Culture
The school caters for students who may be experiencing problems due to physical, psychological, emotional and/or familial reasons. They may also have learning difficulties and/or disorders. Their placement at Berne could be short term, where the aim is to work on the student’s behavioural or emotional issues in order to reintegrate them back into their mainstream school, or long term, where the aim is to continue to educate them through to the School Certificate.
The school’s culture has been designed to defuse a lot of the behavioural triggers the students were experiencing in mainstream schools. For example, there is no uniform and there is no set homework.
The student-teacher relationship is unusual compared to mainstream schools. Students address staff by their first name, and even eat meals together. All staff are expected to get involved in all school activities, such as camps, excursions and personal development activities.
There is a strong focus on reducing the derailing effects of learning difficulties and disorders by having small class sizes (of about five or six students per class), and by streaming students based on ability. The lower ability classes are purposefully even smaller, usually having only two or three students per teacher.
Read more about this topic: The John Berne School
Famous quotes containing the word culture:
“Letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend is the policy for promoting the progress of the arts and the sciences and a flourishing culture in our land.”
—Mao Zedong (1893–1976)
“The future is built on brains, not prom court, as most people can tell you after attending their high school reunion. But you’d never know it by talking to kids or listening to the messages they get from the culture and even from their schools.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1953)
“We belong to an age whose culture is in danger of perishing through the means to culture.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)