Longhouse School

By Lolita Goldstein-Thomas

Disclosure: This paper was written toward partial credit for a course at Empire State University. I am the primary author but I was assisted by my wife, Heidi Goldstein-Thomas, and two other colleagues who prefer not to be credited. I worked very closely with “u/Andinio” (AKA “Andy”) who also prefers not to be credited. Andy spent many hours with me coaching me on qualitative research and provided great assistance in the Methodology subsection of this paper.

Introduction

In a recent presentation entitled “Scraps of Paper in a Drawer,” and presented at a conference sponsored by the Soka Institute for Global Solutions, Andinio (2025) reported on how Josei Toda compiled The System of Value-Creating Pedagogy out of a stack of notes written by Tsunesaburo Makiguchi over many years during his busy tenure as a school principal and educational reformer. From this achievement they had hoped to launch a new educational movement. It was an astounding two-folded methodology–taking place amidst the rising tides of Japanese authoritarianism.

There are clear similarities between those times and today. Since progressive reform initiatives have lost influence in current American educational policy, it is worthwhile to ask, what is today’s equivalent to scraps of paper in a drawer that could lead to a new educational paradigm? Or, perhaps using Neil Postman’s terminology, what is today’s version of “Teaching as a Subversive Activity” (Postman and Weingarten, 1969)?

In the presentation,  Andinio argued that value-creative educators today might consider strengthening their defensive game rather than pressing to shoot wildly on offense. The author shared how he had tried, from his vantage point of retirement, to change the educational “ideosphere” through “worldbuilding.”

Definitions

Two concepts need to be introduced.

The “Ideosphere” is defined in Wikipedia as “the metaphysical ‘place’ where thoughts, theories, ideas, and ideation are regarded to be created, evaluated, and evolved.

“Analogous to the biosphere (the realm of biological evolution), the ideosphere is the realm of memetic evolution, where ‘memes’ take the role of biological genes. As such, the ideosphere is an entire memetic ecology: the collective intelligence of all humans wherein memes live, reproduce, compete, and mutate.”

“Worldbuilding” is defined as the process of constructing an imaginary world or setting, sometimes associated with a fictional universe.

“Developing the world with coherent qualities such as history, geography, culture, and ecology is a key task for many science fiction or fantasy writers. Worldbuilding often involves the creation of geography, a backstory, flora, fauna, inhabitants, technology, and often, if writing speculative fiction, different peoples. This may include social customs as well as invented languages (often called conlangs) for the world.”

It exists in novels, films, comics, and video games. The concept of fictional worlds stretches back to Dante’s Divine Comedy. Perhaps the names of J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis are familiar, too.

The Purpose of the Study

Even in a time of great paradigm shift and ideological rigor mortis, there remain endless—granted, microbial—ways to engage in efforts to change the Ideosphere and thereby create the conditions for new waves of educational policy in the future. The underlying goal of this research project is to explore one methodology that may prove helpful to people in the field during a time that may otherwise be a prolonged and barren winter.

Methodology

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 them started building a “World” on this platform to metaphorically contextualize arguments. Well over twenty characters came to populate this World. They lived in or shared an association with an RV Park in a remote part of Western New York. As in soap operas and Netflix series, characters came and sometimes moved on.

The main characters 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. They hope this spirit can revive the Haudenosaunee, who, in turn, can see themselves as the healers of the dominant culture that had brought so much suffering over the centuries. As part of their work, they opened “Longhouse Daycare” based on this imagined culture.

In the story, there is a secondary World, r/LoHeidiLita, 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.

The two Worlds increasingly intertwine with each other. Altogether, there must be many hundreds of 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 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.

Over a few years, the quality and content of the posts have shifted, more frequently emphasizing the themes of education, families, and the vision of the Longhouse School.

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

At the same time, there are important matters of responsible and ethical researching to address. For example, can a screen warrior writing fiction and then analyzing it—be viewed as a legitimate qualitative researcher? (On a side note, ironically, with the expansion of AI, such an effort might come to be viewed in the future as the only form of acceptable qualitative research, a scenario where a bot will find it more difficult to sneak into the shadows of authenticity.)

In qualitative research, there is a long and now well-accepted history of intermingling personal lives and research. For example, Zumwalt’s partially (1984) study compares the induction of new teachers into their profession to her own experience as a new mother. Both shared, she finds, the shock of glamorized ideals crashing into the rocks of reality, frustration, and exhaustion. Both eventually embrace compromises and reconcile themselves to more reasonable expectations. 

In another example, Joffee (2007) attempted backyard autoethnographic research in his dissertation, which was a 14-year account of the formation and development of “The Value Creation School.”

