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Introduction
At school meeting this week Mrs. Curtis suggested that it is sometimes appropriate to begin by reading a poem, which she did. I have chosen to do the same and selected a poem I took the trouble to memorize while in college. It was not until yesterday, however, that I learned from Mrs. O'Donnell that its author, John Ashbery, recognized as one of America's most important contemporary poets, is a Deerfield alumnus:
THE CATHEDRAL IS
Slated for demolition
Thank you for this honor. This is the only honor at Deerfield that could mean anything to me, for you students are the only body who can validate my profession.
We are here this evening to celebrate the completion of this important stage of your education. I address myself to the class of '07 who, collectively, will be the newest alumni, and thereby the closest to the school. I was surprised to realize this week that I have had the pleasure of sharing a classroom experience with 99 members of this class. (I suspect I have the other half of the class to thank for asking me to speak this evening.) I also address myself to the class of '08, our rising seniors and next year's student leaders.
A noted German philosopher once opined that the Romantics "muddied the water to make it appear deep." I thought to myself, Gosh, those Romantics were smart, for I am aiming for the same deception here tonight, but will warn you in advance that instead of the illusion of depth, you may simply have the experience of dirty water.
I would like to think that your desire to hear me speak had something to do with my teaching ability-if that is the case, any number of my colleagues could be up here with me. (In fact, if any one of you wants to come up and help out, now is the time.)
I have long believed that one measure of a teacher's talent is evidenced by the degree to which her own children embody the discipline she teaches. Mrs. O'Donnell and I encourage Julian to see things as they are and not as they appear. I will share a brief example of our success in this venture:
About a month ago Julian and I found ourselves in a doctor's waiting room. For 45 minutes we discussed various topics, including our favorite dinosaurs. Our conversation led to my asking him if he thought that he would ever become a doctor. He replied that he might. I, of course, asked him why. He reflected a bit and offered that perhaps he would like to because he'd be able to help somebody. He paused, looked up at me and said, "You would never be a doctor."
Julian, I've said this before, "You are like a son to me."
Part One: Frontiers
Several years ago I was honored to share some of my thoughts with the class of '03 and told the following story: "On my first day of teaching at Deerfield Academy, I asked my Political Philosophy class to write down what they thought the essential functions of a government were. My second day teaching was September 11, 2001. Not surprisingly, the next class day the students all wanted to revise their answers. One valuable lesson ensued: 'Be wary of believing you have all the answers.'" I continued, "It is customary to point out to graduating students the ways the world has changed since they have been in high school, and the world certainly has been transformed dramatically while you were in high school." My message to the class of '07 is not so much about how the world has already changed, but rather how it is expected to change as your very careers and lives begin to unfold beyond these hills.
For thousands of years, thinkers as diverse as Buddha and T.S. Eliot have told us that we will not walk out of this room tonight the same people we were when we walked in. (Personally, I'm counting on that.) A contemporary existential Thomist explains that we are "frontier beings," always "living on the edge, on the frontier between matter and spirit, time and eternity, who have to live with the tension caused by the diverse pulls of these apparently conflicting dimensions." He continues his definition by quoting Maximus the Confessor: "Man is a laboratory, a workshop, that contains everything in a most comprehensive fashion." Living on the frontier is always exciting. And I remind you that Deerfield was once on the literal frontier; however, as they learned in Deerfield, when one lives on the frontier, there's always the chance that strangers will show up in the middle of the night and try to kill you with hatchets.
As this moment, therefore, you are at once frontier beings on the frontier of the next phase of your life and of a cultural shift very much underway. The spoils will go to those who wake up first. By spoils I mean the potential to live a meaningful life. I ask you to reflect upon how Deerfield has prepared you for that world.
Daniel Pink calls the age we are entering the "conceptual age" and has received much acclaim for his thesis that the traditional conception of a career, one you may be considering at this moment, is being threatened by three forces he calls: Abundance, Asia and Automation. For those of you looking to earn degrees in engineering, for example, you must now consider that "[e]ach year, India's colleges and universities produce about 350,000 engineering graduates. That's one reason that more than half of the Fortune 500 companies now outsource software work to India." And by the way, these workers will work for about one-fifth of what you will, speak perfect English, and communicate instantly with the U.S. virtually free of cost.
