Community Corner
Cheshire Academy Teaches Global Citizenship
The academy is the first of its kind in Connecticut to offer the rigorous International Baccalaureate Diploma.
Seated around a table in a classroom at a small group of high school students pondered the question: How do we know if a work of art is meaningful?
Does critical opinion matter? Popularity?
Junior Shoshana Kranish wasn't so sure. "Beauty lies in the eye of the beholder," she argued.
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"But what if a million highly educated people before you say 'This is great.' Doesn't that mean something?" challenged her instructor, English faculty member Chip Boyd.
Several agreed it did. "You may not agree, but usually you can understand why other people like it," one class member said.
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A few thought mass appeal was key. Others said the art or literature needs to stand the test of time.
"Do you think people will be reading Harry Potter 1,000 years from now?" Boyd asked them. "There's a lot to this question, isn't there?"
The debate was part of a course titled Theory of Knowledge, a requirement of Cheshire Academy's new International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme, an academic track that emphasizes critical thinking, writing and global perspectives.
Cheshire Academy is the first independent boarding school in Connecticut to be accepted into the IB program, which was founded by a group of international scholars in the 1960s and is based in Geneva, Switzerland.
Knowing how to think independently is a cornerstone of IB, and is also a key trait many college admissions officers are seeking in young applicants, said Laura Longacre, a French teacher and IB Diploma Programme coordinator for the school.
The Theory of Knowledge course, for example, examines "how we know and why."
"It makes you think in a different way than you normally would. We're taught to question what we learn -- not to completely doubt it -- but question it," Shoshana said. "Even in the few days that we've had, I've gotten a lot out of it already."
Longacre said the program's philosophy is similar to the core values of Cheshire Academy, and the global focus is a nice fit for a school with such a large population of international students.
Friday: Part II, IB diploma requirements.
