Quaker Heritage

Guilford College appreciates and recognizes its Quaker Heritage as central to its character, distinctiveness and quality. This heritage informs our ways of thinking about all matters, whether of academic and social policy, or student life, or finance, or governance, or our relationships with alumni or external constituencies. It nourishes Guilford today; it inspires and shapes tomorrow's College. It is the basis for strategic and long-range planning. The intent is to continue to incorporate into our community those unique qualities of Quaker thought that are relevant to a college education as well as those that are common to Quakerism and other philosophies of education.

In striving toward this objective, we recognize that while our educational undertaking is academic and pluralistic in character, its essential qualities derive in large measure from the Quaker affirmation of underlying spiritual meaning and value in all of human endeavor. Indeed, we recognize that many of the specific concerns of the Quaker religion translate into good educational practice and that Quakerism itself is also a way of living in a global community. To think and act otherwise is to make Guilford one among many respectable liberal arts colleges, but not one that stands apart as distinctive.

The Quaker way of living values commitment, courage, candor, empathy, integrity, tolerance in individuals and their community, peace, equality and simplicity. It assumes emergent truth and a search for the ideal. It stresses the importance of silence as a means of communal and individual centering and discovery. It depends on profound respect both for the individual and for the wisdom in community. In this respect for the individual and for the belief that the spiritual dimension is in each person, the Quaker way of living promotes learner-centered rather than curriculum-centered approaches to education. It promotes social justice, world peace, service, ethical behavior and disciplined and creative learning. It seeks to distinguish between the less significant and the significant and between self interest and community well being.

Quaker thought is inherently ethical. Its practical idealism is a basis for a humane society and the kind of education that might foster that society. The College believes that mature individuality and healthy community depend on each other; that full individual development occurs through interaction with others; that connection to others gives individual uniqueness its meaning. Communities thrive in the longer run through the responsible exercise of their members' individuality. The responsibility to others inherent in these reciprocal ties provides both a focus for spontaneity and a powerful motivation to individual excellence. But the priority remains the education and benefit of the community.