Happy Valley School

The Happy Valley School is a nonsectarian, coeducational college preparatory high school located on 400 acres in the Upper Ojai Valley of the Topa Topa Mountains, adjacent to Los Padres National Forest, 90 miles north of Los Angeles, California.

Founded by Aldous Huxley and J. Krishnamurti in 1946, the school was envisioned as an educational community that provides an atmosphere where students may discover both their intellectual and creative potentials.

The course of study has been carefully designed to develop cognitive growth. Skills in thinking, research and written expression are particularly stressed and reinforced. In addition to college preparatory and AP courses, most HVS students take classes in music, studio art, photography, or theatre for all four years of school.

"Ideally, our perspective is the whole of the learning process. We give students a sound academic preparation and at the same time encourage them to keep open all the doors of perception so that they may discover for themselves the infinite variety and wonder of life and the beauty that is everywhere."

—Aldus Huxley

A personal Socratic relationship between approximately 20 teachers and the very small student body (less than 100 students in grades 9 through 12, two-thirds of whom are boarders), seems to transform instruction into genuine education. At Happy Valley School, students learn how to learn, developing a life-long spirit of inquiry expressed in the school’s motto: Aun Aprendo.

It's High School. You're a teenager. Why not spend those miserable trying-to-figure-it-all-out years in a beautiful place where the teachers like kids? And do stuff kids like to do?

Happy Valley School—above all else—is committed to The Art of Learning.

Which is a Good Thing, cause my elder son starts his freshman year here in the fall. And he's committed to skateboarding.



This update just in: Don't believe everything you read. Happy Valley School is holding on by its fingernails. Minimal "adult" supervision. Extremely poor communication with parents. Their advisor/"Socratic" program is a joke. In loco parentis is a phrase they read in a law book once.

Non-existent entry requirements. You got the money, they'll take your kid.

Food's good though. So are the drugs.

To quote other angry parents: "They're morons." "It's all fun and games till somebody sues."

Run. Run like your child's education depended upon it.

Aldus Huxley's been dead a long time.