CA News
Convocation Remarks by John Drew
Thank you Rick, Kim and Eliza, welcome to new students, faculty and staff, and welcome students and colleagues who are returning!
As we start our first day of classes, I am excited about the possibilities of a new year: What will we do with this year? What opportunities will present themselves?
First, a bit of history for context. My own high school experience informs my teaching mostly by my trying to do the OPPOSITE of what I experienced there. Although, my junior history teacher did use cutting-edge technology. At one point in the Iran hostage crisis (as it is known in the US) or Conquest of the American Spy Den (as it is known in Iran) he came into class, tuned into a static-filled AM radio station, and told us to listen to history unfolding. He then put his feet up on his desk and promptly fell asleep behind a newspaper that eventually slid off his lap.
While there were plenty of nice people at Cranston High School West, both adults and students were mostly indifferent to learning.
I was lucky enough to go to a great college -- a place where I was surrounded by people who cared about ideas. There were professors who took me seriously, which was a new experience, and a remarkable gift to receive. There were many kind and gentle people there, but intellectual discourse was often brutal. Students spent altogether too much time keeping score about how smart people were, as if intelligence were one definitive thing, and that that thing could be quantified and ranked.
Part of what I have found so positive at CA is that a remarkable excitement about ideas is complemented by a kindness and level of looking out for one another that is rare. Individuals are valued for what they contribute rather than ranked by scores or some kind of social food chain. While no place is perfect, I have been proud to be a part of a school community that attends to a positive balance of thinking and feeling.
In his first chapel, former head of school Jake Dresden said that "we succeed through the grace of others." I've always liked that phrase. It captures an essential aspect of this school that requires our constant care. In order for this place to provide space for individuals to be themselves, we each must be generous enough to create that space for others. Success, in this sense, means growing into a vision of where you are and in what directions your mind, body and spirit might want to go. And that vision promotes your own growth and not only allows but encourages that same growth in others.
So how might we do that growing? Part of the leap of faith that we ask of each other is to believe that we offer each other worthy, valuable ideas. Notice I am not saying ideas offered by adults to students. While faculty and students each have particular roles and responsibilities, part of what makes this community vibrant is that the exchange of ideas is fluid amongst everyone on this campus -- faculty, staff and students.
I read a fascinating book this summer called Ambient Commons, by a Univerity of Michigan architecture and design professor named Malcolm McCollough. McCollough considers, in one reviewer's words, "the way our attention encounters the environment, and the way environments influence attention." He challenges the ways in which modern cities often place layers of information between the viewer and the physical spaces they inhabit. McCollough plays with ideas of the overlap of information and reality, how we attend to information, and how we create meaning. He offers an example of a beautiful stone archway on his campus that leads from a library to an outside courtyard. Any chance that one might appreciate this transition from inside to out is marred by a generic exit sign, required by law: "... the lesson is this: in the rush of ambient information, don't forget, and don't cover over, the natural meaning of things. Built form plays an important role in everyday life... [because] without any persistent context, you are nowhere." If we only attend to the exit sign and never acknowledge the architecture, meaning is lost. To be clear, before we added some signs to this campus, our visitors were lost. It's all about balance.
This summer, as I drove across the country with my family, I loved places that were distinctive, and was numbed by those few places we visited that were generic. Natural gas money in Fargo, North Dakota has allowed that city to build a bunch of strip mall stores that could be anywhere, and hence make a visitor feel like they are nowhere. These stores may represent more money, but they do not represent wealth. The University of Montana's iconic old building at the foot of a small mountain in Missoula is a unique setting -- you wouldn't mistake it for anywhere else.
So here on campus, you might find your footing by locating yourself. The Sudbury River is north, Main St is south. Wheeler is the eastern-most house on campus, and Rick's house is the westernmost. Nearly all weather comes from the west. But if the wind starts coming from the direction of Wheeler, that's called a nor'easter, and it's likely to be bad.
Another idea I found appealing from McCollough is a simple exercise for restoring attention once we are located in a place. Becoming aware of a simple thing like sunlight moving across a wall (or through the chapel), which McCollough describes as high resolution with low demand, may allow us to restore our attention which has been eroded from lower resolution, high demand sources like electronic screens of various kinds. He asks that we think less about "paying attention," something our elders have often asked us to do, and to consider the flow of attention. He writes, "...across disciplines, and in meditation practices as well, filtering isn't so much tuning out as it a tuning in... Effortless attention occurs amid practiced engagement with a medium, whether the soil, a musical instrument, or your favorite design software. It becomes craft. To live well is to work well. Engaged, skillful experience makes better citizens."
