York Preparatory School - NYC

As we approach graduation and the end of the school year, I wonder again why some students become so much more academically successful than others. What is it that creates the successful student?

I have been the headmaster here for 41 years, and so I look back at 40 valedictorians. What distinguished them? Certainly it was not just brains. We have had valedictorians who were not the smartest in their cohort. Indeed, you might be surprised to learn that some of those valedictorians did poorly on standardized tests and probably always will. Yet, these determined students found their way to triumph in high school and college. Gender did not seem a factor in their success; we have had roughly an equal number of boys and girls. It was not the affluence of their backgrounds; scholarship recipients have been well represented. Nor is it true that valedictorians only came from “intact” families. So what was it?

By the time students arrive in my Ethics class in their senior year, our faculty and administration have often accurately predicted the seniors who will do well at college and could probably guarantee those who will succeed wherever they go. How we arrive at these conclusions is what this piece is really about.

Let us start at the entry to York. A student enters into the school at 6th grade or later. At orientation, the first person who talks to them is me. I tell them of the stress that we place on character. I tell them of the rules of the school. And, most importantly, I tell them of the value of education. In truth, intellectually they already know the advantages of being well educated. They don’t really need me to stress that college graduates generally have richer, happier lives than high school drop-outs. On a conscious level, they are all aware that their parents have sent them to York to get a fine education. They know the long-term gains of being successful at school. But some seem to be able to translate this knowledge into action more than others.

From what I have observed in our students—and read about, particularly the famous Stanford University “Marshmallow Experiment” of the 60s—I think the key difference between success and lack of success is the particular ability to delay immediate gratification and instead to work towards the long-term prize of success. That means giving up the impulse to avoid study, the impulse to procrastinate, the impulse to be distracted by immediate pleasures, and instead to accept that study now means success later. This self-control seems consistently to lead to success with school work and good relations with members of the school faculty.

None of this appears to be an intellectual process. Every child recognizes and articulates that he or she should study. I have still to meet the child who argues against it. So the success factor is not something that can be determined by asking the student questions. Every student will pass that multi-choice test. The success factor seems to me far deeper than the conscious articulated argument. It is an emotional or sub-conscious understanding that controls the impulse of gratification.

I am thinking of particular students as I write this. Students who struggled and triumphed. Students with learning disabilities who now have doctorates. They all shared that emotional ability to control their impulses. While everyone in their class wanted success, and everyone wanted to enjoy themselves, they were the ones who sacrificed their “enjoyment” time for this future dream. They were able to listen and work even when they were not that interested in the subject. So the question is: Who instilled in them this impulse control? There must have been a real consequence-driven emotional framework built around them. And this understanding of consequences had to be continually re-enforced as they grew to adolescence.

I remember a friend of mine at Oxford. He was a brilliant American physicist and Rhodes Scholar. He had been an All-American football player and top of his college class. His first name was Joe. He told me once that there were three things one could do at high school and college: have a social life, have an athletic life, and have an intellectual life. And he had discovered early on that if he was going to be successful, he could only do well in two of those three things. So although he had close friends, Joe gave up on a great deal of his social life and focused first on academics and secondly on his football. He went on to an incredibly successful career and has a wonderful marriage with a wide range of friends and acquaintances. He had true impulse control as a very young man.

I have known others (I think I include myself here) who say that they were driven by a fear of failure. That is what kept them at their books when the playground tried to lure them away. But fear of failure assumes that sub-consciously you understand that there are consequences for leaving study for play. In other words, these students already had accepted that long-term effort will have a reward in the future. If they did not have that understanding, their fear of failure would not have driven them forward.

Understanding consequences and controlling instant gratification are not difficult qualities to recognize in students. Hence my confidence in commenting that there are students who we are sure will succeed. Others will (happily) surprise us with their success. They will come to their epiphany later. Their valedictory moment will be after high school. Perhaps we will be more influential in their lives than those who come pre-programmed with the insight I have referred to.

It is certainly our task to make it very clear that success is earned through effort and that the rewards are positively life-changing. I try to stress this in my first talk to students when they arrive for orientation. I urge them to be their own best friend for the long run. Some do not need to hear me because they already know, and others will change in their time at York as we stress the realities of consequences. By the time of their graduation, the hope is that they have all understood the message so that they can go out and conquer the world.

Ronald P. Stewart, Headmaster
E-mail: rstewart@yorkprep.org

Happy New Year!

