Future Builders Academy Curriculum

Future Builders Academy – Core Curriculum

The OSE Future Builders Academy (FBA) is a 4 year apprenticeship and immersion program with hands-on, immersive learning dedicated to world-building for real. We have an apprenticeship which teaches young people, career-shifters, and entrepreneurs interested in starting or optimizing their business with open source collaboration - to change the world for a living.

Our program is based on hands-on design-build of just about anything. The supporting learning curriculum is built around three core pillars:

1. Architectures of Civilization
2. Learning How to Learn
3. Learning How to Be a Human

We learn the above by doing: by building the things that we study. Learning how to be a human is the basis of sound design decisions. Learning how to learn allows us to absorb integrated knowledge - which would be impossible otherwise due to the large scope of integrated knowledge. Architectures of civilization are the way society works: its technologies and institutions. In our program, we learn to build the future that we want to live in.

1. Architectures of Civilization

This is the study of both the technosphere (human-made technologies) and human institutions (social, political, and economic systems). We ask two key questions:

• What are the essential working principles of each?
• How can we evolve them into more beneficial, sustainable forms?

In essence, this is a study of humanity’s role as a steward of the planet.

Practically, we start with the Global Village Construction Set (GVCS) — a core toolkit of technologies that make up about 10% of the entire material economy. We break these down to their building blocks, studying the mechanisms, algorithms, and first principles that make both nature and technology function. It’s like learning to build civilization with LEGO bricks.

Our first focus is housing — because it is a universal need, a global crisis, and a practical way to fund our work by building homes.

2. Learning How to Learn (LtL)

This is about mastering literacies — not just reading and writing, but all the ways humans can be competent in the world. There are around 100 key literacies, from technical and scientific to emotional and collaborative. Many people are unaware that most of these even exist — and that they can be deliberately studied and improved.

Metalearning — or “learning how to learn” — starts with recognizing your own ignorance, mapping out the full landscape of possible literacies, and then systematically developing them. This is a lifelong practice.

We also study multiple intelligences — different types of natural aptitudes. Importantly, high intelligence in an area doesn’t guarantee high performance; you still need practice. Similarly, you can achieve high literacy in an area even if your innate aptitude is average, through consistent work.

We reject the idea of “born genius.” Genius is made through effort and practice. Neuroplasticity — the brain’s ability to rewire itself — means that any skill, intelligence, or literacy can be developed with dedication. The key question is: Do you want to learn it? If yes, improvement is inevitable, and excellence is possible.

3. Learning How to Be a Human (LtH)

LtH is a specialized part of Learning How to Learn, focusing on the human side of life:

• Ability to collaborate openly - the cultural and technical skills of collaborative literacy
• Organizational and leadership skills
• Social and emotional intelligence
• Psychological and spiritual growth
• Civic engagement and collaboration

It’s about relationships between people, rather than between people and technology. In our model of intelligences and literacies, LtH draws heavily from the interpersonal, intrapersonal, and civic domains.

How It Works

See more at Future Builders Academy - How It Works

Our Method and Goal

We teach and practice Integrated Design, Integrated Learning, and Integrated Enterprise — producing people who are Integrated Humans. Our work blends:

• Extreme Education — fast, immersive, comprehensive learning
• Extreme Enterprise — building real economic value while learning
• Extreme Design and Manufacturing — creating technology for abundance

Our ultimate aim is to cultivate an abundance mindset — a way of thinking and acting that generates material and spiritual wealth for all.

The Future Builders Academy is, at its core, an experiment in creating genius — and in documenting how quickly and effectively it can be done.

Keywords: Architectures of Civilization, Learning How to Learn, Learning How to Be a Human, Global Village Construction Set, Literacies, Intelligences, Neuroplasticity, Neuroplastic Sublimation, Integrated Design, Integrated Learning, Integrated Enterprise, Integrated Human, Extreme Enterprise, Extreme Education, Extreme Design, Extreme Manufacturing

Future Builders Academy Goals

One goal is deliver the GVCS at commercial product while maintaining full open source by 2028 at a $50M budget, followed by opensourcing the entire technosphere by 2036. This in on the timeline of the Singularity, and is a contender to potential negative outcomes. Our risk-mitigation stretegy consists of the Collaborative Singularity: teaching open collaboration techniques for of win-win creativity towards abundance - or prosperity at scale. This is not about technology, but about transforming mindsets into those of abundance.

Rough rollouts on the technology front are shown at Roadmaps. Our Status of Completion is about 30% - or 2% depending on whether we are counting product or enterprise release. Our rollout on abundance mindset creation starts with the Future Builders Academy - started in earnest in 2025 with its 4 year apprenticeships and shorter-term programs.

To get there, we are pursuing Collaborative Literacy towards swarm collaboration on the scale of thousands, accompanied by reification on a square mile with population of 10000 as a prototype experimental community of tomorrow. The Future Builders Academy is the prerequisite education program to get there.