So what do you notice? What do you tune into? While there are all sorts of discussions and debates about attention right now, this is an old aspect of education. The world has always offered more stimuli than we can absorb, and part of what an education does is provide habits of mind in choosing where you will direct focus. CA offers us all a tradition of creating conditions for learning rather than prescriptions for learning. CA is not a place that could be anywhere. We want to be right here, and students, we want you to be right here with us, constructing meaning from the interactions of a varied group of interesting people.
We need to get this day started, but I want to offer one more image to take into the semester.
"...I always loved venturing out from one stepping stone to the next, right into the middle of the stream -- for even though the river was narrow enough and shallow enough, there was a feeling of daring once you got out into the main flow of the current. Suddenly you were on your own. You were giddy and rooted to the spot at one and the same time. Your body stood stock still... but your head would be light and swimming from the rush of the river at your feet and the big stately movement of the clouds in the sky above your head... It is that double capacity that we possess as human beings -- the capacity to be attracted at one and the same time to the security of the intimately known and the challenges and entrancements of what is beyond us."
My hope for all of us this year is that we might find CA to be our stepping stone. Heaney closes his essay this way:
"The stepping stone invites you to change the terms and the [terrain] of your understanding; it does not ask you to take your feet off the ground but it refreshes your vision by keeping your head in the air and bringing you alive to the open sky of possibility that is within you. And that still seems something to write home about."
Thank you. Let's go to school!
Convocation Remarks by Bill Bailey, Teacher Emeritus
Mr. Dresden has introduced me as a teacher emeritus, a title I have now borne at CA since June of 2002. I was never that sure about the meaning of that title which a number of us have received as retired CA faculty in recognition of our years of service. So prior to writing this talk, I checked the dictionary—teachers should do what they ask their students. Needless to say I looked in a hard cover, not having any idea how to access Wikipedia. And there it was with several citations including:
#1—honorary title following retirement bestowed upon teachers and professors
#3—(by far the most interesting definition) “an old fart”
I think a number of my students here as well as some of the current faculty at CA thought I had reached the latter status some years before I actually retired.
I’ve chosen this morning to devote my time with you, tracing the history of Concord Academy’s commitment to social justice, to tolerance, to embracing of differences, to being a leader in these areas rather than a follower. Institutions—governments, schools and universities, religious denominations, professional organizations—express a belief in values that they see as goals to guide them and their communities. We all know, for example, that in the Declaration of Independence, the signers pledged to create a society based on the premise that “all men are created equal”, a premise modified at the Seneca Fall Women’s Rights Convention in 1848 when the signers redefined that premise to read “all men and women.” Lincoln, in his Gettysburg Address, called for a “new birth of freedom.”
And so it is with Concord, a school that has, I believe, a remarkable story of commitment. CA is, however, no different from our country or any democratic society, no different from religious institutions that profess openness to all, and to social and economic justice. Our story is not without blemish, not without hypocrisy, not without failure or at least hesitation to carry through on our mission.
But I am not here to give a balanced view of Concord. I am here to introduce you or to remind many of you of how CA has attempted to create a school whose values are clear and, I dare say, noble, appreciated, and supported by its students, faculty and administration, and alums. What follows is a story of moments when we did not shrink from our responsibility to ourselves and members of the larger community. I’ve chosen not to name names as I’d like you to concentrate on the sense that you are a part of a remarkable place rather than dwelling on the obviously vital roles played by key people at Concord. Please keep in mind, students, that some of these milestones were made when the climate was not auspicious for change. What appeared radical and courageous in years past may be far more widely embraced in your world, both within and beyond CA.
It was in the early fifties. CA was an all-girls school with a considerably larger number of students living in the Concord area than at present. Each year, a cotillion was held at the Colonial Inn where many girls were making their debuts—a term to describe the event when girls of seventeen and eighteen were presented to society. All CA girls were traditionally invited. Except they were not. When the head of CA learned that invitations had not been issued to the handful of Jewish girls at the school, she wrote to the cotillion committee, informing them that CA boarding girls would not be attending. And you may say, of course, what else could the head do? Yet Concord, in the fifties was like most suburban communities in the northeast. The country club here did not accept Jewish members. Emerson Hospital’s doctors had a bitter fight over whether to allow the first Jewish doctor who came to town to affiliate with the hospital. Real estate companies told prospective Jewish buyers that there were simply no houses on the market in whatever price category they were seeking.
