A Culture of Varying Perspectives and Experiences

Connections: Commencement 2007 -- This summer, Hackley’s new Kathleen Allen Lower School will be completed, the temporary building used as the Lower School’s dining room this year will be removed, and Symmes Hall will be demolished. As a result, we will be able to begin the landscaping of Akin Common, the new center of a reorganized campus. It’s exciting to see beautiful new buildings rise, and gratifying to see how popular Akin Common, even in its curtailed and dusty condition this year, has become with our students. Once the artificial turf is installed, play there will be even more enticing, except perhaps for boys of a certain age who loved being covered in mud or dirt! I predict that even those of us who have lived with this project from the earliest stages will be surprised by how aesthetically and programmatically effective our new arrangement will be. I know the views of our early 20^th century buildings and Akin Common from Kathleen Allen’s new stone tower (views enhanced by the removal of our old Science building and Symmes), will bring great pleasure to generations to come. In a sense we are beginning the restoration of the original beauty of this old school, the scraping away as of a palimpsest to reveal long-hidden images.

As this phase of new construction comes to an end, friends and colleagues, parents and alumni have begun to ask, what’s next for Hackley? They often mean this somewhat jokingly, suggesting that Hackley’s bent for new construction seems consuming. Similarly, when we interview candidates for teaching positions at Hackley, one of the questions that often arises is our vision for Hackley’s future. What do we see as the shaping concerns of the next five years?

As long ago as 1999, with the completion of our long-range plan, we envisioned the buildings and fields of the future; we know that the next buildings are likely to be a pool and a performing arts center, and that we need new fields. Construction, the renewal and renovation of old classrooms and hallways and the provision of the new, will be a perennial concern for Hackley, as it must be for all schools and colleges (young people cause significant wear and tear on physical plants!). But the construction that may take place will not be, I think, our most shaping concern in the next five years. That place will be held by Hackley’s culture, which is both the representation of and the enabler of our educational mission.

Founded by Unitarians who valued inclusiveness of community, Hackley historically was more diverse than its peer schools, which in early decades were the leading boarding schools of New England. In those days, diversity largely meant religious diversity, and sometimes diversity of national origin. Now diversity encompasses broader differences, and we recognize the importance of that diversity not only to the moral, but also to the intellectual quality of the education Hackley offers. On our web site, we say this:

Hackley School was founded upon values of inclusiveness and welcome. Hackley's founders sought to build a school that prized open intellectual discourse, character, inquiry, effort, and investment of self. From its earliest days, Hackley welcomed students of diverse religious, economic, ethnic and national origin within an ethos shaped by the school's Latin Motto, “Iuncti Iuvamus,” which we translate as, "United, We Help One Another," and by the phrase carved over the main entrance, "Enter Here To Be And Find A Friend."

At Hackley, we believe that true education comes in part through the relationships we forge with others. We define diversity to include differences of race, socioeconomic status/class, religion, gender, national original, sexual orientation, learning style, family structure, political view, home community, and talent, and we also recognize that above all, diversity is a multiplicity of perspectives and experience, and that diversity of community offers us the great opportunity to learn from each other.

Many Hackley families and teachers have been attracted to Hackley because of this tradition, because Hackley in fact offers more diversity of perspectives and experiences than many public schools in Westchester, which are defined by their local communities. At the same time, as Hackley’s academic reputation has strengthened and spread in the last decade, the exceptional intellectual merits of a Hackley education have attracted ever stronger teachers and students. The enhancement of our campus, an outward symbol of the energy and commitment of our community, has also widened Hackley’s appeal.

Success poses cultural challenges. As one instance, let me focus on the socioeconomic diversity which has long been distinctive at Hackley as compared to many other independent schools. As Hackley’s academic reputation has risen, an increasing proportion of applications has come from more affluent families across a broader geographical range. Such parents, often themselves highly educated, are able to offer an enriched educational environment, and as a result their children often perform very well on standardized admissions tests and have many accomplishments even at an early age. In our competitive admissions context, in other words, to the degree we favor applicants who have demonstrated success in standard measures, Hackley’s population as a whole could easily become more narrowly affluent.

The reality is that barring some munificent eight-figure gift to endowment, Hackley like its peer schools will remain largely tuition-dependent, which in turn means that the majority of our students will come from families able to pay our full tuition. For 2006-07, the families of 79.4% of our students paid full tuition. Anyone who can manage the after-tax dollars involved in paying Hackley’s tuition, for one or two children, is in the financial elite of this country, and indeed the world! I can imagine many reading this with indignation, thinking of the sacrifices necessary to pay that tuition, but the fact is, if somehow one can manage it, one is thereby demonstrating financial means which are impressive relative to what the mass of American citizens could manage. Economic diversity in such a context means that our school community should range from those who can pay full tuition easily, to those who pay it by dint of sacrifice, to those who have validated need and pay partial tuition and receive moderate financial aid grants, to those who are able to pay very little tuition and receive virtually full financial aid grants. Success in our goal of economic diversity would mean our expanding the percentage of people receiving some level of financial aid, and further diversifying the level of aid received.

If we want the stimulation that different experiences and perspectives bring to a school, if we see such diversity as morally and intellectually crucial, we need to assure that people of all backgrounds are able to be full members of and participants in our community. Economic diversity is just one aspect. We need to assure that people with varying political beliefs are not afraid to join in our common conversations; we need to assure that parents who have not mastered English feel supported in participating in the life of our school; we need to assure that all our nationalities, races, and religions are honored. None of this is easy. We will have disagreements about curriculum, about holidays, about school events. Diversity means disagreement and discomfort, and the reality of most human beings is that we seek comfort and the reinforcement of our preexisting beliefs (how many of us read regularly columnists with whom we disagree?). Education, though, requires discomfort. To be educated is to be changed, to be pressed out of one’s comfort zone, whether on the field, in the studio, or in a classroom. We grow when we are challenged and rise to that challenge, and growth is what we want for our children.

If we want the best education for our children, we must be willing to recognize that what we take for granted as a norm, the patterns we have shaped for our social comfort, may be inaccessible to, or at variance with the values of, people of different backgrounds in our community. It would not be reasonable to ask that we all give up our norms and our social patterns; if we did so, the very diversity we value would be subsumed by a new conformity. Instead, we need to create a shared space, a shared conversation, a shared culture to which we can each bring our varying perspectives and experiences. To achieve and maintain such a culture, one in which we can learn from our differences, we need to agree on core values that enable such sharing – a commitment to reason and to mutual respect, and also a willingness to compromise our comfort in order to make space for our common purposes.

Hackley’s philosophy has long made commitment to the democratic ethic, and this idea of a shared culture that honors diverse cultures is defining of that ethic. It is not a physical place, but a disposition of mind which we symbolize with a physical space. In the American tradition we have called it many things – the town square, the public arena, the common ground. As we contemplate the new beauty of Akin Common, I hope we will embrace it as the symbol of our willingness to give up some of our private social space to create Hackley’s cultural common. When we think of Akin Common, we should be able to think of children of all backgrounds playing there together. Given the social inertia favoring comfort and separation, that will not happen unless we will it to be so, unless we work for it to be so. Strengthening that Hackley culture is a worthy goal for our coming years.