Much has been written about middle school education. Often,
this is a time in a student’s life that is filled with change and anxiety, and
school administrators have begun to scrutinize these sometimes tumultuous years
by thinking about creating learning opportunities outside the traditional
classroom. At Summit, there is a commitment to this thinking and middle school students
are reaping the rewards of a curriculum that allows students to step out into
the real world and learn in a dynamic environment
not bound by walls.
Believe it or not, the idea of formal learning out of the
classroom started in open air sanatoriums that sprung up in Europe in the
latter part of the 19th century. During that time, fresh air and sunshine as
much as medicine were used to treat tuberculosis. The idea extended to Britain
during the first half of the 20th century, with the focus on improving the
health of children who were seen as sickly and susceptible to TB. The schools
had no walls and purposefully harsh but healthy environmental conditions. By
the 1940s, there were 155 open-air schools in Britain and their goal was to
improve both health and academics.
These open-air schools shared much with the philosophy of a
set of schools now thriving in the U.S. known as Outward Bound Schools. Outward
Bound programs are based on a development-by-challenge philosophy, put in place
by the school's founder Kurt Hahn, an eccentric and innovative turn of the
century educator, who believed in the need for real, hands-on, practical
challenges for the development of character in adolescent boys. Hahn emphasized
that Outward Bound was about training the mind through the body, and he
attempted to provide youth with challenging experiences in an educational
environment designed to help kids develop inner strength, character and
resolve. Oxford educated, Hahn developed an educational practice focusing on
active service which was later adopted by the International Baccalaureate, and
it is here where his lasting contribution to primary and secondary education
lies. Educational practices like this led directly to one of our mission statements:
To serve as an excellent preparation for students intending to study in
rigorous college-preparatory high school programs, including IB and AP.
There have been other visionaries too. Vermont native and
educational pioneer John Dewey believed that learning was active and schooling
unnecessarily long and restrictive. His idea was that children came to school
to do things and live in a community which gave them real, guided experiences
to foster their capacity to contribute to society. Dewey felt it was vitally
important that education should not be the teaching of mere fact, but that the
skills and knowledge which students learn be integrated fully into their lives
as citizens and human beings.
I studied these two men intensely while in grad school and
found a lot of merit in their ideas. I know we at Summit do too. Academics are
at the core of our mission, but our mission also states we are here to “to
inspire in students a lifelong love of learning, a desire for self-development,
and good citizenship.” The question of inspiration is one we should really
think about. What inspires our children? What inspires our teaching? By being
reflective I feel, as Hahn does, that we help young people become empowered to
develop their innate abilities "to be the leaders and guardians of
tomorrow's world."
