When trying to present an idea or vision, one important aspect of the presentation is establishing a central idea that will stick in their minds long after the remainder of the prose has faded.

For instance, take this:

“Because curricula would be problem and goal-oriented, spanning diverse subjects, and chosen primarily by students in accordance with their own goals, and because performance would be measured by proficiency rather than completion of a set number of credits, graduates of such a university would emerge highly versatile, with the insight, confidence, and experience required to pursue not only the challenges that society will set before them, but their own private visions of how the world should be. In fact, because students tailor their own experiences and can easily change fields without losing time due to our proficiency-oriented measure of progress and our goal-directed curriculum, they will have already exercised a great deal of personal choice, ensuring that their values are fully developed and their ultimate visions are well-defined and inline with their training. In short, they would satisfy the criteria for personal advancement set forth in Maslow’s concept of self-actualization or Dabrowski’s positive disintegration. Polymath graduates would not only be well-versed, but further along in their human development and realization of their potential.”

Very few people will read through that whole paragraph, and very few of those who do will actually understand and remember it all. But the one message that the paragraph (and the text of the site as a whole) conveys is:

“We are going to train polymaths”.

That’s it. In an honest world, I could trim the text down to this sentence and be done with it.

Even though this is the primary thematic idea people take away from the text, it’s a very powerful and compelling one. It captures the very essence of the vision, and thus represents the project’s goals. Those who agree with it resonate with the goals of the project and very often become its most ardent supporters.

This is a natural consequence of idea-orientation as well – the prose grows around an idea because that is the way the writer is thinking. It’s a component of natural leadership.