Hotchkiss Info

kafkareborn
Wed, 30 Dec 2009 23:22:29 +0000

First of all, I will be the first to admit that the top New England prep schools are actually all very similar academically, some schools have niches and excel in some fields while others excel in others. Really, it all comes down to personal fit.

Now to answer you question: the English program at Hotchkiss, in my experience, is phenomenal. Now, all top prep schools probably read very similar books and most use the Harkness method in class, but what I think what sets Hotchkiss apart is the level of discussion among your peers. Sure, all HADES schools have plenty of smart kids but when reading literature having kids that are brought up in a different literary environment than you were can be very enriching. You are exposed to many different interpretations of any particular book and this is enhanced by the cultural diversity. So in that sense, I suppose what I am saying is that the English department is strengthened by the internationalism at Hotchkiss. But that aside, I will quote TheGrammarFairy’s post on this topic to show how Hotchkiss’ curriculum is different:



TheGrammarFairy:

Yep, I’m in the Humanities program. I think it’s a great experience where one can see relationships between events and ideas across the disciplines. For example, at the end of this term I wrote a paper about the inability of religions to coexist for English and Philosophy, backed it up with ideas from our current English text and religious readings, and related it to conflict between Protestant and Catholic ideals in the European Reformation that we talked about in History. It’s a whole lot more than a standard read-it-and-analyze-it English class, more than a this-happened-at-this-time-because-of-this History class, or a this-is-how-to-use-this-technique art class. This isn’t to say that other classes at Hotchkiss are boring in any way, but I feel that the integrated approach is a wonderful way to find deeper meaning in one’s classes. The program also satisfies a heap of requirements - your U.S. History requirement is waived (though many will take it anyway), and the art requirement is finished. The one disadvantage I have found, though, is that it’s difficult to take outside semester electives, like a different art class, with so many class periods taken up by Humanities.