What is the Mandeville Academy?
The Mandeville Academy is an educational institute for highly talented adolescents. Mandeville Academy defines the term highly talented as follow: people who are more intelligence than 98% of the population. Because highly talented people only number 2% of the general population, their small number makes it difficult to share their special talents, since there’s only a limited amount of peers.
Over three-quarter of highly talented people do not graduate from university. This is because the curriculum of our higher education system insufficiently meets the specific needs and requirements of the highly talented students. They often learn in a different way from other higher-educated students. They have a quicker grasp of the material after which they enjoy making variations on it and connecting it to other problems. This often doesn’t match with the needs of the average student, who benefits from the repetition of the subject matter.
There is no form of higher education recognizing the needs of highly talented students. For this reason, these students regularly underachieve and play truancy and even leave school unqualified. The CVs of many highly talented people catch the eye in that they haven’t finished any school. This means they start their careers unqualified and are unable to gain entrance to the jobs where they would be most effective. This leaves a lot of intellectual potential unused. This should be unacceptable for our society as the Netherlands is a knowledge-intensive society.
Objective
The Mandeville Academy offers an opportunity to a small group of ambitious highly talented adolescents to acquaint themselves with a wide range of academic disciplines at the highest possible quality during one year. They will also acquire indispensible skills enabling them to function at top level and learn to be independent as they will be interned at the Mandeville Academy. After one year at the Mandeville Academy they will have discovered their main interests, having been taught by high-standing teachers in various disciplines and having made a conscious choice about the next step in their academic or professional careers. They will also be a member of the Mandeville Academy alumni network that can serve as a business or personal network for feedback and the sharing of experiences.
Values
Autonomy, setting your own course, is the core value of Mandeville Academy. It is essential for highly talented people to determine their own course, even though this is difficult to realize most of the times. There are simply too little educational routes that do justice to their thinking powers and many talents. In order to go their own way, they need to find their own life’s path and learn to keep on track. They will learn these skills at Mandeville Academy.
Independence is important for the Mandeville Academy. It is the added value of our students; they have more knowledge and skills than the average person. Regular and official higher education institutes do not focus on highly talented student but on the much larger group of averagely talented person. The official higher education institutes have insufficient capacity to accommodate highly talented students in the way that best suits them. For that reason the Mandeville Academy is not an accredited official educational institute, but a completely independent institution.
The Mandeville Academy does not make any distinction based on nationality, skin colour, gender identity or sexual preference, political preference or philosophy. Respect for all is key. Each person who complies with the selection criteria is eligible for the Mandeville Academy. This also goes for people who do not have the funds to pay for tuition.