Program Structure

• The program involves personally-tailored curriculum for each participant - with a Learning Plan session at the beginning of each apprentice's journey. The exact nature of the custom curriculum depends on the student's Learning Plan.
• Each student learns 20 trades for integrated house construction. Given that construction is brutal work, the goal for the cohort is to find the most difficult parts and solve them - by improving process design, developing related machines, or developing automated toolchains.
• Each participant is a collaborator in the larger OSE goal of open-sourcing civilization. Each person engages in collaborative, swarm-based development of a new product (one of the 50 GVCS technologies or its sub-components) as part of their 4 year journey, with a final project of building and presenting an enterprise concept around this product.
• Program location is at the Open Source Ecology facility in the Kansas City area, Missouri, USA. Remote options are possible - if you have access to workshop/prototyping facilities and capital for materials so you can do builds alongside with us. You can travel to select Extreme Build events on site - where we do swarm builds on the time scale of a week. Please discuss this with us if you are interested in remote participation. Remote participation can work when you already have facilities - such as a working farm of manufacturing operation - and you would like to optimize your methods with open source collaboration where you share your results with the rest of the world.
• The program starts with a 2 week Future Builder Crash Course, for rapid learning of build skills. Students may eventually choose to participate in leadership or other roles in lieu of direct crash course participation.
• Each quarter continues with more house builds, such as in the Hangar to accommodate a number of DIY house builds based on learnings from the Builder Crash Course. Thus, students participate in up to one full house build every month. The program design of 24 students in a cohort allows for such high build velocity and thus accelerated learning.
• Basic student program involves 2 days of work study performing real builds - starting with Seed Eco-Homes. This builds upon the Builder Crash Course as a rapid-learning introduction to the overall house build process.
• We spend time in the Rapid Learning Facility (RLF)- learning from modular education kits, documenting, collaborating, and otherwise building core Collaborative Literacy competency.
• We can offer up to 24 scholarships to all outstanding candidates, with a $600 living stipend each month. Each scholarship lasts the full year, including the summer if students choose to spend the summer at our campus. Students can apply for the scholarship each year.
• To qualify for a scholarships, the candidate must commit to full time engagement with a goal completing the 4 year program. After graduation, the student must either continue their studies with OSE on site, or work with OSE on site for a minimum of 2 years from program completion.
• Students must commit to ideals of universal access to prosperity, by developing the Zero Marginal Cost Society - of which the Global Village Construction Set is an essential component. The overall campus experience is intended to be an earnest experiment of starting a prototype model community of tomorrow (as in Disney's original EPCOT Center mission).
• The core goal of the program is to equip students with the skills to become system tranformers. Students study systems ('Civilization Architectures') by building them from scratch as part of their curriculum - and then work on improvements to evolve outdated or broken systems.
• Successful graduates may be invited to stay at the core OSE campus as part of the civilization reboot experiment. As part of an integrated civilization experiment, we are also developing various social security programs including on-site medical facilities, retirement living, hospice, Universal Basic Assets infrastructures, bank, insurance company, and legal services infrastructure, among others.

Competency-Based Performance

The first few weeks of the program will focus on skill acquisition and competency testing. We will design and build rapid learning stations - by producing learning kits for each area of study. Examples are: tools, techniques, water, plumbing, electrical, structural modules, and all other skill sets required. This combines computer workstations for watching videos, video capture for capturing data and time lapse footage during builds, and learning kits of prepared parts. This is combined with FreeCAD file viewing and reading of technical blueprints for every aspect of the build.

As part of our 4 year program, build performance data will be documented for the purpose of open enterprise development. For students whom OSE hires, pay scale will be determined transparently by competency testing. Such competency testing will also enable any graduates to determine pay scales if starting their own enterprise.

Future Builders Academy – 4-Year Pathways to Mastery

We offer three competency-based training tracks designed to prepare participants for high-impact roles in open-source building and enterprise leadership. All tracks combine on-the-job training, Rapid Learning Facility (RLF) skill development, and collaborative literacy training, measured in college credit-hour equivalents for transparent, recognized value.

Work-Study Component (All Tracks)

• Base: 3 credit hours equivalent of on-the-job training.
• Enhanced Credit: May count for more if the apprentice actively takes on leadership, documentation, or management roles.
• Structure: Real production builds in controlled environments or in the field.

1. Builder Track

Purpose: Develop highly skilled builders with documented competencies for immediate hire.

Program Highlights:

• On-the-Job Training: 3 credit hours – live builds (module production or field projects).
• RLF Practice: 3–6 credit hours – skill-building with kits; collaborative literacy in design, build, and documentation.
• Total Credits: 6–9 credits equivalent.
• Work Commitment: 3–5 days/week.
• Age Requirement: None (competency-based; tool restrictions may apply for minors).

Outcome After 4 Years:

• Expected Starting Pay: $72,000/year (pending competency documentation).
• Annual Cost: $5,023.

2. Civilization Designer Track

Purpose: Train designers, builders, and engineers capable of creating integrated infrastructure systems without leading large crews.

