school.” School isn’t built to accommodate the needs of the student; it is built to accommodate the needs of itself at the expense of the student.

When asked about the efficiency of the school system anonymously, one hundred students I surveyed at a public high school said:

• It sucks. (written five times)
• Probably rigged, doesn’t benefit the students, just the people in charge.
• It’s f*cked.
• It doesn’t evolve and it teaches us to be robots.
• It also makes us feel dumb in some ways, like a fish being told to climb a tree.
• It mostly just teaches us to memorize things.
• There’s too much pressure on tests and not enough time to learn things.
• Honestly it’s crap.
• We focus so much on the grades and not on the outcome.
• They want their children to be straight A students.
• They shove everything about our future up our butts and never talk about how to get to that future.
• There’s way too much useless stuff that we just learn for the standardized test, instead of stuff that would be helpful in life.
• It is more about passing than learning.
• It’s very backwards and overwhelming.
• The school system has everyone stressed and getting mental disorders.
• Garbage.
• It blows.
• Sucks balls.
• 
  

Students know they’re being cheated out of an education by the politicians who designed this system and by the administrators who enforce it. Their opinions are just as valid as those of an adult, yet they are brushed aside as the edgy complaints of a typical teen. Students are not taught that they have an unalienable right to speak their truth and to control their own bodies and actions. Why does a bell have more of a right to control your time than you do? Why does a teacher have the right to take your personal possessions if they deem them distracting? Why are kids who commandeer themselves slapped with labels like “problem child” and “trouble maker” and told that they’ll end up flipping burgers?

There is no answer that can justify indoctrinating children into believing that they lack the right to control their own lives, yet this system is ingrained in our society as the only true way to be educated and prepared for adult life.

In the past 125 years since this system was founded, humans have developed computers, smartphones, internet, solar panels, air conditioning, and hundreds of other things that we wouldn’t think of living without in 2018. And with these inventions, we’ve thrown out things like showering only twice a year, measles and mumps, and washing laundry by hand. It’s time to add this school system to that pile.

John Taylor Gatto, former schoolteacher and author of Weapons of Mass Instruction , notes that schooling is becoming useless in today’s world, saying, “I’ve noticed a fascinating phenomenon in my 25 years of teaching — that schools and schooling are becoming increasingly irrelevant in the great enterprises of the planet. No one believes anymore that scientists are trained in science classes or politicians in civics classes or poets in English classes. The truth is that schools don’t really teach anything except how to obey orders.” ²

The world has changed a lot in the past century.

A century ago, John D. Rockefeller, founder of the General Education Board, said, “I don’t want a nation of thinkers. I want a nation of workers.” His words are echoed by almost every school in the United States. And in 2018, they’re dead wrong. Manufacturing jobs are obsolete, as are coal jobs. Retail jobs are following, and none of them are coming back. The wealth of all human knowledge is at our fingertips.

The youth of today will not succeed through obedience and conformity, or with an education suited to a factory worker in 1890, rather through innovation, ingenuity, and creativity. Khost says, “Standardized tests produce standardized minds. And the world doesn’t need standardized minds; it needs people who come alive.” I asked Khost what advice he would give to students who hate school, and to that, he said:

If every day of your life is being dictated by someone else, there is something wrong there. This is true whether you’re twelve or forty-two. And so, if you do not like school, you should start considering no longer going. Remember that life is a balance and doing so will definitely have consequences that also might suck. But I would much rather be fighting for my rights and struggling than complying with someone else’s oppression of me and struggling.

Rebellion sounds exciting, but in the end, rebellion means taking responsibility for your own life and your own decisions, which is actually quite burdensome. That responsibility starts with a really really hard question: what do you want to actually do with your time? And then it gets even harder because you actually have to go do it. And a lot of the time, what you thought you wanted isn’t really what you even wanted. And then you’re not only back to square one but you have a lot of people (especially adults) sitting around telling you, “I told you so!” This is what is called failure. And failure is absolutely fantastic! No, really. An expert is any one person who has made all of the mistakes in one concentrated field and now knows how to not make them any more. Fall flat on your face. Then pick yourself up and do it over and over and over again. Follow passion. Passion is real. And all of the nine to fiver career oriented folks out there who say otherwise are just jaded and forgot how to joyously fall flat on their faces with failure.

Have a dream so worthy that you would die for it. That is passion, that is worth pursuing. And if you’re not doing that and people are holding you back from doing that, something is wrong, go fix it. Now!

And contrary to the sea of blank faces you’ll see if you walk into an average high school classroom, students are passionate.

