Hoosc is a coeducational, college preparatory school enrolling boarding and day students in grades 8-12, and postgraduates.
HOOSAC SCHOOL, founded in 1889, is a coeducational, college preparatory school enrolling boarders and a few day students in Forms II-VI (Grades 8-12) and a postgraduate program. Hoosick, a hamlet of 350 residents, is in the Hudson Valley near the borders of New York, Massachusetts, and Vermont. Albany and Troy are 45 minutes away, and Bennington and Williams colleges are within a 20-minute drive. Hoosac students have library privileges at the colleges and at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and enjoy many cultural programs offered on these campuses.
Too often, students with vastly different ambitions and abilities are pitted against each other, with results that are both predictable and frustrating. Although we must set and maintain high standards of literacy and competency in many academic and extracurricular fields, the fact is that each of us is an individual--with individual abilities, hopes, dreams, and drives. And to ignore that individuality is to ignore one of the most important aspects of education itself.
All of which is to clarify and illustrate the unique advantage of a Hoosac education, to establish and encourage an intensive competition between the student that is, and the student that might be.
Just as it would be foolish for a Winston Churchill to compete academically in some way against an Albert Einstein, it is equally foolish for a student with unusual literary abilities to compete directly against someone with unusual mathematical abilities. Far better would be the literary student writing in competition with what he or she might become--a future poet, critic, novelist, teacher--than against someone else who has little interest or ability in these areas.
We at Hoosac believe that this education of the individual, this recognition of the importance of discovering and developing the unique best each student has to offer, represents the highest goal of education. We also believe it will have more success in a student's preparation--not only for college but for life--than any other approach.
