"How can there be peace without people understanding each other and how can this be if they don't know each other?"
-Lester B. Pearson, Prime Minister of Canada
Founded in 1962, by Kurt Hahn and others, the college was a practical response to the search for new and peaceful solutions in a world driven by political, racial and economic divisions. More than 300 students from many backgrounds are drawn together from some 70 countries to live, study and explore the concepts of international understanding and active service to others. Respect and understanding of diverse cultures motivates the academic and social life of the college. The college is the first of ten colleges now found in ten different countries and all five continents.
The ideals and aims of Atlantic Colleges and United World Colleges
"Through international education, shared experience and community service, United World Colleges enable young people to become responsible citizens, politically and environmentally aware, committed to the ideals of peace, justice, understanding and co-operation, and to the implementation of these ideals through action and personal example."The founders of the colleges saw the late teenage years as an age of idealism for young people, when commitment, ideas of justice and an impatience for fair solutions motivates their thoughts. The colleges are vehicles to allow such principles to be encouraged through development of knowledge, values and the will to act. Therefore Kurt Hahn's motto "plus est en vous (i.e. there is more in you than you think), is still a basic principle of Atlantic College. The college curriculum is designed to allow the expression of these ideals and, the students are seen as equal partners in creating the community, in showing leadership and in taking initiatives. They enter at the age of 16/17 for the two years prior to admissions to Universities and Higher Education. Students do not "come to the college" - they become the college.