I asked students what they were truly passionate about learning.

Their responses ranged from “how the world works” to “music, history and science.” Some said, “not sure,” while others said “anything I can.” Students are passionate about languages, programming, maths, psychology, law, writing, computers, and so much more. They want to learn about money, economics, space, finance. One student says, “I’m not really sure because we’re only taught four main things.”

Another states, “I’m just getting through it so I can get a job and start my life. Anything STEM-related.” They are curious and intelligent, and they are being held back by a system that does not value them. One says, “I’m passionate about learning so many different things, I’m not even sure if I know everything I’m passionate about. With the school system now, they don’t allow those passions to develop because right after an interesting unit, you just move on and never talk about the topic again.”

If you walk into a classroom of kindergarteners, they are eager to learn. They ask hundreds of odd questions. Why is the sky blue? Why does it get dark at night? Why do cats have tails? What happens if I eat food I found on the floor? If you walk into a classroom of high schoolers, chances are they won’t even notice you’ve entered.

Over 20 percent of the students I surveyed said they learned nothing at all or very little during the average school day, and 52 percent said they learned only some things. One student said, “I learn how to juul in bathrooms.” When asked about how frequently they are bored during school, over half said they were bored over 70 percent of the time, with only 36 percent being bored under half the time.

What happens between kindergarten and high school that results in all the zeal for learning being sucked from the classroom? They learn that their passions are just hobbies, that the things they love doing are useless compared to their homework, and that the only way they can succeed is to stifle themselves into mediocrity.

Students want to learn. They just don’t want to be schooled.

[by Jane Arisi ]

[1] One Nation Under Siege. Directed by William Lewis, BridgeStone Media Group and William Lewis Films 2006.
[2] John Taylor Gatto. Weapons of Mass Instruction. New Society Publishers, 2010.

Jane Arisi is a writer, artist, and high school student.

Moving away from here and residing somewhere else, out in the space,.... it looks like a joke NOW, but I've no doubt it WILL happen one day.... because mankind and its abilities and dreams are much much much bigger than this little tiny planet called The Earth...
2-July-2018

London, UK

Asgardia as a unified nation, of all cultures and religions as one.

I would like to help build this nation, with 2 years in finance and charitable works.

I believe we can achieve what humanity has failed to produce, which is a unification of our species, an evolution of our thinking, of our rules, of our existence as one.

How can  I get involved

I dream of a future for our children

Rob Velez

I’ve been wondering for so long what role theatre, music and other forms of art serve in understanding the spatial structure around us known as space; how we could develop such an understanding into something more useful for the improvement of our nation...

Then, it hit me. If Asgardia aims to have one spoken language in due time, what better way then to use the arts to explore languages and forms of communication?! Can the medium of topography break down barriers of language for example, so that we may communicate in silence? Hit me up with suggestions as I’m wanting to contribute to this global community

On the 25th of June 2018, along with the newly elected Members of Parliament, I had the privilege to be part of the historic moment when Asgardia’s first Head of Nation, Dr Igor Ashurbeyli, stated at his inauguration ceremony at the Hofburg Palace in Vienna that "Access to outer space should be a human right, beyond the control of any Earthly nation!"

Until today, the Outer Space Treaty that underpins international space law stated that responsibility and liability for objects sent into space lies with the nation that launched them. But the geopolitical landscape of space activity has changed since the Outer Space Treaty was drawn up in the 1960s and as from today, Asgardia is ready to set a new precedent, shifting responsibility to the “space nation” itself.

As Dr Ashurbeyli said, “the existing state agencies represent interests of their own countries and there are not so many countries in the world that have those space agencies." Therefore, it is essential for that to change. And this is where Asgardia comes to revolutionise the way people around the globe are doing politics by setting an example and bringing to life the vision of its Head of Nation, Dr Igor Ashurbeyli, who states: “The ultimate aim is to create a legal platform to ensure protection of planet Earth and to provide access to space technologies for those who do not have that access at the moment.”

On the 25 ^th of June 2018 history was made in the Austrian city of Vienna. Dr. Igor Ashurbeyli was officially inaugurated as the head of state for Asgardia, the Space Nation. While he delivered an inspirational speech to the congregation that was sure to light the fires in the hearts of any devoted Asgardian citizen, the message carried a clear vision of the future.

There has been enough pomp and ceremony for the time-being, so I’m going to get straight into the details.