Many of you may have heard that China plans to create 100 new universities over the coming decade and aims to have at least one Chinese institution rank among the world's top 10. According to The New York Times, "China has already pulled off one of the most remarkable expansions of education in modern times, increasing the number of undergraduates and people who hold doctoral degrees fivefold in 10 years." That is direct competition for the college degree that you have worked so hard for the right to earn.
Two Deerfield seniors recognized this trend in 1971, when Rory Cowan and Lee Phillips wrote in their senior project book (quite an impressive senior project titled, A Sigh of Change): "I mean even now we are churning out PhDs at such a startling rate that they sometimes wind up teaching grammar school because there are simply no high positions available. And it's getting to the point where fields are becoming so specialized that doctors in, say, philosophy are finding it impossible to communicate with doctors in mathematics unless they use sign language" (45). To update their point, earlier this month Dr. Tyson asked you, How does a biologist talk to an astro-physicist?
Another line of attack comes from the exponential growth and impressive developments in the world of technology. Not too long ago, in 1987, Gary Kasparov, then the chess world's enfant terrible, boasted: 'No computer can ever beat me.' Today, Kasparov says: 'I give us only a few years. Then they'll win every match, and we may have to struggle to win even a single game'" (Pink).
Those in professions like the law are under another form of pressure. Daniel Pink warns that "[d]ozens of inexpensive information and advice services are reshaping law practice. At CompleteCase.com, you can get an uncontested divorce for $249, less than a tenth of the cost of a divorce lawyer...Instead of hiring a lawyer for 10 hours to craft a contract, consumers can fill out the form themselves and hire a lawyer for one hour to look it over."
Imagine if you were inspired by Mr. Dickerson, this year's Lambert Fellow, to become a journalist and work for The New York Times newspaper. Before you get your newly minted journalism degree, the landscape will likely shift. Here is what Arthur Sulzberger, owner, chairman and publisher of the most respected newspaper in the world said in February of this year: "I really don't know whether we'll be printing the Times in five years, and you know what? I don't care either."
In response to this changing world and certainly a variety of other factors, Harvard University announced in February that it was undergoing the biggest curricular overhaul in 30 years (to the oldest curriculum in the United States). Among the several new requirements will be one under the rubric of "culture and belief" intended to "introduce students to ideas, art and religion in the context of the social, political, religious, economic and cross-cultural conditions" that shape them. Other new requirements will include the study of empirical reasoning, ethical reasoning, the science of living systems, the science of the physical universe, and "aesthetic and interpretive understanding."
Harvard seems to be making a statement that its students must think outside the box because the box was an illusion all along. To the ancient Greeks, who invented philosophy, everything worth thinking about was philosophy. It seems that Americans are finally arriving at the same conclusion. Bertrand Russell, the famous philosopher and mathematician, added his own spin: "Science is what you know, philosophy is what you don't know."
Consistent with this development, Daniel Pink encourages you to intentionally develop skills and prepare for jobs that utilize "design, story, symphony, empathy, play, and meaning." For a moment, let's consider play. Pinks asks you to imagine an accountant spending this beautiful Sunday afternoon painting a picture or writing a play for fun. Now, imagine a sculptor spending this same afternoon doing someone's taxes for fun. In other words, as we find written in the Tao 24 centuries ago: "In work, do what you enjoy."
"Want to get ahead today? Forget what your parents told you. Instead, do something foreigners can't do cheaper. Something computers can't do faster. And something that fills one of the nonmaterial, transcendent desires of an abundant age. In other words, go right, young man and woman, go right." I remind you that Pink is referring to the right hemisphere of your brain, which has been long understood as the part of the brain that specializes in context and synthesizes the big picture. James Watson, winner of the Nobel Prize for co-discovering DNA, observed that the human brain is "by far the most complex thing we have yet discovered in the universe." This is the new frontier, the invitation to voyage, and it is right here inside your head.
Frederick Nietzsche seemed to anticipate contemporary neuroscience in his "Untimely Meditation" on "Schopenhauer as Educator": "The whole future of all the sciences," he writes, "is staked on an attempt to understand this canvas and these colors, but not the image. It could be said that only a man who has a firm grasp on the over-all picture of life and existence can use the individual sciences without harming himself; for without such a regulative total image they are strings that reach no end anywhere and merely make our lives still more confused and labyrinthine."
