Sometimes it is a fascination with the subject studied, a love of pure knowledge. From the outset, we have designed our classrooms to capture children's natural curiosity and to harness the sheer intellectual energy they bring to their discovery of the world. Our purpose has never been to teach a rigid set of skills and facts as ends in themselves, but rather to enable children to use their learning as a tool to winnow the essential from the trivial. Given the unprecedented level of uncertainty about what will be important tomorrow, allegiance to thought, the emphasis on depth, mastery, imagination, passion and adaptability , remains a priority that shapes every aspect of the school's academic program. The middle years at Shady Hill are a time of academic and intellectual consolidation.
Students continue to explore, of course, but they are able to do so with greater understanding.
Having learned to read, they now use imaginative and fact-based literature to master new information and assess its worth. They are capable of more complex number functions in mathematics and the scientific inquiry that allows them to discover principles. Central Subjects bring new understandings about human motivation and behavior. In studying peoples or eras like the Ancient Greeks or Medieval Life, fourth and fifth graders find themselves absorbed in worlds previously unknown to them. With their growing knowledge comes the ability and the desire to research, to write effectively, to begin to perceive and hold opposing points of view.