Timeline to the end of 2018

“It’s no-longer just an idea.” Dr. Ashurbeyli said at the start of his address. He highlighted the fact that we have established all branches of the nation and that Asgardia has officially been born – and this is just the start. Outlined here are the next immediate steps for the nation.

1. Form cabinet of ministers
2. Elect heads of parliamentary committees
3. Members of the court
4. Assemble the prosecutor’s office
5. Assemble national audit office
6. supreme space council
7. complete recruitment of administration
8. establish national bank
9. Introduction of National currency

Timeframe over next 25 years

Our goals for the next 25 years are to make “Significant progress.” in the following three areas:

1. Science, engineering, infrastructure
2. Nation building, economic development
3. philosophy, ideology, space politics

Science & engineering

1. Build infrastructure that is independent from earth
2. Handheld devices: Integrated passport, credit card, smartphones
3. Network of low-earth orbit satellites to be deployed to deliver global internet coverage
4. Core satellites to be placed on high-earth orbit to provide digital state services to Citizens and businesses
5. Free access to space technologies to earthlings regardless of their nationality or advancement
6. Space Arks to be deployed to provide permanent residence to humans in outer-space.
7. Space Arks to have artificial gravity and protection from radiation to enable human reproduction.
8. Asgardia to field space fleet to defend humanity and the planet from threats emanating from outer space.
9. Satellites to orbit the moon
10. Settlements to be established in moon’s orbit and on it’s surface.

Nation Building

1. To establish bilateral agreements with as many states on earth as possible as well as accession to international organisations – both inter-governmental and non-governmental and ultimately the united nations.
2. Open embassies on all continents.
3. Grow population to 2% of the most creative individuals on planet earth (150m pop aprox)

Economic Development

1. Focus specifically and exclusively on delivering value and wellbeing to the citizens;
2. Protecting national sovereignty;
3. Pursuing science and technology space program.

Philosophy, ideology and space politics.

1. In Asgardia, offer the civilisation of Earth an alternative to Geo-politics in the form of space-politics.
2. Open a path to a new spiral of human development.
3. Underscore that Asgardia is a truly avant-garde, technocratic and futuristic state.

One of the greatest thing about the inauguration was that, for the first time, we truly get to see the vision of the future for Asgardia. This is an important time for the nation and I would encourage all citizens to contribute to the success of the nation in any way that they can.

You can watch the full speech from the Head of the Nation himself and the inauguration event on our YouTube channel .

In 2017 Head of Nation Dr. Ashurbeyli issued Decree No.3 which outlined Unity Day- An important day where Asgardians cast their votes on the Declaration of unity and the constitution.

Fast-forward to 18th of June 2018 and Unity Day is a special day for Asgardia, this the day when Asgardians all over the world come together to celebrate the acceptance of the two most important pieces of writing our nation has; The Declaration of Unity and the Constitution.

The Declaration of unity enshrines the type of people that Asgardians should aspire to be, and this day reminds us of our pledges:

We, the people of Asgardia, will do everything for the prosperity
of our new space nation created by us;
for the safeguarding of our motherland - planet Earth;
and the development of the entire humankind in space.
We are not the best, we are the future.
One humanity - one unity.

Read the full declaration text here

It is expected that on this day people will hold a wide range of celebrations including meet-ups, private celebrations, sharing culture and lots and lots of photographs of Asgardians.

On the run up to Unity Day this year, I asked some people what positive impact Asgardia has had on them and it was inspiring to see that Asgardia is connecting people all around the world. Here are some comments that Asgardians made.

• I've made some friends and expanded my horizons. It's also made me realise that humans can come together to create something from nothing. - Daniel. W.
• [Asgardia] Helped to solidify, distill, expand, and aggregate my political and social beliefs. – James O.
• It is a positive experience until now :) I made a bunch of new friends, I learned a lot of new things and keep learning ! It is motivating me to improve my self and my knowledge ! – Nissem A.
• Asgardia has breathed new life into us and have been studying international space station documents and researching space suits – Brian. C.
• It’s been a great experience ! I am there since the beginning ! There was some high and down! As I use to say brighter the light darker is the shadow. So we have to stand up both and this is the way a path is defined! – Valéry G.
• I think being an Asgardians citizen gave me the opportunity to meet new people, to win real friends, to share ideas, to brainstorming our different cultures and expertises. The fact of being a pioneer of a space nation project is the most fabulous experience. – Abderrahim E.
• I now have a new adopted "nephew" in India and adopted "son" in Brazil! They actually contact me almost every day compaired to my bio. Kids, lol. – Ann K-G

It is easy to see from these comments just why people from all around the world are coming together to celebrate our unity. Real bonds are forming between people through very real encounters, discussions and debates.

