Our Mission Statement...
It is our mission to provide a philosophical and practical education for all students, an education that features creativity and inquiry, encourages habitual reading and productivity, as well as self-reflection and original thought. We agree with Socrates that the "unexamined life is not worth living,” and it is our desire to prepare students to live thoughtful and meaningful lives. We are committed to inspiring the love of learning in our students.
This mission can best be accomplished in a school that is a democratic community. As a democratic community, we strive to exemplify the values of democracy: mutual respect, cooperation, empathy, the love of humankind, justice for all, and service to the world.
The James Baldwin School is college preparatory. Our curriculum and pedagogy prepare students for the rigors of college work and motivate them to desire and plan for a higher education. In preparing students for college we believe that we move students toward higher levels of intellectual engagement while they are in high school.
It is our mission, as well, at the James Baldwin School, to provide a haven for students who have previously experienced school as unresponsive to their needs as individuals. We wish for all students to find their voice and to speak knowledgeably and thoughtfully on issues that concern their school, their world. We aid students in this endeavor by personalizing our learning situations, by democratizing and humanizing the school environment, and by creating a “talking culture,” an atmosphere of informal intellectual discourse among students and faculty.
In order to achieve this, we intend…
It is our mission to provide a philosophical and practical education for all students, an education that features creativity and inquiry, encourages habitual reading and productivity, as well as self-reflection and original thought. We agree with Socrates that the "unexamined life is not worth living,” and it is our desire to prepare students to live thoughtful and meaningful lives. We are committed to inspiring the love of learning in our students.
This mission can best be accomplished in a school that is a democratic community. As a democratic community, we strive to exemplify the values of democracy: mutual respect, cooperation, empathy, the love of humankind, justice for all, and service to the world.
The James Baldwin School is college preparatory. Our curriculum and pedagogy prepare students for the rigors of college work and motivate them to desire and plan for a higher education. In preparing students for college we believe that we move students toward higher levels of intellectual engagement while they are in high school.
It is our mission, as well, at the James Baldwin School, to provide a haven for students who have previously experienced school as unresponsive to their needs as individuals. We wish for all students to find their voice and to speak knowledgeably and thoughtfully on issues that concern their school, their world. We aid students in this endeavor by personalizing our learning situations, by democratizing and humanizing the school environment, and by creating a “talking culture,” an atmosphere of informal intellectual discourse among students and faculty.
In order to achieve this, we intend…
- To restore a true understanding of the First Amendment: that freedom of expression is the highest democratic right and must be therefore taken seriously, and that democracy can only continue if opinions are based on evidence and meaningful thought;
- To encourage students to become passionate thinkers, seekers of truth and beauty, advocates for justice;
- To create an environment in which individuality is respected and cherished, an environment in which human beings are valued for the content of their character and the quality of their thought;
- To address the problem of student cynicism through promoting intellectual behaviors which lead to students’ discovery of their own humanity and the value of human life, human feeling, human culture, human history, and the human endeavor;
- To promote an ongoing dialogue about the educational process, and to create an atmosphere of mutual intellectual and artistic endeavor in which students and teachers learn from each other;
- To cultivate the natural idealism of youth through promoting and honoring community work, and to acknowledge and engage the vital inter-dependency of the practical and the philosophical by creating meaningful external learning situations in the community at large;
- To advocate for peace and non-violence through an understanding of history, modeling respect and mutual esteem, and actively exploring and promoting alternatives to hurtful conflict in the realms of both interpersonal and political life;
- To provide moral alternatives and to help students become morally sensitive people, and to establish the connections between the academic disciplines and moral action, the connections between learning and community, thereby creating a just community in our school;
- To employ the best progressive principles of education, to promote emotional as well as intellectual development, and to cultivate the various learning styles and intelligence present in all students. To this effect, we advocate that depth of inquiry, not coverage of material, guide classroom instruction.
