Pacifica Community
Charter School

About the School

Our goals

1. Build a public charter school community which respects and empowers children within a peaceful, non-authoritarian, multicultural and multiracial environment.
2. Offer children a rich and stimulating curriculum which attends to the full range of their emotional, academic, musical, linguistic and physical education needs.
3. Nurture tolerance, empathy, generosity, global citizenship, optimism and the joy of learning.
4. Promote humanistic education principles and methods within the public school system.
5. Serve our own parents and those of other schools by offering parenting, communications skills and conflict resolution workshops.

Our Philosophy

Children are inherently curious and embrace learning with great joy and energy. We believe children should be the subjects of their own educational experience.

Our charter school will promote active, cooperative and hands-on learning experiences. Children will involve themselves in developing their own curriculum.

Members of the school community will operate on democratic principles, always redefining and clarifying goals so that everyone can work cooperatively toward shared objectives. We expect parents to be intimately involved in school programs and to do their best to apply humanistic education principles in the home. To that end, we offer parenting workshops.

“Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself.” — John Dewey

Like school reform advocate Howard Gardner, we believe that education should nurture the full range of multiple intelligences, not just cognitive skills. We believe the child's emotional development is fundamental to education. Understanding and respecting one's feelings, learning to communicate honestly and effectively with others, and finding and developing one's inner strengths are among the most precious gifts a school can provide its children. Our school will listen to and cherish the authentic voice of every child.

Our approach to tolerance is based upon the conviction that the child who is respected will respect others. We do not shame, blame or manipulate children. Values cannot be taught by lecture or admonition; they are learned through humanistic practice.

“It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.” — Albert Einstein

We believe the self-motivated child can master academic subjects and develop other competencies faster and more thoroughly than the child who is taught to be a passive recipient of knowledge delivered by an authority (teacher).

“A whale ship was my Yale College and my Harvard.” — Herman Melville

We believe experience is as important to learning as books or teachers. We conceive of our school as a home base from which children venture into the world, both through imagination and frequent field trips. We claim the region's diverse neighborhoods, museums, factories, shops, parks and beaches as educational sites for our students' exploration.

“The most extraordinary thing about a really good teacher is that he or she transcends accepted educational methods.” — Margaret Mead

It is not necessary for a new humanistic charter school to "reinvent the wheel." We value and incorporate the experience and wisdom of dozens of alternative school communities which have put humanistic education principles into practice. We acknowledge the training and inspiration some of our members have received from pioneers such as Phyllis Fleishman (Play Mountain Place), A. S. Neil (Summerhill) and Carl Rogers (founder of humanistic psychology). We know there is no simple formula for building a good school or developing a good teacher. By setting high standards for ourselves as parents and teachers, we call forth talent, energy, inspiration and abundant resources for the benefit of children.

We believe that all children - not just those whose families can afford private school - deserve to have the choice of a humanistic education. We are committed to public education and to building a school which is culturally and ethnically diverse.

We aspire to an educational impact beyond a single charter school. We will create an exemplary school which marks alternative paths to public school reform in Southern California. As our students graduate and carry their gifts out into other schools and communities, they will be humanistic education ambassadors. To paraphrase Henry Adams, a good school affects eternity; no one can ever tell where its influence stops.

Our Supporters

We are extremely grateful for the support of the many organizations and individuals who contribute in so many ways to our success.

We welcome comments and questions concerning this statement of educational philosophy; contact Mary Sue (marysue@pacificaschool.org).