Landmerk Foundation

Mission

Stichting Landmerk wants to help young people by providing them with high-quality education. In doing so, Landmerk mainly focuses on two groups: high-school and university students.

Landmerk’s view on education is founded upon an authentic and optimistic idea of humanity and focuses on broad and deep formation of the intellect. Our education seeks to investigate the big questions such as what is happiness, what is friendship, what is good?

Each Landmerk course aims to train students to become better thinkers, speakers, readers and writers. In this manner, we want to help our students become happy people with a clear and realistic view of the world, a balanced character and a strong ambition to apply their talents and skills to noble purposes.

What does Landmerk do to achieve this mission?

Landmerk offers two types of educational programmes: courses that are organized by Landmerk independently and courses organized in cooperation with high schools. An example of the first type is our ‘Rhetoric in Rome’ program, in which high school students spend a week in Rome, studying texts by Cicero, Quintillian, and Livy and practicing their rhetorical skills by giving speeches in the ancient city itself, e.g. on the Forum and Capitoline Hill. Courses organized in cooperation with high schools are specifically catered to each particular school. Topics range from exercises in rhetoric to Shakespeare to Plato, and the length differs from one morning to a number of weeks. The Landmerk approach remains the same: small classes in which we aim to train students to improve their thinking, speaking and writing skills.

To enable our educational programmes, both now and in the future, we train our own teachers.  Every Monday, these teachers-in-training come together to study and practice. The teachers-in-training programme thus ensures Landmerk has a pool of driven and motivated teachers who believe in our mission and are able to teach in accordance with it.

In addition to providing educational programmes, Landmerk offers scholarships for highly motivated students who want to pursue an education in the liberal arts at a different institution than Landmerk itself. Students can apply for scholarships for summer courses, semesters abroad or individual courses as long as the education offered is in accordance with Landmerk’s mission.

What can you do to contribute?

By making a donation you can help Stichting Landmerk sustain and develop our various programmes, both its education and its scholarship program.

For more information, please visit our website https://www.landmerk.nl, or get in touch with one of our founders, Dr. Jordi Wiersma. You can reach Dr. Wiersma by sending an e-mail to jordi.wiersma@landmerk.nl.