I thought of writing my usual silly stuff.  I was going to write about the song from the musical Cats called “Memory,” and then, after the first word I would write that I realized I had forgotten the rest of the song. You can sort of guess where that was going.

But, recently, one of my senior students, whose homework it is to criticize these monthly pieces, told me that he had to go back over twelve months to find a piece he really disagreed with. Since the primary reason for these “thoughts” is to write short essays that could be criticized by my students, I realize that his complaint is probably right. I have, in these essays, focused overly on humor, and “underly” (I know, the word does not exist but it fits nicely) on substance. Lately they seem to lack heft.  It is cute to write about Joy of Cooking (November thoughts), but it does not leave much for my students to attack. One of my previous summertime “thoughts” was actually about the right way to make s’mores. Though one can choose to char the marshmallow thoroughly or merely toast it, it is not exactly the kind of thing that is conducive to robust debate. So, out of respect for the correct criticism of my senior student, I will, at least in this piece, attempt to take a stand that is… well, a stand.

I am not a fan of former senator John Edwards. Hypocrite, philanderer, and potential destroyer of his political party (what would have happened if he had become the Democratic Presidential candidate and his affair was made public a week or so before the Presidential election?); it is difficult to be a fan of such a man. But his stump speech about the two Americas was not without merit. It is the old problem that the message is better than the messenger. I was reminded of this on Veterans Day when a reporter from the Christian Science Monitor called me to ask why we did not close our school on this national holiday. I answered that we had a moment of silence while standing, on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month (the time all sides agreed fighting would end in the First World War) to honor those who had died for our country, that I hoped our faculty would discuss the meaning of sacrifice in that context, but that taking a day off school would not instill greater feelings of patriotic duty.

As I talked to the reporter, I realized that the present war in Afghanistan and Iraq means comparatively little to our students. Most of them do not know anyone fighting there and have no real connection with the tragedy of the conflict. We, by that I mean our community, are not fighting this war. In fact, it is almost as though we have returned to the Civil War days when you could buy your way out of the draft. The war is being fought, in the main, by our poorest citizens. Our country is indeed being divided into different Americas.

York Prep is a private school.  By definition, that means that attendance is fee-based. Without the sacrifice of some of our less wealthy parents and the opportunities provided by our scholarship program, we would be truly insular. Our students, if they only came from the homes of the wealthy, would have no idea of what it means to go to a public clinic for their health problems, to attend community centers for play opportunities, to buy food in small bodegas, to walk in the shadow of poverty, and to lead the daily life that the majority of our urban poor lead. The fact that we have bridges between these diverse worlds is due to the commitment York Prep made when it was founded in 1969. From day one it was intended to be a school of students from diverse economic backgrounds. Furthermore, we required that our students complete community service to graduate. Jayme used to call it “mandatory voluntary service.” The bridges have always been there, but I know that they are not nearly strong enough. If I found a lamp with a genie, I would ask that our school be free without tuition and still stay the same unique school that we are, offering the same program to students regardless of the means to pay. We have done our best to address this divide with our scholarship program, and we have successfully given underprivileged students the opportunity for future success. And one can dream of what one could do with greater funds. But no one can ignore reality. It is a shame about reality; it never goes away.

So I do not have a solution to the “two Americas” problem. The gap between rich and poor seems to be so wide that I cannot see a way to cultivate a sense of common concerns and values that traditionally describe one cohesive country. Realistically, our urban public schools are (and exceptions, of course, exist) disastrous at the junior high and high school level because of their inability to escape the bureaucratic paralysis that seems endemic to the system. Compounding this tragedy is the level of violence that seems to be tolerated by a frightened cohort of administrators. Therefore, private schools need to be inclusive and welcoming. But anyone who reads The New York Times knows that there are too few private schools for too many applicants, and so, places in them are very limited for the poorer segment of our society.

In our contemporary United States, what used to be the uniting bond of shared military service, at least during the first two World Wars, no longer exists, and even our houses of worship seem to be divided along economic and racial grounds. Where, one can ask, do we all come together? Maybe that togetherness was only there briefly in World War II, and even then the armed forces were segregated. But now that we are in a more genuine democracy, there must be social interaction among citizens. I have no solution. We cannot ban private clubs so that all swim in public pools. We should not ban the choice of parents to choose private schools. And I am not proposing a draft. But at some level, this disconnect, this “gating” of one community from another, damages our country and may lead to potential disaster. I look at the news that is reported and am appalled by the focus on celebrity scandal and trivia, while noting the absence of genuine reporting about the separation of those who lead one life from those who lead a totally different one with no contact between them.

