The
school's goal is to help children grow strong and happy. In doing
so we prize certain abilities: the abilities to think, to demonstrate
essential academic skills, to be curious and resourceful, to communicate
with oneself and with others, to trust, to be grateful, to wonder.
And we prize certain qualities: honesty, humility, empathy, and
compassion. To
preserve or achieve these attributes, we believe that one must possess
a sense of worth and a sense of belonging - a child who feels alienated
or unsure will be neither a good citizen nor an efficient learner.
Therefore the school's first concern is to be a family, so that
students may be secure enough to be able to appraise their own strengths
and weaknesses, to risk succeeding and failing.
We
believe that confidence derives partly from experience, therefore
that students should have opportunities to participate in many and
varied activities - academic, artistic, social, athletic - intimately
and realistically. A class overnight camping trip is as integral
to the curriculum as is long division, care of a salamander in the
science lab as germane as learning how to study for a test. Students
need not only to read and discuss plays, but write and act them;
not only to listen to symphonies, but play instruments; not only
to participate in sports, but compete in them. There should be time
to practice as well as study democracy; time to teach, as well as
be taught.
Students
also need opportunities to make choices: simple choices - whether or not to
attend carefully to today's test review; and complex choices-whether or not
to show disapproval of an irresponsible act by an important friend. They need
freedom, often encouragement, to make such choices. Mistakes need to have
as realistic consequences as possible, yet if adult intervention is required,
it should be forthright, but also sympathetic and optimistic. Similarly, responsible
conduct should be rewarded as naturally as possible, but when necessary, with
adult confirmation. Finally, we recognize that the most sensible and ambitious
philosophy is achieved only by parents and teachers who maintain high expectations
of themselves and their children, who are patient, and who are not discouraged
by failure, or afraid to love.
