R-MA Visits Twin Oaks

On Saturday March 21st, Randolph-Macon Academy students from the Utopian/Dystopian Literature class, along with Mr. Brandon Sloan and Mr. Bryan McCabe, went on a field trip to the Twin Oaks Community, a small independent community based on the ideas in B.F. Skinner's novel Walden Two. Skinner's 1948 novel, which the class read at the beginning of the third quarter, details a utopian society based in part on the tenets of Skinner's work in the field of behaviorism. 

In the aftermath of the novel's publication, several small communities sprung up across the United States, attempting to employ the behaviorist's community model. One of these communities, Twin Oaks, founded in 1967, is located in Louisa, VA, near Charlottesville and Richmond.

The R-MA group took a three-hour walking tour to explore some of the community's 400+ acres, to learn about its overall communal structure, and to view its hammocks manufacturing and tofu businesses.