UWC-USA President Victoria Mora was asked to write a piece about UWC-USA for the Parents League of New York Review, a publication geared for parents with a strong interest in education. She chose to write about Kurt Hahn’s vision for the UWCs and the power of nature in the UWC experience.
“Hahn’s principles were grounded in a belief that investing in youth, and challenging them to grow, would yield a more peaceful world. Hahn saw decency and kindness as natural to young people. He sought to bring together students on the threshold of adulthood, where this decency could be encouraged and nurtured in the face of challenges best met cooperatively. Such an education, Hahn believed, could provide a check on society’s tendency to corrupt the natural inclination in young people to form connections with one other—regardless of their differences.”
Wilderness challenges and hikes are central to the UWC-USA experience and our alumni speak to the power of their orientation hikes in the nearby mountains.
“It is that first wilderness challenge that binds them and makes them friends for life. It is something they never forget. It doesn’t matter where they come from, or where their families fall on the broadest economic spectrum imaginable, or what cultural commitments they thought were settled for themselves. Because they have had to depend on one another, they can never see success again as wholly individual, wholly about themselves.”
Read the full article here.