One Student at a Time

Making individualized instruction the standard

By David V. Hicks

I oversee the education of more than 11,500 students in a family of 10 schools spread over three continents—North America, Europe, and Asia—but 35 years in education has taught me that there’s an irony in getting preoccupied with numbers: It’s best to forget how many students there are and focus on just one at a time.

This concentration on the individual is nothing more and nothing less than the natural goal toward which we all strive in one way or another as educators. Whether we’re in a strong economy or, as now, in an anemic one, we need to educate each student as an individual, meeting his or her specific needs to prepare for whatever academic and life challenges lie ahead.

I was thinking about this the other day as I considered how much private and public schools have to teach one another, and it occurred to me that what our college-preparatory schools provide for each of our students is in many ways the ideal extension of the individualized education program that public schools already provide for a small...