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 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.

The problem with the old teaching model...

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

Most classrooms are set up around a teacher dictating correct material to students...who don't want to pay attention.

The problem is, most people find it easier to give than than to receive...

And what makes it easier for us to RECEIVE...

is if we've had the chance to GIVE first.

What made my teaching style stand out is that my students were experiencing the beauty of GIVING and RECEIVING.

They were invited to actually participate...and co-create the atmosphere.

So, what is the Pedagogy of the Present?

And what is Embodied Knowledge Practice?

Conventional approaches to pedagogy (= the art of teaching) focus on:

Engineering outcomes.

Standardizing results.

Accommodating diverse learning styles.

The “Pedagogy of the Present,” on the other hand, is the form of teaching that works for artists (both as teachers and as students).

In this pedagogy, teaching is not: 

• Guiding students toward a pre-determined outcome
• Managing the attention and behavior of a group
• Telling people what is correct and incorrect

Instead, teaching is:

modelling an art (a living, expressive, emergent practice)

in real time

in front of an audience

that you invite to do the same. 

THIS IS WHY YOU'RE AFRAID OF TEACHING (& OF SELLING)

In teaching as embodied knowledge practice, you don't invite your students to copy what you are doing,

but to experiment with the thoughts, techniques, and materials that govern it.

This is why true teaching is inherently transformational, and inherently a form of ART:

because what you are doing is not replicating static knowledge

but creating INTIMACY with materials and practices.

INTIMACY = TRANSFORMATION.

TRANSFORMATION = ART.

And as the teacher, even if you are teaching materials you’ve known for ages, still:

You are encountering it again.

Deepening your intimacy with it.

And you have never met it with these students before.

And they are quite new to it, and their unfamiliarity is transferred to you as a kind of electricity.

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