As a school, Mary McDowell Friends School asserts that all students can learn and that each has unique and valuable contributions to make. We strive to embrace one another’s differences, and together create a vibrant quilt including individuals of all socioeconomic backgrounds, diverse cultures and ethnicities, varying sexual orientations and gender identities, and many religious practices. We also strive to give voice to all of these groups in our curriculum, celebrations, and other expressions of community values.
Quakers believe that there is an “inner light,” an innate goodness and commonality, at the center of every person. Faith and Practice of New York Yearly Meeting also points out that “the history of Friends as a persecuted movement ought to make us sensitive to the feelings of those who suffer from prejudice.” Indeed, Quakers long supported Native Americans against unjust treatment, harbored Jews during the Holocaust, founded schools and colleges for freed slaves, marched for LGBTQ rights, and undertook many other civil rights actions before doing so was popular.