It has long been my belief that Deerfield's sole purpose and its greatest duty to you are to awaken your instinct to ask the right questions and to provide you with the practical skills to pursue the most meaningful answers. This is the "potential" Mr. Koch spoke of in his address to our community earlier this month.
Like you, I am a member of the class of 2007. At my Columbia University graduation ceremony this past Tuesday evening, it occurred to me that I have perhaps acted in accordance with Pink's advice. Within five years of choosing my new calling, I went back to school to acquaint myself with the best practices of virtually every area of my new profession. I now see that what drew me to teaching was its potential to embrace design, story, symphony, empathy, play, and meaning-Personally, I'm still working on empathy.
My finance teacher, a remarkable self-made woman who cut her teeth in the unforgiving bureaucracy of New York state government, one day asked our class how our Excel assignments were going. I had gone to Mr. Ahbel for extra help but knew many of my classmates blew it off with the excuse that none of us really knew the program or felt we were "good" at computers. Hearing this, our teacher paused and spat out, "If you want to have jobs in five years, you had better start learning what you will need to know in order to be relevant."
I would like to share another thing I learned last summer in a course on cognitive science and its implications for teaching and learning: it takes a minimum of eight years to master anything: chess, violin, writing, teaching...I urge you to get going. In the spirit of full disclosure I will admit that I am only in my seventh year of secondary school teaching.
Part Two: Character
There is a Robert Frost quotation that has come to mind numerous times this year: "Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and sorry I could not travel both and be one traveler..."
Come on, give me some credit here.
The Frost quotation that I was really thinking about is this: "In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on." I would add to this notion that everything I've learned about Deerfield's legacy, that which makes it exceptional, can be summed up in three words written by Heraclitus, "Character is destiny." "The rest" of my point here, to borrow a phrase from Rabbi Hillel, "is commentary."
If there is any secondary school in the world that does not have to look outside itself for the formula to turn young people into leaders and valuable members of society, to make them relevant, it is Deerfield. In fact, The Headmaster, John McPhee's "kind of portrait" of Boyden, was required reading in my leadership program at Teachers College. In it we recognize that Mr. Boyden spent 66 years in broad daylight showing us what was important in educating young people and according to McPhee, "Mr. Boyden's own mark was made in moral education rather than in academic disciplines."
This year's Heritage Award winner Father Thomas Keating told some of us at dinner his Deerfield story. Raised in an affluent Park Avenue family, he desperately wanted to leave Deerfield after three years and get on with his life. Mr. Boyden strongly believed that it would be better for Father Keating to stay on for a fourth year. However, Mr. Boyden kept his own counsel for much of Keating's junior year, letting him enjoy Deerfield and grow. When the time came to make the final decision, Mr. Boyden in spite of his personal agenda and convictions to the contrary, allowed Father Keating to graduate after three years and got him into Yale. While Father Keating agrees now that a fourth year would have helped him, he couldn't believe how much time Mr. Boyden spent thinking about him and his future. He always respected Mr. Boyden for having the mature judgment and intuition to allow him to "be himself." In sum, Mr. Boyden made each student feel special and loved.
This reminded me of an unforgettable piece of advice received early in our teaching careers and given by a mutual friend of the O'Donnells and Father Keating, that existential Thomist quoted earlier, Father Norrie Clarke: "Always make sure your students know that you love them." If teachers who are present this evening have made you feel loved, then the school has maintained at least that part of its mission.
So, Mr. Boyden gave us the formula for "Koch" (cheap pun intended) and we must be sure that we don't make the mistake of creating a formula for "New Coke."
While it is true that Mr. Boyden intuitively sensed what was needed to bring a school to greatness, Father Keating reminded us at school meeting that Mr. Boyden was also quite superstitious. For instance, he believed that the quality of the boys' voices at Sunday sing determined both the tenor of the week to come and, more importantly, the success of our teams on the field.