Before I came to Concord in 1967, I was teaching at another New England private school with an all-white, overwhelmingly Christian student body—so typical of that era. A group of faculty petitioned the head to admit students of color. A program had recently begun, called ABC, A Better Chance, a form of affirmative action, seeking qualified students for admission to private school. We had been told that no such students had applied, an argument always used to preserve the status quo, and that no, our school would not join ABC. The fall of my first year of teaching here, I spoke with the head of the school, expressing admiration for CA’s commitment to ABC. I asked if there had been a problem with the board of trustees. He looked at me, “Bill, it never occurred to me to consult with them.”
At about the same time, the U.S. was heavily involved in the Vietnam War with 500,000 American troops committed to defeating communism. Opposition to the war was growing—in Washington, on university campuses, on editorial boards of newspapers. It was a day in the spring of 1968 at CA, and time for an assembly. Kids here (as maybe now?) were thinking, oh no, why do we have to go? A Harvard University Nobel Prize winner, scientist and teacher, George Wald, was speaking. His topic: the war. His message: the Vietnam War was a travesty, contradictory to and destructive of what our country should stand for. Concord did not realize that the school was a kind of testing ground for Professor Wald’s speech, the very same one which would be delivered soon after at Harvard by Professor Wald and reprinted in newspapers and journals across the nation.
At the time, Berkeley, the University of Michigan, and other universities staged what were called “teach ins” with professors and outside speakers educating (with a bias, of course) about the Vietnam War. CA responded with its own teach in, setting aside a day of seminars with all classes cancelled.
When Martin Luther King’s birthday was made a state holiday with all public schools closed, CA instead devoted the day to learning about MLK, his message, and the need for justice for all. I assume you still do. Just so you know about alternatives—one neighboring school (not in Concord) chose a different option for a year or two, giving those students of color the day off and requiring the whites to attend classes!
In the early eighties, a CA girl became pregnant. Abortion was not an option. She and her parents met with the head of the school. The girl had chosen to have her baby and to give it up for adoption. The head proposed that the girl remain at CA until she was due to deliver. He then asked her to come back as soon as she was able. Once again, students, please be aware that almost no private school that I know of would have offered the girl that opportunity—even now many would not. She returned to CA to graduate with her class. She gave her chapel talk in late spring, making reference to her pregnancy. The closing music—my guess is that picking that music is just as important to all of you as it was then—was a tape of the popular song, “In the Heat of the Moment”! Only at CA!
In the late eighties, Concord formed a gay-straight alliance. It was reputed to be the first at an eastern seaboard private school. It was a long step toward acceptance, ultimately embracing gays and lesbians at CA, both students and faculty. More recently the CA performing arts department produced The Laramie Project, a dramatic presentation of the story of the horrible murder of a young gay man, Matthew Shepherd. Once again, Concord made history for itself as a community, giving the first east coast public performance of that play.
Many of you know that the country of South Africa was governed by a small white minority for well over a hundred years, fostering a policy known as apartheid, a legally enforced segregation of the races, akin to Jim Crow as practiced throughout our South through the 1960s. Our own government refused in the 1980s to condemn and isolate the South African government. Many educational and religious institutions in the U.S. challenged the government and chose to end investments in American corporations that engaged in business in South Africa, a big step to take, as such institutions rely on their endowments to make as big an increase as possible. A faculty member here and a group of students proposed that the board of trustees divest its holdings in such companies. They did a great deal of research and made their proposals before both the school community and the board. They were expressing a commitment to justice for the African majority led by Nelson Mandela. The group failed in attaining their objective, but the effort was not lost sight of.
More recently I understand that Concord has made a remarkable effort to respond to the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina. Most of you know of the welcoming of a couple of students from New Orleans and of the numbers of students and faculty who have made the trek to the city to help in its rebuilding.
When I was preparing this talk I found numerous other examples of CA’s commitment. I was awed, in part, because I had never put it all together. So what’s the point? You can make a difference. You can take a stand on an issue that might challenge Concord Academy, that might challenge your country and the world that you are a part of. More importantly, you would be challenging yourself. I wish you an exciting year at Concord. Thank you again for giving me this opportunity.
Convocation Remarks by Sylvia Mendenhall, Teacher Emerita
One of the great things about being a student is that each September one has the opportunity to make a new start. To be sure, one builds on past experience and learning; nevertheless, the pens and pencils are new, the notebooks, the texts—and the expectations. It is the proverbial clean slate. This does not happen in the same way in the so-called “real world” of business, politics, and labor.
