The emphasis was to acknowledge and nurture the unique worth and insight of each person in the community and to co-exist with compassion and harmony in daily living, learning and decision making.
By providing this kind of nurturing background for secondary students, the hope is that community members will eventually enter into the wider world and contribute profoundly to the lives of others and strive to exemplify a deep sense of compassion and justice.
Consulting with other Quaker groups throughout 1956 and ’57, and traveling through Europe and the United States to become familiar with innovative schools and colleges, three families came together in Rindge, and began their experiment.
George Bliss, with his wife Helen, had taught at the Westtown Quaker boarding school, and was then executive secretary of the New England office of the American Friends Service Committee.
The Meeting School year ran on the semester system, with the Intersession block falling between the Winter and Spring terms.
Classes were organized around the traditional academic subjects of math, writing and literature, social studies and history, sciences, and the arts.
Working with animals and the land, and growing and raising much of the actual food that is eaten, is an unrelentingly honest and authentic experience.