Sooner or later, we will have to resolve all this. In 1969, our idea of a school community that was diverse was a novel one. Now it is the norm and that is for the good. But private schools are not the solution to the problem. There has to be a better way.

So, my seniors, I hope this is meaty enough for you to critique and to suggest solutions that I cannot think of. Platitudes are platitudes because there is too often truth in them. So to say that you are our hope for the future is both platitudinous and true. I hope you attack me with vigor and wisdom. I hope that you reach out and share mutual experiences with that society that you don’t yet know. I pray that we all come together somehow.

Maybe I should have stuck to the piece on memory!

Ronald P. Stewart, Headmaster
E-mail: rstewart@yorkprep.org

As we come to the end of the year, I want to wish all my readers (all six of you apart from my wife, my mother, my daughters, and my senior ethics class who have to read and critique these “thoughts”) a very happy holiday season.

I have noticed an increasing trend in our school Open Houses for parents of prospective students. More of them ask me how long I think I will stay doing what I do. I know I look old, but these questions make my wonder if perhaps I look sick as well. One parent flat out asked me how it was that I wasn’t burned out after 41 years. I restrained the response that I am not a candle but have since thought carefully about the matter.

The obvious answer is that I enjoy enormously what I am doing. Let me be honest, there are days when I am emotionally drained, but most jobs have some days like that. On the other hand, there are many days of pure pleasure, mostly from watching the progress of our students, but also sometimes from enjoying the successful partnership with a parent for the benefit of their child, or from mentoring a faculty member. In other words, this job never bores, gives great feelings of personal value (whether true or merely perceived), allows me to work in an office next to my wife’s, and is infinitely more pleasurable than any other job I could imagine and far better than “retiring.”

I really do not feel “burned out” in the least. I feel as passionate about what we do and just as involved as I ever have. Certainly teaching helps. I have frequently said that I cannot imagine stopping teaching. I will be the first to admit that it is a narcissistic activity. You pontificate, and usually they (in my case, the seniors) listen. Then they get their revenge by attacking these pieces, but that is minor compared to the pontificating part. 

Actually, so good is the job that a number of my friends (people, would you believe, as old as I am) have told me that they really want to teach at a school like York Prep. I don’t know why they confide these “my secret wish” stories to me. Either they want to make me feel good, or they see something they want to be part of. I never actually discuss my job with them, certainly not the emotionally difficult part of it, but it is obvious that when they occasionally come to school to see Jayme or me, they are overwhelmed by the energy and attractiveness of our students (who wouldn’t be?). They walk in, and there are gaggles of giggling adolescents (I only put that in because I like the alliterative sound of the phrase). I am watching kids in the gym from the lobby windows; smiling teachers stroll around; there is a hum of energy.

If you didn’t know, you would think that the job is a piece of cake. After all, none of the traumatic scenarios are ever played out in public—those moments when it suddenly is clear that there is abuse in a sad home situation (yes, we have had them), when a child has just lost his way (those, too), or we are trying to counsel a young person who is on the verge of giving up. These don’t happen often and, when they do, the tears are shed in private not in the lobby. How we handle problems is the test of the school, not how we handle the giggling gaggle (I really do like that phrase!). But our friends don’t see that reality.

So, at the end of the year, let me wish you a New Year of joy. Let me hope that you only (like our friends) see the happiness in school, that your child is one of the giggling gaggle, that all will be well, and that sadness never enters your child’s future. I hope that I am around for many years to share that joy, because this candle is not burning out, and, hopefully, there is a lot of wax left.

Ronald P. Stewart, Headmaster
E-mail: rstewart@yorkprep.org

Like many others, I like to read something when I eat alone.  Recently, I had a very early morning meeting and was having breakfast at home beforehand.  The newspapers had not yet arrived, and I was in the kitchen with nothing to read but cookbooks. So I started thumbing through the pages of Joy of Cooking, which was the nearest of the cookbooks on the counter.  I immediately wondered (because I think that way) why the authors did not use the definite article before Joy.  Surely, The Joy of Cooking would sound better.  However, since this book has been a huge commercial success, I have to assume that the authors, Irma Rombauer and Marion Rombauer Becker, knew perfectly well what they were doing.  It is an indication of my family’s rare use of cookbooks that the edition we have is the third printing dating from February, 1976.  Our book is over thirty years old and virtually in mint condition.  I have subsequently learned that this year is the 75th anniversary of the original printing of Joy and that the “The” did, in fact, come and go in different editions of the book. Apparently, the first edition now sells for about $5000.

