Headmaster’s Blog
During the first week of November, I attended the annual Heads of School Conference held at the Mohonk Mountain House in New Paltz. More the 114 Heads of independent schools in New York attended for our annual discussion of issues pertaining to independent schools. This year’s conference clearly focused on the current state of education in the face of a not yet fully recovered economy and how financial changes affect our schools. Part of the program included some study results undertaken by ISM (Independent School Management) and presented by Director, Terry L. Moore.
Among the many questions and answers in several parent surveys about reasons for choosing an independent school, one struck me as very appropriate for discussion. Parents look for independent schools in which their child will be safe—physically, socially, intellectually and academically. This is a complex parental response, since all of these levels of ‘safety’ clearly intermingle with each other.
My sense is that physical safety is a sine qua non as a pre-condition for choosing an independent school. After that are the other aspects of safety: academic, social and intellectual. For me the idea of being in an academic environment in which a student’s intellectual safety is nurtured is profoundly important. For students to develop the ability, the skill and the willingness to be critical thinkers, the school has to provide an intellectual context in which ideas are proposed, discussed, investigated, and carefully criticized and then either accepted or rejected within a full range of understanding and seriousness. For a student to propose an idea involves a certain amount of risk taking; how that idea is received and examined determines how successful a school will be in developing critical thinkers.
In my AP English class, I urge my students to be bold thinkers—try out ideas, interpretations, and viewpoints; follow the idea wherever it may lead. Sometimes you will think that the idea has real merit; others you may feel need to be rethought. But my advice is to push the idea however you need in order to discover how truthful it is. There is a line in Spenser’s Faerie Queene that reads, “Be bold, be bold, be not too bold.” I fully support the first two parts of that exhortation. “Be bold, be bold” in your thinking and discover where it may take you.
And for this to happen, a school needs to be open to ideas and critical challenges and encourage, support and nurture thinking. When a school does this, it is truly fulfilling its mission as an intellectual catalyst for the unlimited development of young and daring thinkers.