WHAT IS ROUND SQUARE?

Round Square (www.roundsquare.org) gets its name from a 17th century circular building at Gordonstoun School (called The Round Square) where leaders of schools around the world first met to map out this international partnership of schools. The organization was established in 1966 to honor the work of educator Kurt Hahn, who founded two independent schools (Schule Schloss Salem in Germany, and Gordonstoun School in Scotland) and inspired the Outward Bound Program. According to the Round Square website, Hahn believed that schools:

٭ "should have a greater purpose beyond preparing students for college and university." Among Hahn's particular educational precepts was the belief that children should have a "chance to discover themselves," that schools "see to it that children experience both success and defeat," that schools "train the imagination, the ability to anticipate and to plan," that children "take sports and games seriously, but only as a part of the whole,"
٭ and that schools "free children of rich and influential parents of the paralyzing influence of wealth and privilege."
Programs initiated or inspired by Round Square, expanding upon Hahn's precepts, help schools with diverse histories and missions work together through service projects, annual conferences, exchanges, and outdoor expeditions.

(From http://www.nais.org/pubs/ismag.cfm?file_id=3113&ismag_id=33)