Idly, I turned the pages and was immediately impressed by the encyclopedic knowledge of the authors.  I have written before about my general lack of interest in eating, so I ignored the menus; but I did read the historical, philosophical, and scientific information contained within the book, along with fascinating social commentary and jokes. Yes, jokes on Food. (Page 310: In answer to the question “Do you have any truffles?” the shopkeeper replied, “Who doesn’t?”)  If Joy of Cooking were placed in a time capsule, it would give our great, great, great (and repeat the word by any number you can think of) grandchildren  more details about the way we live our lives than most books I have read.

There are a lot of quotes in the book. On page 402, they quote Lao-Tzu, the father of Taoism, as saying: “Ruling a large kingdom is like eating a small fish.”  At that point, I wondered if they were making the quotes up as they went along.  I mean, how is ruling a large kingdom like eating a small fish?  Sure, you eat a small fish carefully, and you should not overdo it, but if that is the philosophical basis of the analogy, then we are in analogy heaven and we can all join in.  I can make up them endlessly. “Courting a woman is like eating cotton candy.” After all, the whole process can get sticky and one has to be careful about the mess.  How about “Voting in an election is like planting vegetables; you never know how they are going to taste.”  Very defensible!  In fact, I am just getting started.  “Fighting for peace is like eating to get slim.” Sounds good to me! “Raising children is like juggling hot potatoes.”  You get the picture.

I found the book to be a virtual Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations.  I counted over thirty in the first five minutes I began to look for them. Some of them are—I have to admit—famous, like Voltaire’s remark (page 336) that France was a land of forty-two sauces and one religion, while Britain was a land of one sauce and forty-two religions.   I had heard that one before and today, of course, with British cooking as improved as it is , Voltaire is definitely now wrong.  And I knew (page 422) that Ben Franklin regretted that the Bald Eagle was chosen as America’s national symbol instead of the turkey. But, frankly, most of the quotes were obscure.  Did Balzac really write (page 584) that “even the cook should be rubbed in garlic”?  There are no references made, so I suppose you have to take that one on faith.

I like quotes, but I recognize that they quickly become platitudes because they are repeated so often.  And even Joy of Cooking plays parody word games with famous lines.  On page 502, they paraphrase Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream with “what foods these morsels be.”  Clever!  When I was at college, there was a popular small book called The Prophet by the Arab mystic Kahlil Gibran. The chapter headings should indicate the sort of stuff that was in it: “Pain,” “Self-Knowledge,” “Time.” It was full of definitions for “he who walked with the wind.”  Gibran (no humor) obviously did not recognize any possible allusion to flatulence.  One of my friends thought it was a book of deep insight; I thought it was claptrap. I was, therefore, delighted to find a very clever parody of the book called The Profit by Kehlog Albran, which is genuinely funny in its ludicrous platitudes. “Thus they asked the master, ‘Speak to me of paper,’ and he replied, ‘It is very thin!’”  I feel privileged to have a copy.

The English are particularly fond of broad definitions which are absurd when analyzed.  I was taught, in deadly earnest by a deadly earnest history teacher, that the Bishop of Sheffield’s remark, “All governments are like wheelbarrows–useful instruments but they must be pushed,” was a brilliant statement. Again, for me, claptrap!  Or Robert Louis Stevenson: “The first duty of a man is to speak; that is his chief business in the world.”  I could go on for a long (and boring) time.

Americans are less in awe of definitions and quotes, perhaps because they started later at it than the British.  There is a wonderful dark side to American humor, and particularly American cartoonists like Charles Addams. I have a favorite “Far Side” cartoon by Gary Larson which shows a polar bear pointing to an igloo and saying to another polar bear: “I love these; crunchy on the outside and chewy in the middle.”

Before I finish on Joy of Cooking, I want to defend the book against the criticism thrown in the recent (and, I thought, delightful) film “Julie and Julia,” in which it was suggested that the Rombauers had not tried all their recipes.  Almost certainly true, but understandable given the truly encyclopedic nature of their work. They covered everything.  Page 515: “If possible, trap the possum and feed it on milk and cereals for ten days before killing.” Page 516: “Beaver. Use young animals only.”  Best of all, page 819: “Kill and gut a medium-sized walrus. Net several small migrating birds, and remove one specific small feather from each wing.  Store birds whole in interior of walrus. Sew up walrus. Two years or so later… partially thaw walrus. Slice and serve.” I want to see Julia do that one!

