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Nellie Cornish and Calvin Cady never wrote the principles they developed for the Cornish School down as a list, and maybe their suspicions about systemization discouraged it. But it's easier to absorb as a list. Following is a construction of what they might have produced had they been so inclined.

 

It is of necessity a work in progress.

Principles of the Cornish School Under Nellie Cornish

 

  1. An education in the arts is an education.   EXPAND
  2. The main purpose of education is the development of the individual, not imparting skills.   EXPAND
  3. The arts are best taught together.   EXPAND
  4. Departments and curricula should be interrelated.   EXPAND
  5. Systemization of education should be avoided, experiment should be encouraged.   EXPAND
  6. There should be no grades, no schedules .   EXPAND
  7. The school should be a home for the arts.   EXPAND
  8. Quality in everything, always strive to be the best.   EXPAND

 

2. The main purpose of education is the development of the individual, not imparting skills.

At its inception in 1914, the Cornish was an elementary school of music, limitations it almost immediately outgrew. The course for Cornish was set with these opening words of its first catalogue:

“The object of music study is first and foremost to make of the child a student and a thinker and then aid in the development of a capacity to enjoy the beauty and significance of music.”

The main purpose of a Cornish education was to make thinkers, and then—e.g., secondarily—to help them appreciate music. In this first sentence, there is no mention of teaching anyone to sing or play an instrument, which we should find extremely significant. Addressing the teaching of music proper, relegated to a terciary position in rounding out the paragraph is this:

“The child must be led to realize that it is not the reading of printed notes nor the ability to play a given number of pieces without understanding the thoughts to be expressed that is the making of a real musician.”

Cornish was an anti-conservatory, open to students of all artistic abilities, believing that an education through the arts was not just for a talented few, but of benefit to anyone. A Cornish education was democratic. Nellie Cornish’s adopted daughter, Elena Miramova, in an interview sometime after her mother's death, reinforces these ideas, “Cornish School was not dedicated to producing talented artists, its goal was the development of the human personality in all its phases.”