Backyard autoethnographic studies are, indeed, fraught with difficulties. In “Easier Said than Done: Writing an Autoethnography,” Wall (2008) reflects on writing such a qualitative study and provides many useful cautions, perils, and solutions.

A second important issue is the “masking” of identities and locations due to personal needs for anonymity. This report includes several people who request anonymity, and therefore, moves beyond “story as scholarship.” It describes a fictional (or real or partially fictionalized) account of the (supposed) founding of what might be a real or fictionalized “Longhouse School” which is based on assumed reconstructed values of the ahistoric Haudenosaunee people before the European invasion and the resulting disease, depopulation, cultural degradation–and even genocide—that must have resulted in unmeasurable intergenerational trauma. Here, too, is the matter of “appropriation.”

A third problematic feature can be charges of cultural appropriation since several key participants are from the Indigenous community and several others are not. There are posts about one campaign to recruit children from the local Indigenous community and also ones about home-visits to the families of students for next year. The author participated in some of these visits and she also described her research. She did not encounter any opposition or concerns about cultural appropriation. Still, this research project does not enjoy any official imprimatur and the authors need to be aware of the problems of appropriation.

A counter question: Is this research plan really so radical? Anthropologists have studied mythology for generations. Claude Lévi-Strauss wrote about a “structural theory” of mythology in which there are interlocking component parts to myths that can by analyzed through metrics. Joseph Campbell sought to discover the overriding themes underlying all myths and piled myth on top of myth to find commonality.

Likewise, there are multiple academic sources analyzing the use of fiction to promote learning. The main contributor to the Longhouse posts has discussed the deep influence the biographical works on three young educators had in his own growth as a teacher and school leader. Over the years Andinio had recommended to him  Little Town on the Prairie and These Happy Golden Years, fictionalized versions of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s story of working as a teacher from the age of fifteen. The Headmaster by John McPhee is a journalistic account of the 23-year-old Frank L. Boyden who became the leader of a fledgling Deerfield Academy and then served it for 66 years, transforming the school into a unique elite academy. In The Thread That Runs So True, poet Jesse Stuart recounts his rapid rise from a 17-year-old teacher to a superintendent in rural Kentucky. GuyAgiosNikolaos had made numerous comments similar to “All younger than me, these were exceptional teachers–if they could do it, why can’t I?”

But how can personal autobiography meet the bar of objectivity that is essential to research? Renner (2001), Steiner (1975), and Krall (1988) propose solutions.

This study focuses on the work of Florence Krall (2008) who delineates a model of five “movements”: venturing, remembering, comprehending, embodying, and restoring. According to Krall, retelling a story in these five movements provides a form of control over variables. She calls each stage of recounting rpersonal history a separate lens, wash, or layer of analysis. By superimposing them, a  triangulated story can emerge.

Krall summarizes the process:

We are asked to examine experiences from various perspectives: to recall significant educational experiences and to describe and order them; to stand back from these experiences in a state of critical self-awareness; to look at them from the viewpoint of others and to draw meaning from them by relating them to the larger social context. Finally, we are asked to take a new stand and to act intentionally upon the knowledge gained (Krall 468).

Krall explains she has used this approach in her work with graduate students while warning them that some scholars view the process with skepticism.

Movement 1, Venturing:

Venturing, according to Krall, starts with a disciplined regimen of writing thick descriptions (Geertz, 1973) of experiences that have “special clarity” for the narrator (Krall, p. 469).

Tsunesaburo Makiguchi’s writing of notes could be viewed as his venturing movement. In the current study, the characters feel their posts have meet the bar of providing “special clarity” and are important enough to warrant writing.

Krall next explains that the purpose of this construction of events is to start the process of distancing which is important for reflectivity and critical self-understanding. The goal at this stage is to clarify or discover central questions or issues. The writer now tries to suspend preconceptions, opinions, and judgment.

In the current study, the venturing data comprise the early posts about P-12 education submitted by various characters in the two Reddit Worlds. With time, however, “GuyAgiosNikolaos”  takes on the responsibility of “co-director” for Longhouse Elementary School and subsequently posts more frequently.

Readers begin to understand the personal context–the “what makes him tick” as a teacher–in his earlier posts where he had described his long history of childhood PTSD and additional trauma sustained during the war in Afghanistan. Readers learn he is an autodidactic learner who began earning college credits in non-classroom environments. He has sought a great deal of medical and alternative care to successfully manage his trauma. Now married, Guy became a father, completed his BA and MA degrees, obtained both teaching and supervision certification from his state, and has several years of teaching experience under his belt. He has also come to believe that his past trauma informs his work as a teacher, especially with children who have suffered intergenerational trauma or who have internalized marginalization.

