Passive Acceptance: Beaver's Liberal Ideology

SAM O'REILLY '09

"The progressive school teaches the child to think for himself instead of passively accepting stereotyped ideas. It keeps always in mind that each child is different from every other, and that what makes an educated person useful in his particular walk of life, what makes him interesting, what makes him an individual, is not his resemblance to other people, but his differences."
-John French

It’s the convocation day. I walk into Bradley Hall with a snazzy shirt Mr. Manning let me borrow and a bowtie from Mr. Greenberg’s room. Just before I take my seat in the back row, I say to a teacher, “Above or below five minutes when the word ‘Progressive’ is used for the first time.” She laughs and answers, “Below.” I promptly take my seat next to Clay and have some time to marvel at his beard. Mr. Gow walks on stage. Guess what word was in his first sentence?

I am not saying that the fact that Beaver defines itself as a “progressive” school is a bad thing. In fact, it is something to be proud of. Beaver was one of the first so-called “progressive” schools to be founded. Some people may not realize how revolutionary the progressive education movement was at the time. Traditional education generally followed a script in which the teacher would talk, and the students would listen. This idea of progressive education centered on students thinking as individuals.

The progressive education movement was a success, and Beaver was an innovator in this entirely new field of thought. Progressive education today is immensely popular and helps many young independent thinkers. Progressive education has spread and is now extremely popular all across the country and the world. Much like any revolution, the progressive movement evolves. Such change is necessary for the progressive movement to remain progressive…to progress. Yet, how can Beaver continue to be progressive in a time of increased awareness of progressive values across the nation? In today’s world, what can Beaver do to further facilitate independent thought?

Do not get the ideas of being liberal and being progressive mixed up because they are completely different. Beaver is a particularly liberal school in a politically liberal region of the United States. I find the curriculum in the English and History departments have a very liberal slant. Take History, for example: there is too much history to cover, so the department must choose which parts are important for kids to understand. That’s understandable, but these issues are presented in a biased way. In the 10th grade, I was educated about the huge injustice of Americans driving Native Americans off their land. I could not help but think that the curriculum had an agenda of making students disagree with the expansion. One thing that was not presented to us was what our country would be like if we had not taken that land. Would we be as powerful as we are? We are generally taught to disagree with a capitalist conservative ideology. This is all rather ironic because that same ideology helps to pay for our cars, houses, private school tuitions, and video game systems.

I decided to go to Beaver because I agreed with the basic ideals. My parents did not suggest that I go to Beaver; I took the initiative to say that I wanted to go to this kind of school. Beaver is a very liberal school and there is nothing wrong with that. It is important, however, that we address this reality. I have been at Beaver since the 6th grade. I am currently experiencing my 6th year of Beaver curriculum and culture. When I first came to Beaver, I ate it all up. I ate every bite. I loved the idea of thinking for myself and learning from liberal minded people. Keep in mind I was an intensely opinionated sixth grader, whether I was informed or not. Bush was the devil, and Republicans ruled the world, and Michael Moore was the man.

I evolved over my middle school years. I can’t really pinpoint one moment when everything changed. I do know that it was around 8th grade when I came to the conclusion that the liberal agenda of Beaver was not always a good thing. I became concerned that the liberal mindset was too institutionalized. The ideology of Beaver generally attracts a very liberal staff. Kids do not appreciate how many teachers come to Beaver over potentially higher paying jobs because they agree with the core standards of the school. A generally liberal staff grouped with a generally liberal curriculum has created an institutionalized liberal ideology. The funny thing about it was that I agreed with all of the ideals that the curriculum was teaching. Nonetheless, the widespread passive acceptance of these ideas alarmed me.

I think that Beaver has unintentionally become a place that does not truly harbor independent thought. Throughout my years at the school, I felt as if I was being led in a general direction. Whether teachers realized it or not, they were leading students towards liberal ideals in the way they were presenting information. For example, when I was in the eighth grade, a writer for The Simpson’s spoke at our school. He gave a very interesting and funny speech about his experiences, and just so happened to call something “gay” and referred to Steven Hawkins as a nice “cripple.” I can understand that there would be some controversy after that, although what did people expect from a Simpson’s writer? For the next week, I think we talked about the issue in every class. In English, we even had to write an editorial about what we thought of the issue. All of the teachers were obviously offended and continued bringing up the issue. We were expected to be offended. We were supposed to view his comments as highly offensive. If we did not share the same disgust, then we were ignorant.

