John C. Corlette - The Start of Aiglon

The Start of Aiglon

In 1949 Corlette opened his school in Chesières, the same village where he had gone to school as a teenager.

Like his mentor Kurt Hahn, John Corlette wrote no books to guide future generations in the creation of a curriculum. His speeches, like those of Kurt Hahn’s, are peppered with phrases that can guide the reader away from a focus on curriculum and textbooks and toward the use of philosophy and environment to improve the behavior of “the whole man.”

The following extracts from a speech given by Corlette at Aiglon's end-of-term ceremony in July 1973 help illustrate his vision for the school. At the time of delivering this address, the school had expanded to nearly 300 students and had introduced co-education. However, the precepts that guided the early years of the school were still present 25 years after its foundation in 1949.

• Education should be more than academics. We believe that the goal of education is, or should be, the development of the spiritual man, that is of that part of each one of us which, with development and training, is capable of a vision or direct apprehension of the purpose of life, of the true nature of ourselves, of the world in which we live and of such other worlds or states of being as may exist besides.
• Standards of behavior should be set by the school.
• Another of our basic principles is that we believe that it is the business of those who direct the school, first to set the standards which they believe the students should be aiming at, and state them in no equivocal fashion, and secondly that they should provide a method of grading for each aspect which will enable the student to know what progress the school authorities think he is making. This grading should, if necessary and where possible, be accompanied by explanations which will help the student to understand his assessment and plan his future progress.
• In other words, “tolerance of the beliefs of others” does not mean that there is a relativistic “any standards will do” approach to teaching. Multiculturalism does not connote a lack of universal standards.
• Education requires teachers to look beyond academics, even if the judgments might be regarded as “subjective.” This is no reason for teachers to avoid the responsibility of judging their pupils' work and progress, moreover this is precisely how promotion is accorded to us in real life outside school.
• A rank system or similar structure that rewards good behavior is central to the school’s method. It charts the course of the development of the boy or girl as regards his character, sense of responsibility, maturity and general development in relation to the basic standards of conduct and morality which we lay down and which are derived, as far as we are able to understand them, from the teachings of Jesus Christ and other great teachers. This assessment has come to be known here as the Rank System, and is absolutely basic to the idea of education at Aiglon. Note: Corlette did not like the word “rank” as it held unintended military overtones.
• A system of rewarding merit outside the classroom is needed.
• We get promoted in our business or occupation and our salary increased precisely as we are able to convince our superiors in the hierarchy of our merits with reference to their requirements. The exception to this is of course if we are members of a trade union, in which case, as things are today, our salaries are increased, not according to our merit, but according to the seriousness of the threats with which we are able to menace our employers. There have been attempts by students in some schools to follow this example by threatening the school authorities in various ways if they do not give them what they want. This could not happen at Aiglon for the very simple reason that we would rather close the school than abandon our principles.
• Education includes developing appreciation for and a relationship with our environment. Intimate contact with nature, too, is important, and a realisation of our living relationship with it. Hence our adventure training programme.
• Learning to live with others and maintaining good relations with people is part of an education. Absolutely essential too is a positive and loving relationship with all other people regardless of their origin, background or beliefs, and a positive and loving relationship with everything in the world and in the universe around us.
• The education which we offer is designed to go far beyond to develop the whole of you and not just a part, to help you to become truly and intensely alive, to help you to a knowledge of and understanding of that part of you which I call the spiritual part, by attention whose dictates you can attain to much more than success in examinations and a good job, that is to lasting happiness. Note: This theory of education goes further than a typical school’s mission.