The New School Information

The New School is dedicated to helping each child develop, in the ways that are best for him, the skills of rigorous thought, articulate expression, and a joyful engagement in life. Using the time honored methods of dialectic, developed through student inquiry, and grounded in personal responsibility, we seek to help each child develop integrally as they work towards competent adulthood and meaningful engagement in life. The New School works toward these goals by allowing children freedom and power within the school's structures and community that make the meaning and effects of actions directly comprehensible and felt. Needed "lessons" are learned by direct and conscious experience of their value. In this way, each child can come to choose education rather than suffer it. When this happens, learning becomes joyful, energetic, and quick. This idea of guidance without constrictive control is supported by the work of Lev Vygotsky, a Russian educational philosopher, psychologist, and semiotician. He developed the idea of the Zone of Proximal Development or ZPD. It was Vygotsky's belief that children learn by trying things just slightly outside their range of ability, the upper end of their ZPD, and then seeking the aid of someone more knowledgeable. The more knowledgeable other helps the child by letting the child do everything they can for themselves, only interjecting with possibilities or corrections when the child can no longer make progress with the task. Children, by observing the more knowledgeable other, by working with the expert, just as an apprentice works beside the master, learn something beyond their own ability and so progress by expanding their ZPD.