I suppose the moral of all this is that reading can be surprising.  It was just breakfast alone and I idly picked up the nearest cooking book, never expecting to be so engaged and amused. One just has to be willing to open that first page.  Furthermore, I never dreamt Joy of Cooking would be the subject of my “Headmaster’s Thoughts” for the month of November, the month of Thanksgiving.  I think, bearing in mind I have poor taste in food, we should serve armadillo at our family Thanksgiving dinner. I never knew (page 516) that “under its shell this small scaly creature has a light meat, pork-like in flavor.” One lives and learns!

Ronald P. Stewart, Headmaster
E-mail: rstewart@yorkprep.org

–Introduction–

This being the introduction of our new website, I write to hope that you enjoy it and that you will feel free to e-mail me at rstewart@yorkprep.org with any suggestions or comments.  I have included two pieces as my “thoughts” for this month, in commemoration of the new format.

Frankly, the first piece is more typical of my writing for these thoughts. It is much lighter in tone and hopefully even amusing.  The second piece was written for the faculty at their orientation meetings. It represents my views and was a topic for discussion.  I have not edited it, so that clearly it is a statement of my core beliefs for the faculty to see.  Both pieces (written obviously at different times) represent me, and I cannot blame anyone else for their shortcomings. 

 ______________________________________

 –Headmaster’s Thoughts: Part One–

 Another new year, another group of smart seniors to whom I get to teach ethical philosophy.

But something is worrying me.  I have read that as you grow older, your brain gets smaller.  In fact, apparently your brain peaks in its size and flexibility (I’ve never seen a flexible brain) at the age of 18 or 19 and then shrinks and is less receptive to new information. This means (good grief!) that my seniors are much smarter than I am.  In fact, they may now be at the peak of their intelligence for their entire life. This is really depressing!  I am trying to teach students how to think (much more important than having them memorize things, incidentally) and, instead, they should be teaching it to me.  My brain is far less able to absorb information than theirs are.  I think I am going to throw up!

If this is true, we should reverse roles, and 18 year olds should be teaching tiny-brained beings we now call “teachers.” Suddenly, I understand why my students can text and I can’t.  I just have no idea how to do it.  How do you do it?  They understand how to install complex programs on any computer while I have difficulty loading a DVD into my DVD player.  They can play video games while simultaneously calling their best friends, photographing their cats on their iPhones, and Twittering—and I think twittering is what some birds do. They are smarter than I am, and I am getting dumber.  As they say so eloquently: OMG!

This means that I am scheduled to read fourth grade books, and they are scheduled to read Hegel.  But none of them have read Hegel or plan to do it.  What a waste.  Here am I trying to make philosophy easy for them, but if all this is true, then I should be forcing them to read Spinoza, whom I have never fully understood. Maybe they can explain him to me.

Why do I ever presume to give them advice?  They should be giving me advice. They should be advising me to follow my dream or to go for the gold or some such platitude. They should be kind to me, caring, and sympathetic. After all, they are smarter than I am, and I am in mental decline.  At least that is what the learned authors of studies tell me.

Wait a moment!  Those learned authors are not 18!  These study writers are not at the peak of their mental powers. Like me, they are past it.  Had they come out with their theories when they were younger than 20, then they would have some credibility.  But many of them are about my age.  Their brains (if they are right) have been shrinking for years.  What a relief!  I really shouldn’t believe absolutely everything I read.  I can ignore all this rubbish and go back to teaching my students. Unless one of my young superior intelligent students comes up with a study about shrinking brains and age; then, Houston, we have a problem.

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–Headmaster’s Thoughts: Part Two–

 A Commitment to Building Character

(Notes for faculty orientation and discussion)

I believe that teaching is a moral act (and art) and that we should project a moral leadership and require our students to be ethical citizens of York Prep School.

This means that we should be examples of the good and recognize that if we gossip or put someone down or act inappropriately, we are not supporting the principle of a teacher as a leader.

In the same way, we cannot allow students to act differently from how we would have them act in our homes. Graffiti, obscenities, bullying, and plagiarism should never be allowed. At the same time, we should praise accomplishment, particularly character-oriented ones, in all community members. We need to hold students to standards of decency and honesty, punctuality and courtesy, and praise good working practices.

