Longhouse School

Rationale: Can World-Building Impact the Educational Ideosphere?

About five years ago, several friends opened a Reddit community called “r/SgiwhistleblowersMITA” to help respond to wild accusations about the SGI Buddhist movement made by some fierce critics on Reddit.

About a year later one of the friends started building a “World” on this platform to contextualize his arguments. Or, perhaps, he was just launching a slightly fictionalized account of real people? Or, perhaps, they and their children are real living beings full of life. Well over twenty characters came to populate this World. They all lived in or shared an association with an RV Park located in a remote part of Western New York. As in all soap operas and Netflix series, characters came and sometimes moved on.

The main characters, however, are the four RV Park co-owners who are members of a blended family. Two of them are Indigenous and are purposefully trying to recreate elements of the “Longhouse Culture” of the Haudenosaunee (“Iroquois”) people who predated by centuries the arrival of Europeans.

Someone on the Reddit sub highly critical of the SGI once posted that this was cultural appropriation. The insinuation was that this was a grave human rights violation. But not to “Dee” and “Eulogio,” the two Indigenous people among the RV Park owners. They hope this spirit can revive the Haudenosaunee, who had suffered unimaginable injuries in the preceding generations at the hands of the dominant culture. Instead of remaining in victimhood, Dee and Eulogio dared to dream of their people transforming their sufferings into the healing of the very same dominant culture that had brought so much suffering over the centuries. As part of their work, they opened “Longhouse Daycare” based on the ideals of this imagined culture.

In the story, there is a secondary World populated by four high school-aged teenagers along with their families, friends, and teachers. The four are unique learners and prodigious achievers who make life decisions that are highly unconventional and controversial. Yet, they and their families thrive in their own unique ways.

The two worlds increasingly intertwine with each other. Altogether, there must be a thousand posts using the voices of multiple characters in both Worlds.

What is the impact of these posts on the ideosphere? A typical SGIWhistleblowersMITA post receives (these are very generalized figures) about two hundred views and seven “likes”; posts on LoHeidiLita receive far fewer. Unfortunately, Reddit provides no statistics to ascertain how many of these are unique viewers. However, at some point, to some extent, it is safe to estimate that there have been about 200,000 visits to these two communities.

The quality and content of the posts have shifted, more frequently emphasizing the theme of education and the vision of the Longhouse School.

Can these posts represent an entry into the “Ideosphere” about education? Can they spawn a “butterfly effect” and affect larger changes in educational policy?

At the same time, there is the matter of responsible research to discuss. For the time being let’s set aside the possibility that these are real characters writing. Instead, if it’s a screen warrior writing fiction and then analyzing it—can that be viewed as a legitimate qualitative researcher? (On a side note, perhaps, with the expansion of AI, such a stance might come to be viewed as the only form of acceptable qualitative research, a scenario where a bot cannot sneak into in the shadows of authenticity.)

*To be continued tomorrow*