The concept of respect is fundamental to Immanuel Kant’s moral philosophy. For him, respect comprises the only proper stance of one human being to another. In his Groundwork for the Metaphysic of Morals (1785), he writes, “Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or the person of any other, never simply as a means but always at the same time as an end.” Treating people respectfully, then, for Kant is to treat them as ends in themselves and therefore humanely as human beings. This is our most pressing moral obligation.
At Dartmoor, respect for the student informs our educational philosophy and teaching efforts. The foundation for our mentoring relationship of scholar and pupil derives from Platonic instruction and dialectic. Part of this respect assumes all students want to learn and can. Though intellectual snobbery inclines some individuals to be disrespectful of those who learn differently or more deliberately, as free, rational beings---that is, as people---all learners deserve our respect.
How does Dartmoor demonstrate respect for the student? We begin in enrollment meetings by letting students articulate for themselves what their frustrations are. This is the first step for a student to take over ownership of her education. The next step is to place students at their instructional level rather than in a chronologically driven system of grade and age. There are obvious advantages to this and these are easily illustrated.
Imagine you wanted to learn how to ski and went to your first lesson full of enthusiasm to learn. As the class put on their skis, however, you began to fear that maybe you were in the wrong class as everyone else spoke familiarly of various experiences in Park City, Vail, Switzerland, France, Austria, Italy. Soon you find yourself on a chairlift with your class heading slowly to the top of a formidable advanced run, the anxiety increasing with every second, every gain in altitude. At the end of the lift, your classmates hop off and zip expertly down the mountain...imagine the terror of looking down that mountain; imagine this experience duplicated incessantly for a dozen or so years and you can imagine how students with learning differences feel in a traditional classroom.
On the other hand, it is just as easy to understand the frustration of a gifted student when you imagine yourself as an expert skier resigned to a course of bunny hills, while fresh, powdery peaks loom gigantically above you, with a sign draped in front of the closed ski lifts: off limits.
