A Mentor and a Habit of Unlearning
On the topic of student-centered learning, let’s shift to young learners. I first learned about the concept of child-centered learning while attending one of David Paul’s one-day workshops when I was first starting out about 25 years ago. That workshop was literally a life-changing experience.
Parkhurst in 1922. Minerva in 2012. Dalton X in 2027. Each asked the same question: what does education look like when it truly serves the learner? We don’t have all the answers. But we’re building the space to find them. Go forth unafraid.
The Minerva Baccalaureate builds transferable skills across everything. The A-Levels build mastery in something specific. What if it were possible for them to coexist? Broad thinkers and deep specialists, learning alongside each other, encompassed and nestled in the Dalton Plan framework.
A-Levels have no required subjects. As a result, students are able to specialize in what aligns with their own individual interests and goals. In that sense, the freedom of choice and flexibility actually aligns with the Dalton Plan.
The IB and MBacc ask: can learners think across everything? The A-Levels ask: how deep can learners go? Neither is necessarily better. They serve different kinds of learners. So, the question could be asked: Why not serve both?
The A-Levels are taken by 175,000+ students in 160 countries. Recognised by the Ivy League, Russell Group, and leading universities worldwide, including the top public universities in Japan. For students with clear direction, they’re a powerful signal of mastery.
Not every 16-year-old is still figuring out what they love. Some already know. For them, the IGSCE or A-Levels might be a good choice— the chance to go genuinely deep into 3–4 subjects. Breadth is a virtue. So is depth.
We’re not just designing a school. We’re asking: what does a 15-year-old need to become someone who can navigate a world that doesn’t exist yet? Parkhurst asked that in 1922. We’re still asking it a century later. When everything can be looked up, what core competencies are worth developing?
Dalton X in one sentence: take Parkhurst’s freedom and responsibility, layer on Minerva’s learning science, add A-Levels depth and global recognition, then head out into the world to learn, discover, explore, connect and build. That’s the plan.
Year 2 at Dalton X: students participate in four three-month rotations at hubs around Japan and across the globe. Mornings online. Afternoons solving real problems in real places. We are bringing the world to the classroom and the classroom to the world. Literally.
Dalton X High School opens April 2027. The “X” stands for the unknown — variables, possibility, the future unwritten. It also stands for a crossroads, a meeting across cultures and curriculums. The idea is to create a unique, hybrid model combining the best of traditional and cutting edge education.
Kawaijuku — the group behind Dalton X — partnered with the Dalton School New York in 1976 to open Dalton schools in Tokyo and Nagoya. Dalton X isn’t starting from zero. It’s the next chapter of a 50-year relationship. More on Dalton X in the next few posts. www.daltonx.ed.jp
The History of Dalton Schools
The Netherlands has over 400 Dalton schools — the highest density in the world. A century-old American idea found its most enduring home in Holland. More on the history of Dalton Schools and Dalton International can be found here: tinyurl.com/DaltonHis…
Freedom isn’t permission to do nothing. Dutch educator Hans Wenke reframed Parkhurst’s first principle: freedom is the earned outcome of responsibility. That distinction matters enormously in how you design a school. The balance between freedom and responsibility is a crucial one.
The Dalton Plan has three parts: the House (community), the Assignment (a contract between student and teacher), and the Lab (hands-on exploration). Built in 1922. Still the bones of what we’re building at Dalton X in 2027. I’ll write more about the Dalton Plan in subsequent posts.
Helen Parkhurst’s insight: give children real responsibility for their learning and they instinctively seek the best way to achieve it. Not a theory. Alongside her mentor, Maria Montessori, she actually watched it happen in her classroom over a century ago. No tests or exams, minimal discipline.
“Let us think of a school as a social laboratory where pupils themselves are the experimenters, not the victims of an intricate and crystallized system.” — Helen Parkhurst, 1922. The brand new Minerva Baccalaureate is one leg of the Dalton X curriculum, Parkhurst’s century-old Dalton Plan is another.
Ben Nelson: “We designed the curriculum, the pedagogy, the technology, the global orientation… to promote students' intellectual, social and emotional well-being, with only a single overarching goal in mind: the success of our students. Ultimately, this is the only metric that matters.”
Fully active learning works because it mirrors how understanding actually develops — through wrestling with ideas, making mistakes, getting feedback, and trying again. Minerva didn’t invent this. Cognitive science confirmed it. Minerva built a school around the science of learning. More on this in future posts.
The API feature of OpenAlex looks particularly interesting: developers.openalex.org