EDUCATIONAL PROFILE
The Laboratory School wants to be a place where children and young people enjoy learning and living. It wants to enable important experiences that otherwise many of them wouldn’t be able to have. Living and learning should, as far as possible, go hand in hand. The teaching follows the principle of learning from and by experience (and not primarily from tuition). The school is equipped with learning facilities which favour this type of learning. In addition the school uses the city, both the local surroundings and further afield, nature and the community as further possibilities for learning.
The school wants to accept the differences between children and perceives them as enrichment. As a result, teaching is highly individualized and it takes into account that not all children learn at the same speed and that they have differing abilities and needs. The pupils live and learn together in groups of mixed age and abilities. The school doesn’t want to exclude anybody, there is no repeating of school years and there is no setting of pupils. Instead the school offers a variety of different courses.
The school considers itself to be a community made up of all the members of the school who accept and respect each other in their differences. The behaviour that is expected of every citizen in our society should be learnt in the daily life of the school: dealing with common issues peacefully and reasonably. This type of learning happens through responsibility and participation. In this “small community” individuals learn to take responsibility for their own tasks and learning.
The school is a bridge between a child’s family life and adult life in a complex society. It is divided into levels. Learning shouldn’t be like a conveyor belt but like a staircase. Four times during their school life the children must take a big step that brings significant changes and increasing responsibilities.
