You’ve probably experienced classrooms that were stultifying places where the teacher knows the correct answer & rewards the students who replicate it. 

The material is dry AF & one-dimensional. 

Nothing new is created. 

There is no mystery, no revelation, no transformation 

OR they’re spaces of “critique”. 

You’ve been ripped open & torn down in spaces like these 

Either way, the material is all either hyper-focused on “results”

or it’s completely abstract & theoretical

The year was 1848.

Two philosophers & school-reformers, Franz Serafin Exner & Hermann Bonitz,

join together to create an entirely new curriculum for the Habsburg Empire school system--

one that would replace the dogmatic Catholic / imperialist one.

Over the next 100 years, this education reform would birth a modernist movement

that influenced teaching practices, artistic movements, scientific revolutions,

even political programs & governmental practices...

not just in the empire but all over the world.

What was this curriculum, what was the pedagogy it was built on, that it held such power?

And how did this bunch of philosophers & heretics manage to carry through a reform with that level of influence,

that level of capacity for actual transformation?

In a political environment that was by no means forward thinking, by no means peaceful?

That was just as riven as ours is today?

This was what I was trying to find out, almost two centuries later.

The year was 2022.

I was writing a PhD dissertation on this 1848 curriculum

that resulted in a mass, trans- & multi-disciplinary flourishing

the likes of which the world has rarely seen…

While I taught a seminar to students who were pre-tech & post-Covid,

ravaged by the weird present

& barely looking up from their laptops.

Where once empirical reality *was* the threat to the established order...

which was based on biblical timelines & Catholic orthodoxy….

Where once it was revolutionary to teach "peasants" to read and write...

Now fake news & anti-science were threatening the empirical agreed-upon reality

that had shored up the established order for the last 150 years.

It seemed the dominant forces in the world weren’t governed by facts any longer,

but by whatever ChatGpt said in their last interchange with it,

...or else whatever was most convenient for their latest political maneuver.

I didn’t want to train my students to get good grades on papers in required classes.

I wanted to discover & create new worlds with them.

I couldn’t help thinking that TEACHING + LEARNING were still the answer to our current predicament.

(but *NOT* the kind we found in most schools)

That the power of Exner + Bonitz’s ideas, structures, & material practices hadn’t been exhausted -

not even close.

I read about one of my authors offering illegal public lectures in pre-1848 Austria…

And I thought:

We needed to make education illicit again.

We needed to make it grounded in practice,

and in the emerging situation.

We needed a PEDAGOGY OF THE PRESENT,

one that was fed & enriched by the untold histories

& possibilities of pedagogies past.

Regenerative Reading.

Transformational Teaching.

Embodied Knowledge Practice.

PEDAGOGY OF THE PRESENT

A seminar + practicum to excavate the little-known yet profoundly influential revolutionary Austrian (but not just Austrian) tradition

that I call “Embodied Knowledge Practice”

& use it to turn your special interests & beloved objects

into immersive, process-oriented, creative teaching spaces –

that transform you, your students, & the world around you.

LOGISTICS

We will meet at 12pm EST every other Saturday beginning March 21, 2026

for four seminars and one final workshop.

Over the course of 8 weeks, we'll: 

🔹 Tune into the little-known yet deeply influential Austrian tradition of Embodied Knowledge Practice through curated, potent excerpts 

🔹 Receive a living imprint of what this means for our art, teaching + practice us today 

🔹 Conceive + create a curriculum for your own transformational teaching space inspired by this tradition + your beloved objects

What’s included: 

4 live bi-weekly seminars where we read & think together (you can arrive with or without having done the reading – we will be reading live together, as well) 

8 weekly audio lectures in Telegram (so you can listen on the go, as many times as you like)

Weekly short, potent, curated readings (that tune you into the spirit of Embodied Knowledge Practice without overwhelming you) 

A final live workshop so you have structured time to work on your final assignment with the group + submit it for workshop + feedback

Personal feedback from me for anyone who submits to the group workshop!

100% of your tuition can be applied to any level of The Lyceum within 30 days