Oak Grove School

Oak Grove School is set in the peaceful and beautiful Ojai Valley, just 90 minutes from Los Angeles. The rustic campus is nestled on 150 acres, with easy access to downtown Ojai, the Ventura beaches, and local mountain trails.

23,300 Day / 53,100 Boarding

Need-based aid available

Oak Grove’s High School balances a rigorous college-prep program with a focus on self-knowledge and an emphasis on our shared responsibility to the greater world. Our engaging curriculum challenges students both in knowledge of content and in skill development. Project-based learning and small, discussion-based classes offer the space to explore topics deeply. Completion of our four-year course sequence meets and exceeds the requirements for entry into major colleges and universities.

The application process includes a campus tour, completion of the online application, teacher evaluation forms, previous school transcripts, a parent interview, and a student visit. Criteria for admission include student interest and character, academic aptitude and achievement, recommendations, and interviews. In addition to evaluating individual merit and the appropriateness of an Oak Grove education for each student, the composition of each class and what a student will bring to that dynamic is also considered. There are a limited number of spaces available throughout the school. Some classes may only have spaces available based on attrition.

The mission of Oak Grove School is to assist students in developing those qualities of mind, heart, and body that will enable them to function with excellence, care, and responsibility in the modern world. In addition, it is the intention of the school to offer a place where the whole community can inquire together into the perennial questions of humankind and explore an approach to life that is whole, mindful, and intelligent.

It is becoming more and more important in a world that is destructive and degenerating that there should be a place, an oasis, where one can learn a way of living that is whole, sane, and intelligent. Education in the modern world has been concerned with the cultivation not of intelligence, but of intellect, of memory and its skills. In this process little occurs beyond passing information from the teacher to the taught, the leader to the follower, bringing about a superficial and mechanical way of life. In this there is little human relationship.

Surely a school is a place where one learns about the totality, the wholeness of life. Academic excellence is absolutely necessary, but a school includes much more than that. It is a place where both the teacher and the taught explore not only the outer world, the world of knowledge, but also their own thinking, their behavior. From this they begin to discover their own conditioning and how it distorts their thinking. This conditioning is the self to which such tremendous and cruel importance is given. Freedom from conditioning and its misery begins with this awareness. It is only in such freedom that true learning can take place. In this school it is the responsibility of the teacher to sustain with the student a careful exploration into the implications of conditioning and thus end it.

A school is a place where one learns the importance of knowledge and its limitations. It is a place where one learns to observe the world not from any particular point of view or conclusion. One learns to look at the whole of man’s endeavor, his search for beauty, his search for truth and for a way of living without conflict. Conflict is the very essence of violence. So far education has not been concerned with this, but in this school our intent is to understand actuality and its action without any preconceived ideals, theories, or belief, which bring about a contradictory attitude toward existence.

The school is concerned with freedom and order. Freedom is not the expression of one’s own desire, choice, or self-interest. That inevitably leads to disorder. Freedom of choice is not freedom, though it may appear so; nor is order, conformity, or imitation. Order can only come with the insight that to choose is itself the denial of freedom.

In school one learns the importance of relationship which is not based on attachment and possession. It is here one can learn about the movement of thought, love, and death, for all this is our life. From the ancient of times, man has sought something beyond the materialistic world, something immeasurable, something sacred. It is the intent of this school to inquire into this possibility.

This whole movement of inquiry into knowledge, into oneself, into the possibility of something beyond knowledge, brings about naturally a psychological revolution, and from this comes inevitably a totally different order in human relationship, which is society. The intelligent understanding of all this can bring about a profound change in the consciousness of mankind.

Because one of his primary concerns was “right education,” Krishnamurti founded Oak Grove School in 1975. The intent of the Oak Grove School is for students to develop the intellectual capacity and skills necessary to function with excellence in society, and at the same time to develop a foundation for inquiry into perennial questions of human life. Consistent with the views of its founder, the school does not subscribe to any creed or ideology. Rather, it assists students in the open-minded investigation of enduring human issues. Krishnamurti maintained that if young people learn to see how they are conditioned by race, nationality, religion, tradition, and beliefs, they will discover for themselves how to be fully intelligent human beings.

Oak Grove's residential program reimagines the High School boarding experience. Set in the peaceful and beautiful Ojai Valley, just 90 minutes from Los Angeles, Oak Grove offers flexible 7-day boarding to domestic and international students in 9th through 12th grades. Our family-style boarding facility provides a safe and friendly living and learning environment. Because some boarders live within an hour or two from Ojai, weekends can be spent with family, if desired.

An Oak Grove School education will include opportunities for hands-on and project-based learning, as well as traditional academic coursework. We believe in collaborating and investigating together and encouraging students to explore, question, and engage the world around them. While memorization has a place, students are also asked to think deeply, approach learning from multiple perspectives, and make connections across disciplines. Beyond the classroom, we encourage self-expression through art, music, and drama, and selflessness through community service opportunities. At Oak Grove, we will empower you with responsibility and ownership of your own learning so you are fully prepared to meet the demands of college and beyond.