2008 crash stashed away, I guess I don't know what to do, Fred.
I like to think I work at a school with as solid and pervasive a social
justice mission as any, where kids have to think about these things in every
class in every discipline. We have set aside simple noblesse oblige
"service" concepts for some serious thinking and lots of talking and even
doing about social entrepreneurship and socially conscious capitalism.
Short of stopping the dance altogether and liquidating our assets toward
some particular cause, we're doing what we can to make our place an agency
for good, for helping kids see the large-scale social, economic, and
cultural benefits of more collaboration, more awareness of the pain of the
world and our roles in both exacerbating and ameliorating that pain. Some of
the kids probably miss these messages, while others probably think they're
shoved down their throats, so the balance is probably about right. Our
families seem to get this, and they even seem to appreciate it.
As a school we walk what I think is the righteous line between reasonable
choices for institutional sustainability (= survival of our worthy mission
and the will to carry it out) and doing the socially just thing--around
financial aid, programs, choices about spending and resource allocation. If
you were a bloated, ethically numb plutocrat you wouldn't choose our place
to educate your kid or to be on the board, anyhow.
I vote with the good guys and occasionally with the too-good-to-be-true guys
(although I wouldn't vote for a Nader if it would risk giving a victory to
the bad guys); I put my spare money toward the causes that matter to me,
primarily the 5 different public radio outlets for which I'm a sustainer;
they educate broadly and well, I think.
But I think there are quite a few schools like ours and quite a few people
like me in them, trying to figure it out and use our personal and
institutional resources to accomplish something other than educate more
generations of Richie Riches. There are a whole lot of good will and good
intentions in this profession, and whatever you may say about the pavement
on the road to hell, our schools are more authentically playing roles for
social good than they were 2, 4, 8, or 10 decades ago--it's progress, though
slow. It is a matter of balancing institutional survival against these
shifting intentions: after all, many of our schools have played a key role
for a century or more in sustaining community and even national elites, and
redefining the task--most importantly, redefining the role of elites, in
many cases--is not so easy.
But lots of us are trying. And I see not just the graybeards working at it;
the younger folk coming in, at least the ones I see, have ideals and dreams,
too--PG
Peter Gow
Director of College Counseling and Special Programs
Beaver Country Day School
791 Hammond Street
Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts 02467
www.bcdschool.org
617-738-2755 (O)
617-738-2747 (F)
petergow3 (Skype)
On Mon, Oct 25, 2010 at 7:30 PM, Fred Bartels <fredbartels@gmail.com> wrote:
> David,
>
> So many myths, and so many of them being spread via the "very strange
> political doings afoot" that Peter mentions.*
>
> Recently, many of my fellow technorati jumped on Malcolm Gladwell for the
> New Yorker article in which he questioned whether social networks and
> twitter will be able to drive significant social change.
>
> http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/10/04/101004fa_fact_gladwell
>
> I found much of what Gladwell wrote quite convincing. In essence he asks
> how
> will people find the courage to stand up and fight a terrible injustice? In
> the Civil Rights movement the people who literally put their lives on the
> line (not career setbacks mind you, but lives) had to trust each other and
> know that there were serious organizations with substantial resources
> watching their backs. I think Gladwell is right, we are going to need more
> than blogs and twitter to have a chance at winning this fight.
>
> David, here is something I don't understand. There must be lots of
> wonderful
> independent school administrators who are late in their careers (gray
> beards
> like us) who know that economic inequality has gotten way out of hand.
> These
> folks have their TIAA/CREF stash safely tucked away. Why aren't they
> speaking out? Have they too fallen prey to the myth that "making money
> separates you from the crowd."?
>
> Fred
>
>
> *http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer
>
>
>
>
> On Mon, Oct 25, 2010 at 5:26 PM, David Withrow
> <davidwithrow@harfordday.org>wrote:
>
> > On Mon, Oct 25, 2010 at 5:26 PM, David Withrow
> > <davidwithrow@harfordday.org>wrote:
> >
> > > BTW , 2 Trillion dollars are sitting in the coffers of businesses,
> great
> > > and small. hmmm..... Who's playing whom?
> > > When the owners of the country play the rest of us ..... the Tea Party
> is
> > a
> > > distraction/
> > >
> > > On the other hand there is often resistance to the idea of
> collaboration
> > in
> > > the classroom and collaborative assessment. That is what the interview
> > said
> > > to me.
> > >
> > > Even in an advantaged setting collaborative learning has an important
> > role.
> > > The leaders of the educational community must take the educational
> role:
> > > that of informing all of us about a rising tide raises the community.
> > Yet,
> > > who has that courage? In these tight times most heads cannot, will not
> > move
> > > on this. The community, in general, believes in the myth that making
> > money
> > > separates you from the crowd.
> > >
> > > cynically,
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> >
> > [ For info on ISED-L see
> https://www.gds.org/podium/default.aspx?t=128874]
> > Submissions to ISED-L are released under a creative commons, attribution,
> > non-commercial, share-alike license.
> > RSS Feed, http://listserv.syr.edu/scripts/wa.exe?RSS&L=ISED-L
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Fred Bartels
> Dir. of Info. Tech.
> Rye Country Day School
>
> [ For info on ISED-L see https://www.gds.org/podium/default.aspx?t=128874]
> Submissions to ISED-L are released under a creative commons, attribution,
> non-commercial, share-alike license.
> RSS Feed, http://listserv.syr.edu/scripts/wa.exe?RSS&L=ISED-L
>
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