My first knowledge of the existence of Concord Academy occurred at the beginning of my freshman year at Smith College. As I arrived at my first lecture in European History, next to me sat another freshman, clad in a dark green blazer. In those days students from fancy prep schools all wore blazers displaying the prep-school crest on the pocket. But this blazer was different, for it sported on its sleeve, just above the cuff, a 3 ½ inch embroidered lizard. In the days that followed I learned that Lucia Lee Cabot had just graduated from a school called Concord Academy, and the lizard was a chameleon. Weird.
As the years continued, I graduated from college, traveled in Europe for a year, held a series of jobs in various publishing and publicity offices to earn enough money to travel again. One day, I looked at myself in the mirror and said, “Sylvia, this has got to stop—enough of writing about chocolate marshmallow pancakes and how to re-upholster a chair with granny’s old shawl. So, in 1955—seven years after I had graduated from Smith—I made a new beginning. As I completed my master’s degree at Harvard, I dreamed of saving the public school system. However, teaching jobs in the Boston area were scarce in those years, so when the vocational office at Smith, let me know about the opening in the English Department at Concord Academy, I decided it would be a good idea to see what a teacher interview might be like. Thus one day in February, dressed in my proper charcoal gray suit and silk blouse, I left my practice teaching job at Newton High School—a dark, brick, prison-like building where they locked the students’ coats in cages during the day so they wouldn’t leave school. I arrived at CA, amazed at the carved antique apple-wood chairs in the Hobson House living room, the tall grandfather’s clock in working order, and the painting over the mantle. THEN I met Mrs. Hall, and we hit it off immediately. I realized that CA was more than a snobby private school and decided to try it for a year, maybe two because it would look better on my record.
As I arrived at the beginning of school in the fall of 1956, fifty-one years ago, there, at the end of the lawn, stood the rough shell of the Chapel. The windows and doors were irregular dark gaping holes soon to be protected by flapping pieces of plastic to keep out the autumn rains. Piled over to the right was a heap of clapboards waiting to be painted by the four upper classes.
I have to confess as a newcomer to the school, the building of the Chapel made me nervous. Had I, a closet agnostic, gotten myself into a job full of holy prayers and a Sunday school approach to life? Fortunately not, but those first few days, even weeks, I was not sure.
Since my beginning days at CA, the school has changed enormously. Here is a quick list of examples:
- In 1956, CA was all girls—seventh- to twelfth-grade, about 220 students, 40 of them boarders who squeezed nicely into Mrs. Hall’s living room for Sunday night readings from “Wind in the Willows.”
- There were no photocopiers, no computers—just a hand-cranked ditto machine with purple ink.
- Almost all the parents and faculty voted Republican. (I was one of three closet Democrats.)
- At age sixteen, all students at CA qualified for smoking permission—smoking allowed in the so-called Purple Oyster or “Purp” in the basement of Mrs. Hall’s house on Main Street. Actually, after the woodcarving in the Chapel and the steeple, the next Molly Gregory project was the Smoking Pavilion or “Pav”, which lasted until at least the late 80’s. The Chapel and the “Pav”—both sacred spots.
- In 1956, all seniors took biology with Miss Morse and the climax of the course was the dissection of a cat, including a life-sized drawing of its innards.
- Everyone was required to sing in Nancy Loring’s Concord Academy chorus, whether you liked to sing or not. This took place in the Assembly Hall, the present library. Nancy Loring was an extraordinary person, a sizable lady. My favorite Nancy Loring story tells of the time she was leading up to a crescendo, and as her arms raised, the elastic on her underpants broke, but agiley she stepped aside as they dropped to her ankles, never missing a beat.
- Was there diversity? Of temperament and character, yes. But the year I arrived, there was only a handful of Jews and Catholics—no Asians, no Hispanics, no African-Americans.
David Aloian, as new head of Concord Academy in 1963, brought a new beginning. He was the first male head, and his passion was academic excellence. Not only did he continue the growth of the music and art departments, he introduced subjects such as calculus and physics to the curriculum. No more kitty diagrams. A whole new group of boarders from Washington DC and New York arrived at the school as a result. During his time, the Science Building and the P.A.C. were built. He appointed a group of department heads to meet to consider the future, and out of this came CA’s first computer, linked to the one at MIT, the start of a filmmaking course, and a program to attract African-American students to CA. He was the ultimate in pursuing the highest standards, and one of my favorite David Aloian stories concerns the night his house—now Lee House—caught fire. There, at 4:00 in the morning, were his wife and children standing in the street along with the boarders from Wheeler House all shivering in their pajamas. Then out came David Aloian clad in his impeccable headmaster’s suit, clean shirt, and silk tie, ready to assume his role for the day.
