What We Believe
Our ambitions as both a place of learning and a force in the world go well beyond a pithy
mission statement. The Crossroads School Statement of Philosophy offers a detailed
portrait of our values and our progressive, child-centered approach to education, one that
encourages intellectual bravery and emotional resilience. The Philosophy includes five core
commitments, and we consider these commitments equally important in the lives of our
students. They guide the School in decisions regarding programming and curricula and are
the standards by which we measure our success.
Our Statement of Philosophy
The School was built upon five basic commitments: to academic excellence; to the arts; to
the greater community; to the development of a student population of social, economic,
and racial diversity; and to the development of each student’s physical well-being and full
human potential.
It is the goal of Crossroads School to provide a strong college preparatory program from
which each student will develop a personal commitment to learning, a respect for
independent thinking, and an expanding curiosity about the world and its people. We
consider certain skills to be essential for all graduates: to read well, to write clearly and
coherently, to study effectively, to reason soundly, and to question thoughtfully.
Through the educational process, we assist students in gaining self-esteem, self
knowledge, and respect for the knowledge and opinions of others.
We believe that education must not be a race for the accumulation of facts, but should be
an enriching end in itself. We also believe that education is a joint venture among
students, parents and teachers. To be effective with young people, teachers and parents
must themselves continue to learn, so that they may perceive the young accurately and
treat them wisely. We believe that the arts are an essential part of the curriculum and that
it is important for students to express themselves creatively and to use their imaginations
freely. Therefore, music, drama, visual arts, film, writing and dance are significant parts of
student life at Crossroads.
Through our academic and extra-curricular programs, we seek to promote social, political
and moral understanding, and to instill a respect for the humanity and ecology of the
earth.
We understand that there are many kinds of intelligence, and the traditional academic,
cognitive area is one. Other important areas of intelligence are intuition, imagination,
artistic creativity, physical expression and performance, sensitivity to others and self
understanding. To neglect any of these areas is to limit students in the development of
their full human potential.
We believe that the uniqueness of children is revealed in their very existence and that it is
the School’s responsibility to foster their innate sense of the mystery and joy of life.