In autoethnographic qualitative studies, hunches are data, too, as long as they are fully disclosed as such. The researcher’s “hunch” here is that much of the “tumbling out” of Guy’s posts are authentic data. Another hunch is that the data, once analyzed, will correlate to the values in “Global Citizenship Education” and “Value-Creative (Soka) Education.”

To note, in both Worlds there are also many posts and comments that are not relevant to this study. However, for those many posts about the development of the Longhouse School, the hunch of the researcher is that they will prove to be the equivalent of Makiguchi’s unorganized scraps of paper notes stuffed into a drawer. They posts and comments clearly are something tangible, but what? According to Barzykowski, Ilczuk and Kvilashvili (2024), there is considerable academic consensus that such data points are acceptable in qualitative research.

Movement 2, Remembering:

Krall holds that the “monologue” that results from venturing contains within it the key to central themes. The next charge is to “recall what stands out and to get at its essence, to open and keep open possibilities”; the point is to isolate and release instances in the story that stand out, “that shine like a light in [a writer’s] memory” (Krall 470).

In the Longhouse School story, the demarcation between the venturing and remembering movements is somewhat fuzzy and without a fixed boundary. But, as time passes on, the pace of the Longhouse narrative hastens and focuses as speculations morph into the pending realities of forming a school and the new movement. Here is the unmarked border where the demarcation line lies.

Movement 3, Comprehending:

Krall states that through the process of venturing and remembering, “common themes repeatedly surface in varied contexts” (Krall 471). But she warns that narrative description alone can risk lapsing into just “creative nonfiction” or self-centered “solipsism.”

Instead, it has to be directed to a dimension of exploring in greater depth. What helps? Krall suggests that the personal journey expressed in the narrative must be tethered to another view. In a sense, a solo becomes a duet. She also points out that this reflective process is one that often raises self-doubt.

Krall has observed that “not infrequently the most meaningful sources are uncovered serendipitously; the book that speaks most directly to [a writer’s] question seems to drop mysteriously into [his/her] hands” (Krall 472).

For GuyAgiosNikolaos, that serendipitous book was Daisaku Ikeda’s *The New Human Revolution-Volume1*, recommended to him by Andinio who thought that the narration about a start-up international Buddhist movement in 1960 could inform the co-founder of a start-up school. Vasyl Sukhomlynsky’s *My Heart I Give to Children* was the serendipitous work that attached to Lolita’s narration. Sukhomlynsky was a Ukrainian educator who describes his work teaching a kindergarten class—and sticking with them for ten years–in rural Ukraine after World War II.

At this point in the narrative, the Longhouse Daycare plans to very quickly pod a second school, Longhouse Elementary School (Longhouse Elem) by transferring the Kindergarten from Longhouse Daycare to the Elementary School for the two final months of the school year, welcoming two first-graders–because of critical personal situations—into a multi-graded K/1 class, and helping two teachers develop their early childhood teacher skills.

“Bernie,” a character in prior r/SGIWhistleblowersMITA posts but not a Redditor, and Guy became co-directors and served as teachers for the two “seed” classes. Lolita signed a contract to be an assistant teacher for the following year and joins them at the end of June. They began an active and successful effort to recruit students, largely from Indigenous and marginalized communities, for the new school year’s first and second grades.

The comprehending phase is marked by seventy-six posts from Guy which cover three months of planning and the opening of Longhouse Elem. Guy’s posts are stylistically different from his venturing/remembering ones. They are identified by a numerical scheme, #1-#76. Each post is tagged with a “Longhouse School Theme” and concludes with keywords for the purpose of future analysis. Each is also specifically tied to a passage in The New Human Revolution—Volume 1. 

Lolita’s posts are not nearly as frequent but they contain some of her favorite passages from Sukhomlynsky. She has read the book several times, but she focuses on his descriptions of his students in their first year at the school, roughly corresponding to the ages of the Longhouse Elem students. The scars of the Nazi invasion were deep and many of Sukhomlynsky’s children had lost parents. Another hunch: there is some kind of equivalence in the learning process between this highly evident and recent trauma and the intergenerational trauma in the DNA of the children from Indigenous and marginalized communities that will populate Longhouse.

The three teach the combined new K/1 classes, gaining insights into Early Childhood best practices, deepening their knowledge of the pre-Columbus Haudenosaunee, and experimenting with community-based education. During the same time, the construction for an extension to the Daycare is all completed. Here, all laid out, was the future site of Longhouse Elem.