So remember what we stand for and don’t hold back in your celebrations.

Share your world by taking photographs and uploading them with the hashtag #AsgardiaUnityDay0002 . You can Tweet, Instagram, Facebook, or post your photos on the Asgardia forums to share a picture of your home, a local landmark, your neighbourhood, or a picture of you with other Asgardians.

On June the 25 ^th , Asgardia will host the inauguration of Igor Ashurbeyli at a ceremonious event at the Hofburg in Vienna. Today, I look at 7 reasons why this historic event is important for Asgardia.

1. It puts us on the world stage

This is a public and prestigious event that will be attended by prominent figures. It will also be observed by some of the world’s top mass media outlets making it a great chance for Asgardia to stand up and introduce itself on the global stage.

2. It shows that we are serious

This event has had a lot put into it. Capital, manpower, resources and logistics on this level isn’t something that just anyone could deploy. This will give Asgardia a chance to show the world that it isn’t just the product of imagination, but is capable of real, tangible results. (Assuming launching a satellite into space wasn’t enough.)

3. It makes things official

The inauguration gives us a chance to be constitutionally compliant and officiate our head of nation. He will also have the opportunity to give a public address that will help to set the tone of Asgardia moving into the future.

4. Good Press

As I touched on earlier, this event will be followed by some leading mass media outlets and news of the inauguration will be broadcast around the world. No doubt that the good news will also spread to others and help Asgardia grow and be seen by many people.

5. Parliament will get to meet for the first time

While the inauguration may be the ‘main course’, the icing on the cake is definitely the first official meeting of Parliament on the 24 ^th . This will be a great chance for Asgardia to kickstart the legislative process.

6. We can make new friends

Asgardia will need friends, experts and business partners if we want to achieve our core goals. With up to 400 prominent people in attendance, Asgardia will have a chance to make some new friends that may open up doors for our growing nation.

7. It gives us a good excuse to celebrate.

This is a huge milestone for our nation and a major reason to be a proud Asgardian and celebrate with others. As this moment goes down in Asgardia’s history books we’ll hopefully look back at it in the future and have some fond memories of our own celebrations.

Q. How do I get an official Passport?

A. Passports will only start to be issued once we have reached mutual recognition with other nations that will accept an Asgardian passport as an official document.

It is expected that Citizens will need to present themselves in-person to an Asgardia embassy or consulate to be officially verified before obtaining a travel document.

Q. How do I get an official ID Card?

A. Though no official release date has been given for ID Cards, they are expected to be issued to verified citizens this year. In Decree 13, Administration was instructed to prepare ID cards for the time of the elections.

ID cards will include the unique ID numbers on them (Which you need to keep secret!). It is expected that these cards will be used to access official Asgardia services (such as banking when our currency, SOLAR, is launched.)

Q. I got married, how can I change my name?

A. Write an eMail to support@asgardia.space to request the change to your name and they will assist you with this. This is also applicable for people who have changed their name through other means such as divorce or deed poll.

Q. Am I a part of the ‘golden hundred thousand’?

A. The ‘golden hundred thousand’ was the name given to the first people to pass the third level of verification, but, this figure was closer to 113,000. If your personal data was verified and you had accepted the constitution before 13 September 2017 (4 september 0001) then you’re one of the golden hundred thousand.

Q. When are we expecting United Nation approval for statehood

A. There is no straightforward process to get recognised by the U.N. and there is no pre-defined timeline for this to happen. Asgardia is working towards being recognised as an independent nation and this requires bilateral recognition from other nations. Getting recognition by the international community as an independent nation is one of our core goals.

Q. When will we build space stations?

A. Building a space station is a very costly and time-intensive process that will require budgets, planning and expertise. Building space-stations, or “Arks” is one of Asgardia’s long-term projects and there is no current estimated time-line, though Dr. Ashurbeyli said in the Moscow Conference (October 2017) that he hoped to go to the moon or spend some time on an orbital Ark in his lifetime.

Got more questions?

There is loads of great information on the official FAQ page on asgardia.space

Lembit Opik speaking in the British Parliament in 2009. Lembit was a Member of Parliament in the United Kingdom for 13 years. He led the campaign for action on the threat of Near Earth Objects. He has worked internationally on this campaign, and has collaborated with Apollo 9 astronaut Rusty Schweickart - and with the Spaceguard organisation, which shares the same concerns as Asgardia regarding the NEO threat.