I saw some of my peers molded into a uniform liberal teenager. Perhaps they all would have come to this conclusion about the world in due time. I began to see people agree with everything that I generally agree with. The majority of my class hated Bush, but could not give a good reason why. Many people supported gay marriage, but had not stopped to consider the opinions and concerns of many other religious Americans. When I was assigned to put together a debate together for science about abortion, every member of my class supported it. About 57% of Americans share the same sentiment. This is just one example of how students have become products of their environment. I support abortion as well, but I am alarmed by the conformity of opinions.

I am not the only one who is aware of the institutionalized liberalism. It is hard to disagree with uniformly accepted liberal ideas. I know lots of kids that accept these ideas, but do not care about them. Many students do not actually believe in an opinion unless they are genuinely allowed to come to it own their own. I feel like so many people at Beaver have given up trying to oppose the common opinion. These liberal ideas, righteous as they may be, are such constants in our lives that they don’t matter anymore.

I know a handful of kids at Beaver who do not agree with some very liberal ideas. They do not argue for them however because it is difficult to defend such an opinion. It is much easier to argue for gay marriage rather than against it because the “correct” opinions have already been implied to us through every class diversity day we have ever attended. It is logical to write a liberal minded paper because the ideas have already been laid out to us. Liberal thought used to challenge the general consensus, but now it is institutionalized.

Beaver is an environment where it is just much easier and much more rewarding to agree with liberal ideals. Although some teachers try to keep their opinions secret, it does not take a genius to deduct which side he or she is on. A friend once commented to me after a class, “Beaver does not teach you to think, it teaches you to reiterate ideals in an attempt to mold your personality.” Unlike other schools, Beaver does not emphasize the memorization of facts and dates. However, it does focus on the memorization and reiteration of ideals. Such uniformity in core ideas can be very dangerous.

Beaver needs to be a more self-reflective institution. It needs to take a hard look at itself and judge if it is a progressive institution in today’s world. I personally believe that the school would do itself a great service in attempting to eliminate passive acceptance of liberal idealism. Even if a student disagrees with the war in Iraq, along with the teacher and the rest of the students, it is the job of everybody to ask the question, “why?” It is the responsibility for every teacher, student, and administrator to challenge the common belief. Those of us that consider ourselves liberals must challenge our core ideals on a daily basis to remind ourselves of why they are our ideals. I believe that it is our responsibility, as students and citizens of the world, to guard against this habit of passive acceptance. If we cannot do this, then we can never expect to progress.

“Passive acceptance of the teacher's wisdom is easy to most boys and girls. It involves no effort of independent thought, and seems rational because the teacher knows more than his pupils; it is moreover the way to win the favour of the teacher unless he is a very exceptional man. Yet the habit of passive acceptance is a disastrous one in later life. It causes man to seek and to accept a leader, and to accept as a leader whoever is established in that position.”
-Bertrand Russell

CORRECTION 5/Apr/08: Mr. Gow's Cum Laude speech, read every year, does not mention progressive anything. His convocation day speech, though, does "proudly connect Beaver's heritage to the extraordinary work of the early Progressive Education movement." We are very sorry for the mistake.

Image from: http://www.bcdschool.org/
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Too Much Homework?

ERIK TOBIAS '09

One of the most admirable aspects of the Beaver Country Day School is that it offers "progressive education" to its students. It is therefore ironic that Beaver's biggest flaw is that its high school students are inundated with homework. Junior year is notorious for weighting down the average student to the point of academic surrender. However, Beaver is becoming progressively mainstream because, just like every other high school, Beaver is piling on the homework. Beaver's mission is to offer its students "an academically challenging curriculum in an environment that promotes balance in students’ lives." The balance in student's lives is starting to deteriorate. School work, particularly academics and afternoon activities, are causing students to lose the balance that Beaver preaches. The homework load at Beaver is far too high and ultimately prevents students from performing their best in school and from pursing other activities outside of school. Beaver could truly be progressive if it were to limit homework to one hour per night, in addition to half an hour of reading. This would allow students to be well rounded and pursue other activities outside of school that kids should be able to do.

