Upper School Academic Approach
Academic Engagement and Adolescent Development
Our Upper School challenges students’ intellectual capacities and piques their natural curiosity as they develop through unique stages of adolescence. It is an engaging course of study taught by exceptional faculty who help students discover themselves and their place in the world.
The Class 9 student experiences the world of polarities, contrasts and extremes, sympathies and antipathies. The subjects studied in this year allow the students to experience and explore these oppositions, from which they can come to find their own balance between forces. The students begin the process of identifying and contrasting, and the preliminary steps towards analytical thinking through their studies.
In Class 10 students explore how contrasting phenomena interrelate. Students gain greater perspective from this place of balance and are able to search for unity and connections within the world. Therefore, in this year students experience and study subjects that reveal processes, transformations, metamorphoses, patterns and the kinship that exists between things. The young person begins to understand movement and change. Through the study of the subjects taught, the students enliven their analytical thinking to new powers of imaginative thinking. This stage of development is met by allowing students to understand how complex processes come about by studying their origins and basic principles. In History for example, students study ancient civilisations and patterns in the emergence of ancient cultures and societies. In Geography students study the Earth as a living organism through its rhythmical processes, climatology, hydrology and eco-systems. Similarly in Biology, the study of embryology is taken up.
Class 11 students have a growing capacity for self-reflection and begin to examine questions of identity: How am I shaped by my experiences and my learning? What is uniquely my own? While reading Hamlet and Parzival, two classics about finding one’s destiny, students have the opportunity to consider their own paths. Learning becomes a personal pursuit. The students are keen to explore, discuss and understand the anomalies within the world. Students are seeking answers and are ready to accept the imperfections and subtleties, allowing them to consider all aspects and viewpoints of topics more deeply and thoroughly. A Physics block of Astronomy turns students’ introspective focus to the world of the stars. Projective Geometry presents students with new concepts of space, time, and infinity. The psychological expression of great artists and convictions of great leaders are explored in History.
Class 12 students are able to build on their emerging analytical and imaginative thinking. They can now synthesise knowledge and experience and begin to see their emerging place in the world. The curriculum supports the development of a global consciousness by helping students explore their individual critical questions: How can I make a difference in the world? What path should I follow? In class twelve, students are challenged with questions of morality through Goethe’s Faust. They study philosophy and the ethics underlying decision-making, including those that impact on the natural environment. They also study Economics, Zoology, Development and Chaos Theory. The course of study supports students’ emerging abilities to assess multiple viewpoints and find common elements, central themes, and imaginative solutions. A key part of their study is a year long individual research project which allows the students to explore in-depth, a theme related to their inner question.
Our Upper School challenges students’ intellectual capacities and piques their natural curiosity as they develop through unique stages of adolescence. It is an engaging course of study taught by exceptional faculty who help students discover themselves and their place in the world.
The Class 9 student experiences the world of polarities, contrasts and extremes, sympathies and antipathies. The subjects studied in this year allow the students to experience and explore these oppositions, from which they can come to find their own balance between forces. The students begin the process of identifying and contrasting, and the preliminary steps towards analytical thinking through their studies.
In Class 10 students explore how contrasting phenomena interrelate. Students gain greater perspective from this place of balance and are able to search for unity and connections within the world. Therefore, in this year students experience and study subjects that reveal processes, transformations, metamorphoses, patterns and the kinship that exists between things. The young person begins to understand movement and change. Through the study of the subjects taught, the students enliven their analytical thinking to new powers of imaginative thinking. This stage of development is met by allowing students to understand how complex processes come about by studying their origins and basic principles. In History for example, students study ancient civilisations and patterns in the emergence of ancient cultures and societies. In Geography students study the Earth as a living organism through its rhythmical processes, climatology, hydrology and eco-systems. Similarly in Biology, the study of embryology is taken up.
Class 11 students have a growing capacity for self-reflection and begin to examine questions of identity: How am I shaped by my experiences and my learning? What is uniquely my own? While reading Hamlet and Parzival, two classics about finding one’s destiny, students have the opportunity to consider their own paths. Learning becomes a personal pursuit. The students are keen to explore, discuss and understand the anomalies within the world. Students are seeking answers and are ready to accept the imperfections and subtleties, allowing them to consider all aspects and viewpoints of topics more deeply and thoroughly. A Physics block of Astronomy turns students’ introspective focus to the world of the stars. Projective Geometry presents students with new concepts of space, time, and infinity. The psychological expression of great artists and convictions of great leaders are explored in History.
Class 12 students are able to build on their emerging analytical and imaginative thinking. They can now synthesise knowledge and experience and begin to see their emerging place in the world. The curriculum supports the development of a global consciousness by helping students explore their individual critical questions: How can I make a difference in the world? What path should I follow? In class twelve, students are challenged with questions of morality through Goethe’s Faust. They study philosophy and the ethics underlying decision-making, including those that impact on the natural environment. They also study Economics, Zoology, Development and Chaos Theory. The course of study supports students’ emerging abilities to assess multiple viewpoints and find common elements, central themes, and imaginative solutions. A key part of their study is a year long individual research project which allows the students to explore in-depth, a theme related to their inner question.