With Russell Mead as his succeeding head, there was yet a new beginning after the faculty and administration voted to make CA go co-educational. During the past three to four years various boys’ schools had been trying to woo CA—Groton, St. Paul’s, Middlesex. I’m afraid their propositions were motivated by greed to double the admissions pool, not equal opportunities for women. However, CA did not wish to be swallowed up by a boys’ school as Abbot had been swallowed by Andover, or Rosemary Hall by Choate. We were too independent for that. Instead, we chose to go it alone.
The 70s was a unique period in schools such as CA. Along with a new interest in coeducation, all the basic school structure seemed open to question. Nationally it was a time of protest, student sit-ins, freedom marches, and such. At CA, students were challenging everything: Why are classes required? Why do we have to study grammar? All of a sudden the curriculum was dominated by electives. The school was full of creative energy, but all of it divided, lacking coherent direction.
I don’t remember the exact year, but Headmaster Rus Mead during announcements in the P.A.C., (1) committed a nearly fatal error, and (2) introduced a phrase to describe an essential principle in support of the community of CA. First, the mistake—there had been a rash of minor offenses afoot: filching from cubbies, behavior bordering on hazing in the dormitories. Expressing his displeasure, Rus Mead announced that he would rather have amusing pranks afoot in the school than that sort of behavior. And so the pranks began: the next morning all the classroom chairs had been neatly arranged on the lawn at 8:00 a.m. Then one evening a house director’s bathtub was discovered filled to the brim with light blue jello, and some months later a cinderblock wall blocked the North from the Middle School. Fortunately the cement had not fully hardened. But Mr. Mead and the maintenance crew were not amused. Nevertheless, the same behavior criticized by the headmaster also inspired the phrase that came to be known as “The Common Trust,” first articulated by Rus Mead who declared that adhering to The Common Trust had become the sixth unbreakable rule of Concord Academy, and it was then and is now an important, enduring legacy.
Starting with Phil McKean and then especially with the arrival of Tom Wilcox, came a new beginning, and a new order evolving out of the chaos of the mid-70s. The curriculum was redesigned, including electives but also prerequisites The Dining Hall and Stu-Fac evolved out of what was the old gym, and the new gym opened in 1978. Tom Wilcox’s vision of a traditional quad was fulfilled with the building of the MAC. At this time arrived the expansion of the library, computers, photocopiers, and more important, a commitment to diversity. Under Tom Wilcox, the school finally became fully co-ed. The boarding/day student ratio also became stabilized at approximately fifty-fifty. A new order had been ushered in, giving Jake Dresden a solid base on which to build.
Yes, there have been many new beginnings at CA, but something about the spirit of this place has remained the same through all these years. And this is what draws me back to the school:
- I revel in the spirit of fun and spontaneity that makes this a special place.
- I treasure the sense of excitement about learning.
- I respect the honoring of the individual and how the debate between the good of the individual and the good of the community energizes the school.
So what would I want to know if I were starting the year at CA for the first time?
Number one: Expect the unexpected. You have no idea your first year how many unexpected moments exist in the dailiness of CA. And who knows when Thursday will be Monday until 3:00 p.m.? Number two: Take the courage to ask questions. Questions, rather than correct answers, are often the best route to knowledge. Number three: Remember that the only difference between a crisis and an adventure is the way you look at it. As I was reading Al Gore’s book, The Assault on Reason, I learned that the written Chinese word for “crisis” is made up of two characters: danger, then opportunity. I like that—out of danger comes opportunity.
Finally to begin the new year, I should like to read a short poem written in Sanskrit by a fifth-century Indian poet named Kalidasa. It goes as follows:
Look to this day!
For it is life, the very life of life
In its brief course lie all the verities
and realities of your existence:
The bliss of growth,
The glory of action,
The splendor of beauty;
For yesterday is but a dream,
And tomorrow is only a vision;
But today, well lived, makes every
Yesterday a dream of happiness
And every tomorrow a vision of hope
Look well, therefore, to this day.
Happy beginning of school!