Integrated Programmes (Part III): Shuttles, Not Spaceships

You will probably have noticed by now that my posts on the Integrated Programmes of Atlantis have titles reminiscent of 1960s American space programmes. This is true for a very good reason. I grew up in that era; I was two years old when the Apollo 11 mission delivered Eagle to the moon, and Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on it. "One small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind." The memes are still alive for me.

Similarly, the launch of the Atlantean Integrated Programmes occasioned much fanfare. When the Temple of the Flaming Book consolidated under its Chinese name on the Hill of Tin, allying with the Ladies of the Southern Ocean, it was a big thing (and a very clever move by the latter, for those who were observing closely). When the Hall of the Gryphons reunited with their sisters to form the Gryphon Academy, it was a big thing (and the Jade-Green Hill is now covered with a sprawling campus in black, white and green, although the sisters remain at a distance). But the convoluted mess that evolved organically from the Citadel of Wyverns and its titular masters of methodology was quite something else.

The thing is that everything was launched as if on Boeing Saturn V rockets. We were promised spaceships, but we ended up with shuttles. From the promise of deep blue ocean navies, we ended up fishing along the littoral in tiny boats (and one fast schooner, which I will get to some time in the next few posts). What do I mean, and how did this come to be? Let me bring you behind the scenes.

On the evening of 28 October 1999, the Argonaut and I drafted the first proposal for the Wyvern Programme. It was entitled 'More, Not Less' and it was a direct riff off the 1997 'Teach Less, Learn More' slogan. In that first draft, we were thinking big, and were encouraged to do so. In our minds, we had nothing less than a grand unification theory, in which every member of the Grand Congregation would have a role to play.

By 2002, things had bogged down. (Of course, by then our names had been removed from the front of the proposal and somebody else's name was on it.) We sat around 'writing songs that voices never shared.' The Hierarchs had been mulling over our proposal for more than a year. And then the Thaumaturge summoned us for two meetings, in April and again in July.

In those meeting, he chastised the Grand Inquisitor for pusillanimous behaviour. He wondered aloud why we had so constrained our great vision. The Thaumaturge was himself a Wyvern, and you could tell that his patience was wearing thin. I watched the Grand Inquisitor sweat. He blustered a bit. I continued taking notes.

We found ourselves in a mighty city upon the Southern Ocean in March 2003. That was when I was stunned when the Grand Inquisitor told me to begin preparing a course in the humanities. It was the beginning of the end—not because the humanities are less than the sciences, but because they are greater, and he had just made me a very large target.

Some time after, we began on the project codenamed 'In His Service'. The original vision was to create a gateway course that would prepare all our students for gainful work in any humanities discipline. After planning a broad and challenging outline, the draft went to committee. I will never forget what happened next.

One by one, various teachers complained the material was too difficult to prepare, and that the students would not be able to handle it. Others complained it was too different from the ordinary courses already being taught. And then, I was accused of empire-building. The course was shredded, reduced, and a new chairperson appointed. The rockets were going to launch shuttles, not spaceships.

The other project I worked on was codenamed 'Capsule'. The Grand Inquisitor had almost named it 'iPod', but we had had to tell him about the penalties for infringement of trademark. He wanted to know who had dared to use that name. We sniggered.

Unfortunately, the other project was taken over by philosophers who fancied themselves mathematicians. Even more unfortunately, Iron Man, who was nominally in charge of the project, found himself blindsided by other people's enthusiasms. I have only one thing to say, and it is found in the writings of St Augustine: "The good Christian should beware of mathematicians and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and confine man in the bonds of Hell." Not that I have anything personal against most mathematicians, you understand.

And so, we entered into the Dark Ages, bearing bright torches that we hoped would illuminate the way. And they did, despite the huge amounts of smoke they gave off.