History
The school was founded in 1886 as The Cambridge School for Girls in at 20 Mason Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts by Arthur and Stella Gilman, who had previously helped found Radcliffe College, as a preparatory school for Radcliffe. In 1918 The Cambridge School for Girls merged with the Boston-based Haskell School, and was renamed The Cambridge-Haskell School. Lebanese-born poet Kahlil Gibran, an intimate friend of headmistress Mary Haskell, designed a ring for her students depicting a flower growing in an open hand.
In 1931 the school was moved 20 miles (32 km) to its present campus in Weston under the direction of then-head of school John French, became coeducational, and was renamed a final time as The Cambridge School of Weston. A follower of educational reformer John Dewey, French put in place many of the progressive educational underpinnings that still guide the school today, such as a focus on the whole student, experiential learning, community involvement, and a low student-to-faculty ratio.
In 1939 the school implemented a form of community self-governance modeled after the traditional New England town meeting. Following Robert's Rules of Order, the entire school community, including students, meet to propose and debate school rules and policies, elect representatives to school committees, and decide on other relevant topics to the community. The Cambridge School Town Meeting continues to be a central part of the school's community governance to the present day.
Read more about this topic: The Cambridge School Of Weston
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—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
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