The Pendle Hill Idea

The Society of Friends, while engaged in promoting the cause of education along traditional lines, has also made unique contributions to educational procedure. Among these are the co-educational boarding school, based on the pattern of the Quaker family; the work camp, organized primarily as an educational undertaking; and the educational community or settlement, such as Woodbrooke in England and Pendle Hill in America. All of these make educational use of two basic Quaker principles: the importance of the small, integrated, religiously centered community as a starting point for a social order higher than that of the world in general, and the importance of immediate experience as a necessary supplement to beliefs and theories. These two principles are neither new nor are they the exclusive possession of the Society of Friends. Both are primordial and perhaps more characteristic of ancient than of modern man.