1.3 - Philosophy

Assumptions about how one learns, the purposes and goals of learning, and what constitutes effective teaching define an educational philosophy. The School's educational philosophy is agency education.  It informs our decisions on how knowledge, skills and democratic values should be taught and how students, parents, and teachers should work together to accomplish that part of education that occurs in schooling. 

 

Agency education has as its metaphor a journey.  The journey is the individual's own quest in life and includes responsibility for one's own education, which is a lifelong endeavor.  The purpose of a liberal education is to lead young people on just such an odyssey of the mind and heart, which is to lead them to self-reliance.  The classical allegories for a liberal education, such as the journeys of Odysseus, Aeneas, and Faust, represent a journey of the soul from one's particular time, place, and attachments to the universal and back again.  The beauty of this journey is its applicability to the actual development of mind, heart, skills and knowledge in each child.

 

Children begin their cognitive development by first developing a broad framework of knowledge through early acquisitional curiosity, much like they acquire their early spoken vocabulary.  After they have gained a wide familiarity with literature, history, science, math, music, people, and places, as one does in the early years of Core Knowledge, they begin to appreciate patterns and forms.  Following this, particularly when trained in the Thinking Framework, or Habits of Mind, the student is able to engage in mental modeling, which is possible only when one's broad background knowledge allows her/him to associate ideas and to observe patterns.  By continuing the habits of mind, and the search for patterns, discernment is applied to deeper levels of knowledge, enabling one to solve problems and exercise judgment.

 

The beginnings of the moral journey are along a similar course.  At first the focus is obedience to parental authority.  Later the child focuses on rules, or the required patterns of expectation.  As in writing or thinking, it is only through the formation of good habits that the ability to act and act wisely becomes instinctive.  As those habits become more and more internalized, the student journeys closer to self-reliance.