What the Ateneo Grade School seeks to develop in the students?

The student we seek to develop is a curious child in whom the innate sense of wonder has not been diminished or repressed. He is not afraid to ask questions; to personally assimilate new information into his growing habitual set of new insights and knowledge. He is an imaginative child. His imaginative capacity is fed by the stimulation of his different sensory faculties by rich and varied experiences.

Books are cherised things for him, and his love of stories is a lifelong affair. This love of stories propels for him a whole universe which literally has no limits.

He is a creative child. Creativity, coupled with mastery of subject matter, gives rise to the frontiersman, the pioneer, and the leader of his field.

He is also thereby a fearless child, in the good sense of the word. He believes this world is basically a friendly place, and the unknown is not a fearsome domain but a wonderland to be explored.

By the same token, he is a self-reliant child. His self-reliance simultaneously builds up and builds upon his growing capabilities, and so he also is becoming a man of action.

He is also an independent child. Self-actuation, that both flows from and builds self-reliance, generates for the child personal history of accomplishments and a growing self-awareness of his own capabilities. It is this awareness of both self-accomplishments and self-capabilities that slowly develops in the child the sense of healthy independence.

He is an ambitious child, in the good sense of the word. He wants to achieve and is not afraid to compete. He is a child with a strong sense of what is just and fair because he himself is treated justly and fairly.

As a consequence. he is also a moral child. Not with the minimum morality that does what is right because of fearl but iwth the morality that does what is right of a motivation of love.

His growth in self-reliance, independence, and selfhood is at the same time marked by the personal appropriation of the values that have been shared with him.

Finally, he is an authentically spiritual and religious child. Religion and spirituality being activities not separate from other activities of his life; his conviction of God's love for him, and his sense of indebtedness and need to return that love becomes a fundamental quality of his life that permeates his work and his play, his career and his family, his orientation and his choices in life.