As a student, I have a very busy schedule. I wake up every morning at 6:15am and try to finish up bits of homework from the previous night. It is always a struggle getting out of the house considering I am trying to finish homework, get ready for school and leave the house all at the same time. Somehow, I manage to arrive at Beaver 15 minutes before class starts (Mr.Manning’s time cushion). I then spend the next seven or so hours in classes. I then travel from Beaver straight to golf practice for two hours. By the time I get home after golf practice, it is 6:00pm. I eat dinner with my family until 6:30. That is my only real break of the day. Then I begin the marathon. I receive at the minimum an hour of homework from each class. Considering that I take four classes, that adds up to about four hours of homework starting at 6:30pm.

The homework at Beaver is often drills information into your head. In Spanish, we might practice conjugating verbs, in math we might practice problems, in history we might work on a project, and so forth. The point is that the majority of the homework I receive does not actually teach me anything, but simply drills points made in class into my head. Hence, homework like this could be significantly reduced considering it is mostly "busy work." I understand that some busy work is necessary in order to completely comprehend information, but the amount I receive of it is significantly too high. I also understand that students do have an extended lunch period, but many students use that to see teachers for extra help. When the clock hits 11:00pm, I can barely keep my eyes open and I decide to go to bed even if I haven't finished my homework. On match days, I often get back to Beaver anywhere from 7:30pm-9:00pm. After a match, I am normally exhausted and have to begin my homework late at night. I have come to the conclusion that doing homework after a match is useless because there is no way I can retain anything when I am that tired. I simply scratch words on the paper just to get it done, not caring whether it is right or wrong.

With endless amounts of homework, children are missing some of the best times of their lives. As people get older, they often yearn to be young again. As my Dad says, "I am a 20 year old, trapped in a 50 year old's body." With that being said, I want to be able to take advantage of my youth. When my parents were kids, they didn’t have a lot of homework. They were able to pursue activities outside of school. With less homework, the possibilities are endless. I could get a job after school or volunteer part time at veterinary hospital. Maybe I could actually get involved in politics or pursue Model UN more seriously. Maybe I could practice music with my band. Maybe I could take up cooking. Maybe I could practice a sport or see my friends. All I want is to be able to be kid. While I am in school, the only time I can be a kid is from Friday night to Saturday night because Sunday is completely taken up by homework. High school should be one of the greatest times of my life; I don’t want to remember it by sitting at my desk doing homework. And yes, most of my homework simply requires a desk and computer: not very progressive.

This world is becoming overworked and over programmed. A few students and professors at Penn State actually did a study on how too much homework can be counterproductive. Statistics even prove that "many countries with the highest scoring students, such as Japan, the Czech Republic and Denmark, have teachers who give little homework. At the other end of the spectrum, countries with very low average scores -- Thailand, Greece, Iran -- have teachers who assign a great deal of homework.” In the 1980's, countries started to increase homework in response to performance in comparison to Japanese students. Conversely, Japanese schools were actually lowering amounts of homework. Studies show that math teachers currently in the US assign five-six hours of homework a week (too much) while Japanese schools give two-three hours a week. It has also been proven that working non-stop all day tends to reduce the amount of knowledge you can retain. Along those lines, many case studies have been done in order to show that if a teenager doesn't receive ten hours of sleep a night, his or her learning will be considerably less productive. On a normal day, I receive less than 7 hours of sleep because of homework; my learning is infringed upon considerably.

I realize that there isn't much I can do to change the schedule of my day, but there is room to change my life at home. If I were to get home after school and spend one hour doing homework and a half hour of reading, I guarantee my grades, cheerfulness, mood, extracurricular activities and general knowledge of the world outside of Beaver Country Day School would flourish. I understand that by doing less homework, you are learning less information, but only to a certain extent. The human brain can only retain so much work. As the renowned columnist Thomas Friedman said, "It's for all these reasons [that I have mentioned] that I've been calling them "Generation Q" -- the Quiet Americans, in the best sense of that term, quietly pursuing their idealism, at home and abroad." In other words, because we are so involved in school, homework and extracurricular activities, this generation is not able to formulate opinions and voice them; we simply don’t have time or energy to.