In the summer, Heidi, Lolita, Michael—all 17-years old—and Michael’s mother Anita join Guy and Bernie as “consultants” for two months of planning before the school opened.

To note, Krall, in the stage of comprehending, asks for an imaginative and not literal equivalence between the personal and “serendipitous” narratives. The goal is to secure structure and expand perspectives—not one-on-one correspondence.

From reading his book, Guy highlights numerable themes that inspire, resonate with, and amplify his own conceptions of curriculum, leadership, the heart of a teacher, program features, and the needs of the at-risk first and second graders they must prepare to teach. The intergenerational trauma that exists in both the Indigenous and underserved populations from where they are recruiting students is informed by many harrowing stories of Japanese emigres to the United States and Brazil.

Bernie is not an SGI member but Guy shares with her the main thrust of messages he is reading and she has much to offer in return as they become a team.

Krall points out that in the comprehending phase, issues arise that need to be confronted:

Movement 4, Embodying:

“We may be transformed; we may also be consumed. Even with transformation we may temporarily lose our grounding. Our being may be dominated by what we have learned. After excursions into other works, students may lose faith in what they have written, in their word as it stands against the word of others. To regain their bearing, they must integrate what they have comprehended into their experiential matrix” (Krall 472),

In the 76 comprehending movement posts, Guy and Bernie share many of their anxieties. They are stretched by the need to recruit, visit families, and orient all toward the new school year. The construction of the extension is finally completing and they move into two new classrooms. The collaboration with three student consultants from r/LoHeidiLita and one mother consultant starts during the July 4^th weekend.

Then, suddenly, their work stops short when the opportunity to develop a track, indoor pool, and gym in a joint effort with the local town and school district presents itself. Guy and Bernie now must concentrate on winning public support for a prospective public bond issue. Suddenly, the thinking for a vision statement for the new school year is thrust into the hands of the four consultants! The author is now writing through the eyes of new characters who see the world through their own unique lenses.

The new narrators in the embodying movement now choose to summarize what has been learned and developed so far through the mechanism of a “tour” of Longhouse School for a prospective parent and her son. They set the narrative some ten years into the future when all of the school facilities have been completed and the high school is at the point of graduating its first class in a couple of years. Those rising graduates are, in fact, the second graders from that initial year so long ago. They represent the “products” of Longhouse education.

During the tour, the prospective parent and son meet teachers, administrators, students, and fellow parents. During the tour there is a description of the school’s philosophy, program, and goals. All of this is narrative is based on posts from the prior three movements.

The primary author now is Lolita, once a consultant and now the school’s physical education/drama teacher. Also teaching at the imagined school are the other three consultants.

Lolita makes her draft posts as “episodes” on LoHeidiLita. The final version of her description is posted on the “LonghouseSchool” WordPress website. When compared to Reddit, this platform is simply more publicly available for viewing and commenting.

Here, something like a thousand “venturing” and “remembering” Reddit posts, highlighted into seventy-six “comprehending” posts, are now condensed into a narrative of a school tour described in eleven “embodying” posts.

Readers will now have to decide for themselves whether what is presented is an appropriate vehicle for the ideals of the Longhouse. More fundamentally, readers ultimately must consider: “Is this a school to which I would gladly send my own children?” Those anxieties the co-directors challenged in the comprending movement have become believable and assuring stature to the eyes of the visiting parent who  herself is leaning toward sending her son to Longhouse in the new schoolyear.

Movement 5: Restoring

Movement 5, Restoring:

will be written once the new school year commences. Krall describes it as “one of restitution, restoring parity, and compensating. Personal history, analysis, comparisons based on a review of literature and final reinterpretation must be finely balanced” (Krall 473).

This stage involves completing data collection, data analysis, a bibliography, and personal reflections taken from a log the author is keeping.

Reddit provides limited data such as the number of views and likes, geographical locations, comments, etc. The final data analysis, however, will study whether patterns emerge over time. Using the seventy-six Reddit posts in the Comprehending Movement, this entails frequency analyses of the keywords and the nature of the “New Human Revolution Themes.” The eleven segments of the “tour” will be condensed into a single WordPress post as will the multiple parts of this Rationale. Comments from WordPress readers may or may not appear but posted thoughts will also form part of the data.

These will also be incorporated into a final draft to be completed in the 2025-2026 school year and, full disclosure, will also consist of an important part of the author’s coursework.

Next Steps

Perhaps this narrative of Longhouse School will become the stuff of a novel or Netflix series as suggested above. Or, more likely, will gently contribute to the educational ideosphere and inform the efforts of parents, practitioners, supervisors, or policymakers.

