The School of Life is an educational company that offers advice on life issues. It was founded in 2008 and has branches in London (headquarters), Amsterdam, Berlin, Istanbul, Paris, São Paulo, and Taipei.
The company offers a variety of educational content and services covering finding fulfilling work, mastering relationships, achieving calm, understanding and changing the world.
The company also offers psychotherapy and
bibliotherapy
Bibliotherapy (also referred to as book therapy, reading therapy, poetry therapy or therapeutic storytelling) is a creative arts therapy that involves storytelling or the reading of specific texts. It uses an individual's relationship to the co ...
services and runs online and physical shops.
The company has a channel on YouTube, with over 7 million subscribers; it publishes one new video a week.
History
The School of Life, founded by a number of writers and thinkers, including author
Alain de Botton
Alain de Botton (; born 20 December 1969) is a Swiss-born British author and philosopher. His books discuss various contemporary subjects and themes, emphasizing philosophy's relevance to everyday life. He published ''Essays in Love'' (1993) ...
and curator Sophie Howarth, is assisted by psychotherapists, artists, and educators. The faculty includes philosophers
Mark Vernon,
Robert Rowland Smith, and
Roman Krznaric.
Publishing
In 2016, The School of Life started its own publishing press, The School of Life Press. It has published over fifty books so far - including a range of titles on mental health for children. In 2019, a collection of the School of Life's ideas was published under the title: 'The School of Life: An Emotional Education.'
Books
* ''Great Thinkers'' (2016)
* ''Relationships'' (2017)
* ''How to overcome your childhood'' (2018)
* ''Anxiety'' (2019)
* ''Big Ideas for Curious Minds'' (2019)
* ''What they forgot to teach you at school'' (2020)
Criticism
The School of Life has been criticized for its inaccurate representations of philosophers and its weak philosophical arguments. The ''
Los Angeles Review of Books
The ''Los Angeles Review of Books'' (''LARB'' is a literary review magazine covering the national and international book scenes. A preview version launched on Tumblr in April 2011, and the official website followed one year later in April 2012. ...
'' has criticized a series of books by the School of Life as being a "vortex of jargon pitched somewhere between the banal banter of daytime talk shows and the schedule for a nightmarish New Age retreat." Professor Hans-Georg Moeller of the
University of Macau
The University of Macau (UM; Portuguese: ''Universidade de Macau'', Chinese: 澳門大學) is an internationalised public comprehensive university in Macau. The UM campus is located in the east of Hengqin Island, Guangdong province in Mainland ...
has criticized the School's video on
Lao Tzu
Laozi (), also known by numerous other names, was a semilegendary ancient Chinese Taoist philosopher. Laozi ( zh, ) is a Chinese honorific, generally translated as "the Old Master". Traditional accounts say he was born as in the state of ...
, stating that it used fabricated quotes and misrepresented the ''
Dao De Ching''.
References
External links
*
''The Book of Life'', online database material produced by ''The School of Life''* Officia
YouTube Channel
{{DEFAULTSORT:School Of Life
2008 establishments in England
Education in London
Education-related YouTube channels
Works by Alain de Botton
YouTube channels