Aware that Deerfield is currently in the process of taking a serious look at its future and core values, I'd like to share a story involving Mr. Boyden's consulting with an outside expert regarding an important decision about the school's growth, a story that I suspect many of you, perhaps not even Mr. Morsman, have ever heard before. A former professor of Mrs. O'Donnell's, Betty Rahv, sent her a copy of a book written by her father shortly after Mrs. O'Donnell was hired to teach in her first boarding school in West Virginia. Betty highlighted chapter 25, "Queenie the Wonder Horse," years before we arrived in this valley:
In 1950 when it was time to consider selecting a college for Betty and her sister Emma, who were at Dana Hall, the headmistress, Miss Cook, suggested they travel to Richmond, Virginia to consult Lady Wonder, the talking horse. "She had sort of a big typewriter in her stall," the father writes, "and she bumped letters of the alphabet out with her nose, and Betty's three letters came out O-W-U. She went to Ohio Wesleyan University." For her sister Emma, "that horse actually typed out D-U-K-E...In September of the next year [Emma] found herself en route to Durham, North Carolina to enroll as a freshman at Duke University. When it was time for Betty's brother, Steve, to apply to college, Lady Wonder was dead, so they did the next best thing which was to contact Mr. Boyden, headmaster at Deerfield Academy and ask him where Steve should attend college."
"When Steve told the headmaster about the girls, Mr. Boyden said that Miss Cook had [also] told him about Lady Wonder" and he had made a trip to Richmond to talk to Lady Wonder about a new building at Deerfield Academy that he needed. He asked Lady Wonder, 'Where can I get money for my new building?' Lady Wonder spelled out B-B. He asked her again, and again she spelled out B-B. It suddenly occurred to Mr. Boyden that Lady Wonder was talking about one of the former students at Deerfield, Bruce Barton. Bruce Barton at that time was head of one of the most prestigious advertising agencies in the country. Mr. Boyden immediately went to him and told him the story (about the prediction)...Bruce Barton said that he would build a [building] for Deerfield and Mr. Boyden."
Part Three: Teach and Be Worthy of Your Heritage
This has been a memorable year filled with growth and pain. The defining moment for me this year will always be the untimely and unexpected passing of Mr. Kapteyn. Like many of you, I have not fully processed this. Earlier this spring in Existentialism, we were discussing the important concept of "das man" and its relationship to authenticity. "Das man" is Martin Heidegger's term for the banal existence of "the One" or "the anybody"-"the personification of the collective self and its prescribed patterns of behavior, the embodiment at once of Everybody and Nobody." After we had analyzed this idea from a variety of angles, and it was clear that the class was getting a hold on it, Ian McCormack stated matter-of-factly, "Mr. Kapteyn was as far from das man as a person could possibly get." I looked at Ian and there was this awkward moment when I thought that both of us were going to cry. We knew exactly what he meant and nobody seemed to feel that elaboration was necessary or appropriate.
Upon thinking more about Mr. Kapteyn and the dazzling portrait of authenticity painted at his memorial service, I am struck by his choice to serve as a model of honor and loyalty to his family, to Deerfield, and to you. It is now cliche to say of a school community that "the students are watching." I hope that most of you were watching Mr. Kapteyn because I think that many of us could benefit from his example.
Teachers are always modeling with their minds and their conduct. The former chancellor of Vanderbilt University, Joe B. Wyatt, once told the following story about a young second grade teacher in Austin, Texas: "Her name is Roberta Wright. Among her young students was a little girl who was stealing materials from the classroom each day. Ms. Wright called the mother and scheduled a parent conference. She told the mother about the daily thefts and let her know that the stealing could not continue. The mother sat silent for a few seconds and then said, 'Oh, Ms. Wright, you don't understand, do you? She comes home each afternoon and plays that she's still in school. She pretends she's you.'"
