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Guiding Principles

Student in woods on campus
  1. The school should recognize the child as an individual with individual differences, and  an inherent right to develop these differences.
  2. The school should set up the schedule with freedom to develop these differences.  There  should be freedom, but freedom with control.
  3. The school should see to it that the child must be trained to become an independent thinker,  to express himself/herself freely and accurately, free of embarrassment or self-consciousness, and to assume responsibility and carry it through to a successful end.
  4. The school should provide a classroom atmosphere of child-teacher cooperation, as  opposed to the teacher-dominated classroom.  The teacher should be a source of informed  assistance to whom a child can go for direction in his/her search for desired material.
  5. The school should have teachers sufficiently rich in background to enable them to provide classroom material that will spark a child’s imagination, keep it alive, and encourage each  child to want to know more.
  6. The school should make a child aware of his/her immediate world, his/her place in that environment, and his/her responsibility in global issues.
  7. The school should cultivate in each child a spirit of courtesy, an appreciation for individual differences, and respect for the opinion of others.
  8. The school should open a child’s eyes to the wonders of nature, the stars, the universe and  the world around them.
  9. The student must be led to appreciate the beauty in literature and the fine arts and should be encouraged to create any or all of them.
  10. The child should be made to understand that the so-called tool subjects (reading, writing,  and arithmetic) are means of securing the goals toward which one strives and to this end each child must become proficient.