Program Highlights:

• Work-Study: 3 credit hours – 2 days/week in production builds.
• RLF Practice: 1 day/week for 3–6 credit hours – hands-on skill development across multiple technology areas.
• Classroom Learning: 6 credit hours – literacies, intelligences, and interdisciplinary design.
• Total Credits: 12–15 credits equivalent.
• Time Commitment: minimum 3 days on site, 1 day of classes can be taken remotely - for 4 total days of class and work-study outside of homework, study time, independent projects, etc.

Outcome After 4 Years:

• Expected Starting Pay: $72,000/year+ (pending competency documentation).
• Annual Cost: $15,070.

3. Enterprise Track

Purpose: Prepare leaders to run swarm build crews (24-person teams) for production or educational builds. This also applies to remote participants who are interested in optimizing their own existing enterprise.

Program Highlights:

• Work-Study: 3–6 credit hours – 2 days/week, with leadership and management responsibilities.
• RLF Practice: 6–9 credit hours – advanced skill mastery; leadership in collaboration/documentation.
• Leadership Training: Learn-to-Lead (LtL) & Learning How to Be a Human (LtH) – 6 credit hours of executive, interpersonal, and leadership skills.
• Total Credits: 15–21 credits equivalent.
• Age Requirement: None (competency-based; tool restrictions may apply for minors).
• Time Commitment: minimum 3 days on site, 1 day of classes can be taken remotely - for 4 total days of class and work-study outside of homework, study time, independent projects, etc.

Outcome After 4 Years:

• Expected Starting Pay: $95,000/year (pending competency documentation).
• Annual Cost: $20,090.

Future Builders Academy - Tracks Comparison

Civilization Design Requires a Civilization-Scope Learning Method

In order to achieve OSE's mission of creating a collaborative, win-win world - we start with re-imagining what a benign civilization would look like. We keep the big picture in mind, in the sense that the failure to imaging how a civilization should be designed in order to prosper - may be the answer to the Fermi Paradox in that a civilization will exterminate itself due to various bad practices such as stupidity or nuclear annihilation. We don't know, but we sure do not want our current civilization to prove the Fermi Paradox by demonstrating that peak ignorance leads to the extinction of otherwise sentient life.

To design a benign civilization, we must wrap our heads around a vast topic: the physical world, the human technosphere, institutions - literally everything on earth as informed by history and the cosmos. To this end - we study the design of known human enterprise and its institutions - and how they interact with the natural world - of which humans are a part.

Given this topic is of an impossible scope - it's a perfect question to solve. Just how can we understand everything - or how do we understand just enough - so that we can influence the course of civilization in the positive direction? This is an important question, and we take this question seriously.

To gain the most insight, we approach this problem from multiple angles to incentivize broad, multifaceted, rapid learning:

1. We learn how to build things. And especially physical things. Learning this is perhaps the single most empowering skill that human can gain. Humans have exceeded all other animals in their ability to shape the environment to their will, through the use of tools. Gaining this skill provides immense insight into not only how things work, but also to affecting how things work - to deliver the agency that constitutes one of humanity's most compelling needs and features.
2. We learn how to design things. Of a wide scope, from the technosphere, to terraforming, to institutions. If we want to build things, we need to understand how to design them.
3. We learn how to solve problems, to think, and to form accurate mental models of reality.
4. We learn how to learn. This is a topic I wish I learned in school.
5. We learn by teaching. This is even more powerful than immersion, hands-on learning.
6. We learn How to Be a Human
7. We use an Integrated Learning Method.
8. We appreciate complexity and emergent phenomena. Everything is connected to everything else, and the only constant is change. Integration leads to emergence, leads to transcendence of problems, leads to sublimation.
9. Multilevel Learning - flat teams without glass ceilings, marked by humility of team members
10. Multiple Intelligence Learning - present information in a way that can be understood in by people of different cognitive strengths/types or learning styles. See Multiple Intelligence
11. Stoic Learning - in the sense that you willfully put yourself in difficult situations in order to learn from them. In other cases, necessity is the mother of all invention. It is a necessity-motivated version of problem-based learning. This has to do with developing Antifragility
12. Service Learning - Every year, we plan a service trip to a select location worldwide, to tackle an important issue of human progress. We teach character by service learning. This happens during summer vacations and spring break trips.
13. Enterprise Learning - working mostly on the economic enterprise aspect, a strong motivator for financial independence.
14. Rapid Learning Facility
15. Lving Lab - We do not only study - but actually practice the things that we learn. To this end, we are engaging in a real, living experiment of creating a functional and replicable experimental prototype community that can serve as a model of human possibility. This was the original mission of the EPCOT Center prior to turning into an amusement park enterprise model.
16. Competency-Based Learning - our curriculum is designed for a 4 year learning period, but can be done faster in case of exceptional individuals or those with significant skill sets. Students will contribute to definining transparent competency standards, based on their cohort's performance.

Apply!

• Future Builders Academy Application

Links

• Future Builders Academy Contract