Sometimes our greatest gifts to each other are given without being conscious of the giving. When we reflect upon our lives, we discover that our heritage is deeply personal and is shaped by those who collectively demonstrated love for us. I will admit that for the first few years at Deerfield I did not fully understand the meaning of the school's motto: "Be worthy of your heritage." I have since thought quite a bit about it and believe that I am beginning to understand its wisdom. It seems to me that this Hindu myth aims at a similar target:
One day, Shiva and Parvati acquired a pot containing the nectar of supreme knowledge. Both their sons, Kartikeya and Ganapati contended for it. The hapless parents set up a competition. The rules read that the first one to go around the world seven times would be declared winner of the pot. Kartikeya, inclined to action, instantly started circumambulating the world on his peacock. With a mouse for a mount, the elephant shaped Ganapati knew that he could never keep up with Kartikeya. So, Ganapati thought about the challenge and had an insight. As his brother was making repeated laps around the world and closing in on the prize, Ganapati got on his mouse and slowly circled his parents seven times. Just at that moment, his brother blew in on his peacock and claimed victory. Ganapati corrected him by saying that he had in fact won. "How can that be" asked Kartikeya, "when you have not even left the room?" "My parents are my whole world" replied Ganapati. Shiva and Parvati proudly gave the pot of nectar to Ganapati for demonstrating his wisdom and recognizing what was important in his life.
At boarding school your teachers collaborate with your parents on your personal growth. We are your family, your world. While "Be worthy of your heritage" may mean little to a new sophomore, it occurs to me that it is intended for you at this very moment, and it may have increasing meaning as the years go on. Rory Cowan and Lee Phillips (recall that 1971 senior project entitled "A Sigh of Change") explained it like this: "The minute [one] graduates from Deerfield, [one] becomes an alumnus. The minute [one] graduates from college, [one] becomes a loyal alumnus of Deerfield" (69). Like Ganapati, it might take you some time and great effort to fully understand the depth and complexity of your heritage, as it is made up of your family, your teachers, and your unique experience of Deerfield. Or, as Father Keating asked, "Who are you?" (Keating at school meeting).
Part Four: Leadership
"You are being readied for a life of leadership. To lead is to inspire, direct and control...You will help administer energies newly unlocked from the universe. If you discharge your stewardship truly, you will know great responsibility and the loneliness of the decision-maker. These are the days of your learning. Use them well." With the scholarly prodding of Mr. Morsman, I found these words in the back of the 1962 Pocumtuck.
I believe we all saw how this kind of leadership can change Deerfield and, hopefully, the greater society, at the recent opening of the Koch Center. Leadership is essential, and on this topic Deerfield alumni continue to cross my path. Tuesday evening, Pearl Kane, founding director of the Klingenstein Center at Teachers College, recognized Deerfield alumnus John Klingenstein and the Klingenstein family for their generosity and support in establishing and sustaining an organization dedicated to leadership in independent education around the world. (Mr. Pete Nilsson, I am proud to point out, is a classmate and graduated with me that evening.) Established in the 1970s, the Klingenstein Center grew out of the family's appreciation of educational leaders of the past, likely Mr. and Mrs. Boyden themselves, but, as Pearl Kane announced to its most recent graduates, today we are preparing a new kind of leader, looking forward to the new millennium, risk taking, collaborative, philosophy based and forward thinking. Leadership is personal, not positional and therefore as the authors of the Pocumtuck suggested, frequently a lonely venture. It is about being a role model and making decisions based upon what is necessary and appropriate, not what is necessarily popular.
I remind you of Plato's perspective on the loneliness of the ethical decision-maker when he has Socrates explain, "But why, my dear Crito, should we care about the opinion of the many? Good men, and they are the only persons who are worth considering, will think of these things truly as they occurred."
Conclusion: To the Class of 2007
You have spent collectively well over 500 academic years at Deerfield; your roots here go deep and wide and starting next week, you become a powerful and important group of alumni. You navigated with impressive dignity this year of transition and pain, carving the way for the remaining classes to pick up where you left off. True to Deerfield's heritage, you led the way to deliberately and thoughtfully establish the Honor Code Book and even a senior prank that involved spending time with schoolmates before leaving-perhaps nothing is more Deerfield than that.
Needless to say, you are now, like the many Deerfield alumni mentioned in this talk, Deerfield in the World.
I would like to add that Mrs. O'Donnell and I have had a policy for many years, long before we arrived here. When we come across good people and we must regrettably part, we are sure to tell them that they have an open invitation to our lives. While it might require an even bigger faculty apartment to do so, we extend that invitation to you.
There is a Zen Saying, "Final job of teacher; free student of teacher." I hope that I can speak for my colleagues here this evening when I tell you that you are free.
Thank you.
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