THE MISSION OF WOOSTER SCHOOL

Wooster's mission is to maintain a school for the intellectual, spiritual, ethical, aesthetic, and physical development of boys and girls of diverse backgrounds.  Since its founding it has been guided by four cardinal principles of Religion, Intellectual Excellence, Simplicity, and Hard Work.  We believe that racial, social, economic, religious, and cultural diversity in the student body, staff, and Board of Trustees is central to the school's educational mission and values.

WOOSTER'S PHILOSOPHY

Wooster students are rigorously taught in a liberal arts tradition. The learning of basic skills and techniques --- reading, writing, computing --- leads to acquired knowledge and understanding in both science and the arts and eventually should lead to the exercising of a balanced judgment.

Because education takes place at all times, at work and at play, with teachers and with students, Wooster tries not to be an exclusive school but an inclusive school and to use diversity as a means of achieving a sense of genuine community.

Individual growth seldom takes place outside a social context, and so the school puts what it believes to be proper emphasis on the life of the community as well as of the individual student.For this reason, a Self-help system, an honor code, and student responsibility for many aspects of discipline have been a part of Wooster's traditions ever since its founding.

Wooster believes that education in the truest sense is moral as well as intellectual.Therefore, the school's diversity also reflects a deeply religious conviction that there is value and dignity in the individual because all of us are children of God. Such a belief can be narrow and parochial or boundless and liberating. Wooster believes that its faith is of the latter persuasion. We try to express this faith through our actions, seeing as the most important expression of our religious heritage our Self-help system, racial diversity, and our attempts when dealing with people to temper justice with mercy, to revere patience, and to put the individual ahead of the institution whenever possible.

Finally, but not incidentally, Wooster School seriously tries not to take itself too seriously, tries to remember that laughter is a uniquely human gift, and tries to teach young people to gain perspective by developing the ability to laugh at themselves.

Such has been and is now the essential philosophy of this school.