Every day, I notice kids that haven't done their homework and I am secretly proud of them. I know that they have spent time outside of school pursing something they wanted to do instead of doing homework. It just so happens that many of these kids are the most brilliant kids I know. Their grades might not reflect it, but somehow I know they will be just fine in life; doing it their way.
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Investigating Beaver's Fundraising Guidelines

JEFF HIGGINS '08

For Beaver’s celebration of Martin Luther King and Social Action Day, Mr. Principe and a number of students organized a t-shirt drive. They charged t-shirts home for a ten-dollar price− a common practice at Beaver. They plan to donate the money to an undecided charity. Little did they know, their tee shirt drive broke a few school rules.

“We screwed up,” admits Mr. Principe in response to the incident. But the incident seems so innocent, so benevolent. All they did was sell t-shirts for an important cause--at 10 dollars, too, an unusually low price.

At Beaver, fundraising for charity breaks school rules. This, of course, includes Mr. Principe’s harmless sale of t-shirts. The following rules can be found on page 20 in the student handbook everyone received at the commencement of the school year:
All fundraising activities must meet the following criteria and be approved by the Director of Development:

1. Fundraising must be for Beaver-related activities. Fundraising for other
organizations will not be allowed as it:
a) Implies a choice of one
organization over another and
b) Competes with efforts to support certain
organizations though the Hiatt Center.
2. Student-to-student fundraising is
permissible. Student to parent fundraising is not. No letters will be sent home
to parents asking them for donations.
3. The contribution limit is 15
dollars, whether for an outright donation or to purchase an item (food at a
game, flowers at a performance, t-shirts, etc.)
4. Students will not be
allowed to charge donations to school accounts.

I talked to Beaver’s Director of Development, Karen Hill, to try to understand why these guidelines are in existence. One of the focal reasons behind the guidelines is that fundraising for charity robs money from Beaver. The logic is: if parents are relentlessly hounded for money for x, y, and z charities, when the school asks parent to donate to the annual fund, they are likely to donate less money. Since the school rarely receives large endowments, Beaver relies considerably on the annual fund. Karen Hill elucidated that such charity fundraising would not only make it more difficult to raise money for the annual fund, but also for prom and other student activities.

In addition, restricting fundraising for charity apparently inspires students to support the community around us in others ways, such as through the Hiatt Center. The administration wants students to impart time and work hours, not just money. In addition, Ms. Hill also made the point that if there were nonstop, weekly fundraisers going on around the school, they would likely become disorganized, jaded, and unsuccessful. She also said the reason for the fifteen-dollar cap was to level the playing field for Beaver students who are not as wealthy as others.

In the words of Coach Will Morrison, “C’mon, you guys!” The fifth and final part of Beaver’s bullet-pointed Mission is “Serve both school and society with integrity, respect, and compassion.” This is a school that prides itself on events like the winter holiday celebration and on its strong relationship with the Hiatt Center. This is a school that boasts three faculty members solely devoted to community service, social action, diversity, and cultural issues. Yet, we are not allowed to fundraise for charity.

However, there is some fundraising allowed. For example, the Spare Change Drive to benefit soldiers fighting overseas. The drive was followed up with a Wednesday forum presentation, and was heavily influenced by the faculty. The drive was enormously successful. Just imagine though, without the school’s strict rules, individual donations could soar from 75 cents to 16 dollars. But wait! That would prevent parents from donating to the all-important annual fund.
Personally, I do not see the logic behind some of the guidelines. Fundraising is not allowed because it “Implies a choice of one organization over another.” Honestly, who has ever been ridiculed for donating to one charity over another? It is the equivalent of saying there can be no more fundraising to support victims of Hurricane Katrina because it would not be fair to organizations helping the AIDS epidemic in Africa.

Let us take a look at Mr. Principe’s t-shirts. What harm did that do to the annual fund? Technically, it was not even a fundraiser. The purpose of the drive was to spread awareness of Martin Luther King Day, so students would “make it a day on, not a day off.” Mr. Principe has not yet even counted how much money the drive made or decided upon a place to donate the money. Yet somehow, he “Screwed up.” The drive charged home shirts for a non-Beaver related activity.

