The end of summer and heading back into the classroom probably isn’t as tough at one of these very real and very interesting schools around the world.
Álfaskólinn
More than half of the population of Iceland thinks elves are real, and that they impishly interfere with human life. A cultural love and appreciation of elves led to Magnus Skarphedinsoon to build an institution with a curriculum that teaches students everything there is to know about the diminutive creatures. Attendees of Álfaskólinn (literally “elf school”) receive a five-hour course on elf customs, elf behavior, elf habitats, and get to dress up like elves before they’re tested on the 13 known varieties of elves.
Charles W. Howard Santa Claus School
Another fictional (sorry, kids) magical being with their own school is Santa Claus, and one of the best department store Santas to ever work at Macy’s created this school in the woods outside Midland, Michigan, to teach others in the fine art of pretending to be St. Nicholas. Nicknamed “the Harvard of Santa schools,” Howard offers rigorous courses in costume, makeup, dancing, singing, Christmas history, pleasant breath maintenance, sign language (for communicating with deaf children), as well as reindeer studies with real animals on the premises. The school looks like a gingerbread house and lasts for three days in October.
Tempest Freerunning Academy
Similar to and often associated and confused with parkour, freerunning is an unstructured solo sport that makes running as exciting and complicated as possible, with participants running up walls and ramps and turning anything they encounter into an obstacle to conquer. It can be as dangerous as it is fun, but then there’s the Tempest Freerunning Academy to teach beginners how to do it properly. The Los Angeles school, operated by freerunners and stunt performers whose talents have graced movies and TV shows, is more or less a huge gym full of padded stuff to run on top of, through, or around.
Hamburger University
While there isn’t a Hamburger University in Hamburg, Germany, there is one in Munich, as well as in Japan, England, Australia, Brazil, China, and Illinois, near the headquarters of its creator, McDonald’s. It’s a serious learning facility with a silly name where attendees — mostly longtime and promising McDonald’s employees on a deep management track — spend months learning everything there is to know about the business of fast food, working toward a degree in Hamburgerology. (Really.) They even get 23 college credits that can be applied to a degree at other universities.
Larry Spring School of Common Sense Physica
Ex-pilot Larry Spring founded a school in his own name in Fort Bragg, California, to teach physics, or his own cutting-edge and not quite proven alternative view of how the universe operates on a scientific level. Mainstream physics holds that light is made up of waves and particles; Spring says that there’s a sphere of pure magnetism, or alternating polarity, that make all electrons go. He calls it common sense physics, and his school has evolved into more of a physical thesis statement and museum on his theories.
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