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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

 

3. The arts are best taught together.

The signature element of the Cornish School was its inclusion of all the arts, plastic and performing, under one roof and in fluid combination. It is no accident that Merce Cunningham and Nina Fonoroff entered Cornish in theater and left in dance. Elena Miramova, it seems, went the opposite way, entering in dance and leaving in theater. Cornish students were continually exposed to all the arts both by design and simple proximity, being all co-located in one building. Nellie Cornish admits that keeping the arts working toward a grand purpose is not easy, but she considered it essential:

I recognized the fact that one field of thought does not furnish a sufficient opportunity for the development of the scholar, and that no subject may be understood apart from a knowledge of its allied subjects. It was my purpose to serve education, by giving this opportunity to students by the study and appreciation of the arts — all of which are allied root and branch.

Cornish was drawn to the education philosophy of Calvin Brainerd Cady from the first lecture she attended: “Education of the Individual Through the Realm of Music and Allied Arts.”