Costa Rica European School was founded in 1989 by its Director, Anne Aronson, who longed to see in her adopted country of Costa Rica a school emphasizing the Liberal Arts and the Humanities, such as she had known during her formative years in France and in her university education at the Sorbonne in Paris. The mother of five, Anne set out to establish an innovative, literature-based educational program that recognizes each student as an entire being, with different gifts and limitations, needs and abilities, and hopes for the future.