Here is the bottom line: I think there should be momentous edits made to the guidelines. At a gut level, banning charitable fundraising is flat out wrong and even immoral. Giving charity and helping the needy is a fundamental value in our society. I like the idea of having fundraising activity approved by the director of development. Yet, do we really need to ban fundraising all together? I think not. If a student has a solid plan for a fundraiser, such as the spare change campaign, it should not be limited. If fundraisers are well planned and approved, I do not see the reason for a fifteen dollar cap, a ban from charging items home, or student-to-parent fundraising.

I wonder which unnecessary school rule Mr. Principe will undermine next.

Image from: John Wiley & Sons Publishing
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The Fall of the Mixed-Grade Advisory

MADDY KIEFER ‘08

Most seniors remember the mixed grade advisories that were disbanded in September 2005. Upon our promotion to the upper school in 2004, we were put in advisories with upperclassmen, which, although daunting at first, was eventually an experience that many of us appreciated. Older students provided us with all sorts of advice for surviving high school, from choosing class to prioritizing our responsibilities. Mixed grade advisories gave us the chance to hear first-hand about the stress of junior year, the complicated college process that followed, and the ultimate decision of choosing which college to attend before we had to experience it ourselves. They weren’t trying to scare us, but, rather, to prepare us. When questioned about what it was like when multiple grades were represented in his advisory, Peter Gow, the Director of College Counseling, who has been working at Beaver for over twenty years, recalls, “I remember some great examples of good advice and important lore being passed down in those meetings from older students to younger ones.” He does believe, however, that “same-grade groups can be great ways for advisors to work together on issues related to grade-level concerns.”

A year later, however, few were happy to hear that new advisories were separated by grade. Toph Tucker, a senior who was in a mixed-grade advisory until last year, says, "I know that the administration worries that older students will intimidate freshmen or some such thing, but having some representation from higher grades was one of the best things about my advisory." Toph and I, who were both in Mr. Whitten’s advisory for three years, had such an amazing time in our mixed-grade advisory that we were furious that the incoming freshman didn’t get this opportunity. Instead, they were essentially being cut off. We knew that keeping all of the freshmen apart from upperclassmen was a mistake. The freshmen, however, considered themselves lucky. The idea of having to spend half an hour with the “big kids” every week wasn’t appealing, so there were no objections from them. When asked his opinion on being in an all freshmen advisory, Willy Tucker, Toph’s younger brother, states that he was “pretty happy” about being separated from the older students. As a reply to this comment, Toph remarks, “He just doesn’t know what he’s missing.”

One of the benefits of having older students in our advisory was that we were able to make friends in other grades and connect weekly. Mr. Gow recalls that he “certainly saw inter-grade friendships develop.” These days, the only interactions that most freshmen have with other grades are in extracurriculars, where they tend to isolate themselves and simply stay with the other students in their grade. By contrast, we could more easily branch out from the seventy or so people that we had class with every day and enjoy time spent with these other students. Since the end of the mixed-advisory era, there has been an increased separation between the grades. Hopefully this separation won’t reach the extreme that it has with the middle school. For a school that preaches a community without divisions, such separation in advisories is counter productive.

Currently, the only normally scheduled time that upper and middle school students are together is at All School Meeting once a week. Aside from that, upper schoolers occasionally visit the middle school wing to use the computer labs, but high school students are not even supposed to be in the first-floor middle school hallway. We are almost at the point where they might as well be two separate schools.

Although the Middle School is not involved in the current Upper School advisory problem, and although it hasn’t yet reached the tipping point, these issues are becoming a pattern at Beaver. It is important for the school to recognize the negative effects that these changes are having on the student body, and for it to make strides to correct them. The first two lines of Beaver’s school song read, “Stand we now to hail thee/Beaver, loyal and united,” but the unity of our school is at risk of deteriorating. If the school administration continues to make these choices to separate the grades even further, however, the only occasions that the grades at Beaver will mix will be in the hallways. If it reaches that point, our small school will seem all the more lonely, and our close-knit community as we know it today will cease to exist.
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