Commonwealth School

Name: Commonwealth School
Address: Commonwealth School, 151 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston,, Massachusetts, 02116, US
Telephone: +16172667525

The mission of Commonwealth School is to educate young people from diverse backgrounds to become knowledgeable, thoughtful, and creative adults, capable of careful analysis, fruitful cooperation, responsible leadership, and deep commitment.

Commonwealth aims to be a school:

With the highest standards of academic excellence
Where students learn to think for themselves, to exercise responsibility and initiative in their actions
With a community of talented teachers and promising students from diverse backgrounds
That takes maximum advantage of its rich urban setting
Where arts are a vital element of daily life
That equips students to use a wide range of tools for inquiry and research effectively
That promotes physical and emotional health and fitness
That provides the friendly atmosphere of a small, supportive community
That helps students establish the foundation for rewarding and productive lives

Our gifted and accomplished teachers set the highest standards in keeping with our mission and work hard to help their students meet them. In the liveliness and warmth of a small yet richly varied community, classmates' talents and curiosity often generate much of the excitement.

As they move through grades 9-12, our students develop a large shared frame of reference: cell biology, visual and performing arts, Greek and Roman history, Hamlet, and their collective creativity and sense of humor. They also learn about the city around them formally and informally, through courses, independent projects, and community service.

"To become knowledgeable, thoughtful, and creative adults, capable of careful analysis, fruitful cooperation, and deep commitment." This commitment is the aim of a liberal education. Liberal education is an idea that the high-pressure world often takes a back seat to education as training, as giving students the skills necessary for success and leadership.

Equipping students with those skills is essential, and the trajectory of our alumni's lives confirms that they leave the Commonwealth prepared to flourish. Commonwealth alumni have overseen the development of predictive search at Google and run the New York City Department of Transportation. They have advised American presidents. Some teach physics, history, math, English, economics, philosophy, and classics at leading universities. Our alumni have founded theater and puppet troupes. They play in renowned chamber ensembles, they direct and act in feature films, write and produce TV series. They have set up and run nonprofits to provide medical care to young women in west Africa. The pilot commercial jetliners and Navy fighters. One has gone from chief counsel for Massachusetts's governor to a career in opera and back to the law, now serving as Assistant State Solicitor in the Attorney General's office.

When our alumni visit, they all talk about the critical importance of the skills they developed at Commonwealth—those of reading closely, writing clearly, and thinking critically. They talk about training.

But they also talk, as that senior did, about the way the school shaped their characters and lives. A liberal education, to trace the idea back to its origins, is an education for freedom ("liberal" and "liberate" come from the same root): It aims for the fullest development possible of one's human faculties, which empowers one to live fully and freely. It is important to us that in all of our work, our students develop the capacity for deeper and more meaningful engagement with all life's experiences, the moral imagination necessary for thoughtful, ethical living, and the knowledge and commitment that informed and engaged citizenship requires. As our students learn to listen and respond attentively to classmates in English and science class, as they work together to cook a meal at our Hancock weekend or wash dishes after lunch here at school, and as they reflect with friends on the lessons of love presented with such rich humor in our winter play, Almost Maine, they are gaining the depth, imagination, and skills of collaboration and citizenship that will make possible knowledgeable, thoughtful, and creative lives. Commonwealth cares about the kind of person you will become.