The idea of liberty had to be discovered and understood.
The idea of individual liberty has become so familiar to us that it’s easy to take it for granted. Yet, the idea of liberty had to be discovered and understood. A regime of liberty requires a philosophical explanation and account.
Why, after all, should people live freely? Why shouldn’t they be ruled and controlled without their consent? Why is liberty right, and the alternative wrong? Answering these questions requires an exercise in philosophic reasoning that leads to the idea of liberty.
Each human being possesses a natural right to individual liberty because each human being possesses a free mind capable of reasoning, choosing, and governing the human body that houses a human mind.
Political liberty—the freedom to live as one pleases, to make one’s own choices about how to spend one’s own money and use one’s own property and labor, to unite with fellow citizens and decide how we shall govern ourselves—is the political acknowledgement of the freedom of each human mind.
There are many ways of describing the idea of a free human being governing himself as a form of personal self-government—and a nation of free men and women governing themselves, together, as a form of political self-government. In the Declaration of Independence, that idea was described as: “all men…are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights,” among which are “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
In the most famous list of the three most important unalienable, natural rights, liberty rightfully occupies the central position.
FAQ
No. Waypoints is not a lesson-plan warehouse. It is a curated library of primary sources paired with tutorials that deepen content knowledge and strengthen instruction. There are no student-facing lesson-plans; there are tutorials for teachers. For teachers, Waypoints is more like graduate school than a set of prepared lesson plans.
The Home Plan is ideal for individual learners and homeschooling families.
Organizer and Educator accounts can access the tutorials. Student accounts cannot.
Waypoints is a digital platform for learning and teaching built around beautifully published Primary Source Documents and Teacher Tutorials that reinforce selected Key Ideas of Liberty.
The Home Plan is $199 per year and includes an Organizer account, up to two Educator accounts, and up to four Student accounts.
Yes. Many people use the Home Plan simply for their own access to the Library and Tutorials. If you are a lifelong learner, the Home Plan is for you.
No. The purchase process automatically creates your Organizer account, which includes full access to all Waypoints content.
A Custom Plan is for schools, organizations, or other users whose needs are not fully met by a Home Plan or an Academy Plan. It can include a tailored combination of Educator and Student accounts. Please contact us for a Custom Plan proposal.
Student accounts can access the Library of primary source documents.
Yes, please do! We encourage teachers to use Tutorial content, written or video, any way they find helpful.
The Academy Plan is designed for schools, school districts, and other educational organizations.
For schools and districts, pricing is based on student enrollment. For non-school organizations and businesses, pricing is based on membership or staff size.
Please use the Contact Us page to discuss pricing, onboarding, and implementation.
Educators receive tutorials that illuminate the documents, deepen subject-matter knowledge, and support stronger classroom instruction.
You can go to the Waypoints Library and see the list of titles we have curated stretching across subjects such as American history, political thought, philosophy, economics, and citizenship.
Not yet. Additional titles are being prepared and published on a rolling basis. We will let members know when as more documents are published and uploaded to the Library.
Yes. Waypoints is designed to enrich and elevate existing instruction, especially in history, civics, government, and related courses. A teacher does not need to abandon the textbooks, lesson plans, or other curricula materials that have been used for past instruction. Waypoints is designed as an add-on to the materials teachers have been using and assigning to students.
