The Scarsdale Education for Tomorrow

Background

The 21st Century presents new economic, environmental, political, and social challenges. Our work is to empower Scarsdale graduates to engage successfully with these emerging forces, not to be controlled by them. This work is consistent with our Mission.

The Mission is to "enable our youth to be effective and independent contributors in a democratic society and an interdependent world." We are doing this by pursuing three inter-related goals:

To prepare our students for effective participation in an interdependent world
To develop minds and spirits to inspire a love of learning
To foster decent, responsible, contributing citizens (non sibi)

At strategic planning sessions, professional staff reached informal consensus on the following curriculum overview, comprising subject content, higher order thinking; technological knowledge and certain behaviors, dispositions and capacities. We will revise and improve this curriculum as our understanding grows.

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The goals are not new, nor is the learning that follows from them. These include:

an ability to think and express oneself well;
an understanding of the human experience and the natural universe;
knowledge of oneself and others;
a disposition to make a positive difference.

However, our graduates will need not only to employ the best of traditional scholarship, but also to discover new knowledge and find new solutions. Much of what they must understand cuts across or does not fall within the bounds, or "silos," of the traditional disciplines. We might consider this a core curriculum plus.

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