Endnotes

 1 Andinio (pseudonym). “Scraps of Paper in a Drawer.” Invited talk at Soka University of America, Aliso Viejo, CA, July 11, 2025.

 2 Makiguchi, Tsunesaburo. 1982. Education for Creative Living: Ideas and Proposals of Tsunesaburo Makiguchi. Edited by Dayle Bethel. Translated by Alfred Birnbaum. Iowa State University.

3  “Tsunesaburo Makiguchi: Value-Creating Pedagogy.” Tsunesaburo Makiguchi: Value-Creating Pedagogy. Soka Gakkai, Accessed August 20, 2025. https://www.tmakiguchi.org/educator/educationalreformer/valuecreatingpedagogy.html

4 Postman, Neil, and Charles Weingartner. 1969. Teaching as a Subversive Activity. New York: Delecorte Press.

 5 Wikipedia. 2025. “Ideosphere.” Last modified 12 June 2024. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideosphere

6  Wikipedia. 2025. “Worldbuilding.” Last modified 18 July 2025. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worldbuilding. Note: see the bibliography in the article.

 7 Wikipedia. 2025. “Butterfly effect.” Last modified 29 July 2025. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_effect

 8 Zumwalt, Karen. 1984. “Teachers and Mothers: Facing New Beginnings.” Teachers College Records 86(1): 138-155. https://doi.org/10.1177/016146818408600115.

9  Joffee, Monte. 2006. “The Value Creation School: A Case Study of Collaborative Leadership in a K-12 Focus School.” Doctoral dissertation, Teachers College, Columbia University.

 10 Wall, Sarah. 2008. “Easier Said than Done: Writing an Autoethnography.” International Journal of Qualitative Methods 79(1). Accessed July 20, 2025. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/160940690800700103#.

11 Wikipedia. 2025. “Structuralist theory of mythology.” Last modified 23 June 2025. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structuralist_theory_of_mythology

 12 Wikipedia. 2025. “Joseph Campbell.” Last modified 10 July 2025. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Campbell

 13 Marsh, Elizabeth J., Andrew C. Butler, and Sharda Umanath. 2012. “Using Fictional Sources in the Classroom: Applications from Cognitive Psychology.” Educ Psychol Revs 24: 449–469. Accessed July 20, 2025. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-012-9204-0.

14 Hrastinski, Stefan. 2025. “Fiction in Research: The Case of Education Fiction.” Policy Futures in Education. Accessed July 20, 2025. https://doi.org/Fiction in research:

15  Ingalls Wilder, Laura. 2016. Little Town on the Prairie. HarperCollins.

16  Ingalls Wilder, Laura. 1943. These Happy Golden Years. New York: Harper & Brothers.

 17 McPhee, John A. 1992. The Headmaster. Frank L. Boyden, of Deerfield. Toronto: Macfarlane Walter & Ross.

 18 Stuart, Jesse.1949. The Thread That Runs so True. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1949.

 19 Renner, Peter Grein. “Vulnerable to possibilities: A journey of self-knowing through personal narrative.” Doctoral dissertation. Vancouver, Canada: The University of British Columbia, 2001.

20 Steiner, George. 1975. After Babel: Aspects of Language and translation. London: Oxford University Press.

 21 Krall, Florence R. 1988. “From the inside out—personal history as educational research.“ Educational Theory, 38(4), 467-479. Also see Krall, Florence R. 1994. Ecotone: Wayfaring on the Margins.” State University of New YoSee also Brooks, k Press. Julia Gates. (1995). “Teaching Like a Mountain: Toward a Poetic Pedagogy of Presence in the Midst of Exposure.“ The College of Wooster. https://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/8231/1/BrooksJG_etd2010.pdf. Contains an excellent summary of the Five Movements.

 22 Geertz, Clifford. 1973. “Thick Description: Towards an Interpretive Theory of Culture.” In The Interpretation of Cultures, 3–32. New York: Basic Books, 1973.

 23 Barzykowski, Krystian, Ewa Ilczuk, and Lia Kvavilashvili. “A Comprehensive Guide to Research Protocols for Collecting and Coding Involuntary past and Future Thoughts.” MethodsX 12, no. June (2024). Accessed July 20, 2015. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mex.2024.102732.

 24 Ikeda, Daisaku. 2017. The New Human Revolution, Vol. 1. Santa Monica, CA: Middleway Press

 25 Sukhomlynsy, Vasil. 2016. I Brisbane, Australia: EJR Language Service Pty. Limited. See also Wikipedia. 2025. “Vasyl Sukhomlysnsky.” Last modified 21 June 2025. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasyl_Sukhomlynsky