 Of course, parents are a child’s primary moral teachers, but more time is spent in our schools than at home, and we cannot ignore our role.

So conflicts need to be settled quickly and gracefully.  In our classes we need to emphasize character, as Michael Roper does when he brings in a Warsaw Ghetto survivor or a D-Day hero, as the coaches do when they put sportsmanship above winning, as the English department does when its theme of summer reading is justice for outsiders.

We need to continue to make our school a welcoming place—a place of joy! A community where we value all, including our maintenance staff and secretaries, our 6th graders and our seniors.

As teachers, we need to give students prompt feedback and constructive criticism when evaluating work, and we must take a real interest in all of our students.  And we need to continue to do what we have done so well, which is share our feedback with parents fully and in a timely fashion.

We have a fine community service program, but this program should be and is more than a resume-filler, since we require that students introspect on how they helped others. I believe that students who help other students in this school are performing a valuable part of our mission and of community service.  I am proud of our growing peer tutoring program and our established ambassador program.  They are an important part of our mission.

All of this is not easy, but we have a happy school because we have always done this, and we will continue to have a happy place of learning if we remember that character education is not a quick and slick one-time thing, but a patient pursuit of learning that engages and stimulates character development.       

Ronald P. Stewart, Headmaster
E-mail: rstewart@yorkprep.org

For new parents, I should explain that every month I write something called “Headmaster’s Thoughts”. These are primarily for my Senior students to critique in our Ethics class, but, in actuality, they also have a small audience in the York Prep community. I hope they make my readers smile.  My “thoughts” usually refer to educational issues, are often foolish, and are occasionally humorous. In a sense, this is my monthly homework, and there are times when I really have to dig down to find something to say in time for the deadline. This is a story about just that:

 …………………….

The sign on the doctor’s office at the hospital said “Department of Cognitive Degeneration in the Elderly.”  Nervously, I entered into a long corridor painted in warm earth tones. It led to a small waiting room with a nurse at the desk.

“Mr. Stewart?” she inquired, in a soft voice.

“Yes!”

“Take a seat and fill out this form.  I will help if there are any difficult questions. The doctor will see you shortly. Do you know what an insurance card is?”

“Yes,” I replied. “I brought it.”  I handed it to her and sat down to fill in the shortest form I have ever seen in a doctor’s office.  Basically, it asked my name and when the symptoms began.

I returned the form to the nurse. She looked at it questioningly. “The symptoms started only these past two months?”

 “Yes. I am a bit nervous. Is the doctor…?” I couldn’t find the right word.

 “Gentle? Oh yes. Very gentle!  I have been with the doctor for eleven years. I am Miss Hutchins. If you need another appointment, call me.  Here is my card and see, there is my phone number. Right here!”  She pointed to it helpfully.

 I sat and looked around the office. There were inspirational posters with flowers entangled around the words. One said: “Passion is the longest word in Compassion.”

True, I thought, but one could make an argument for “compass” as being of equal length, or the military word “caisson.” I tried to think of other words that could be formed and wondered if “nimcomp” as in “incompetent” would be accepted at Scrabble.  Since I had just made it up, I decided in the negative.

Miss Hutchins called, “The doctor will see you now!”

A tall, handsome, bearded man with a full head of grey hair came to greet me. His face, at least the non-hirsute part, seemed covered in kindness lines, particularly around the eyes. I would guess he was in his middle fifties.  He spoke in a reassuring way as he took my arm and led me to a large office filled with his academic awards and a number of well-bound leather books.

 He literally helped me sit down before taking his place on the far side of a grand desk.

“Well, Mr. Stewart, I am going to give you a short test to evaluate your condition, and then we will discuss what options we have.  Do you understand what I am going to do?”

“Yes, Doctor!”

“Good.” He took out a large yellow pad. “Your full name?”

 “Ronald Philip Stewart.”

“Very good!” he said, in much the same voice with which one would reward a dog that had just fetched a ball.

“What do you do for a living?”

“I am a headmaster of a private school here in New York.”

“Very stressful, I am sure,” he said kindly. “Stress often brings on these conditions. How long have you done this?”

“This is my forty-first year.”

“Oh my goodness!” he exclaimed. “Very stressful!  Quite understandable! How old are you?”

“Sixty-five.”

“Now I want you to be very specific. Can you remember the year you were born?”

“Nineteen forty-four.”

 “Very good!” Again, that dog-rewarding voice. “Which year are we in now?”

 “Two thousand and nine.”

“Good. And who is the President of the United States?”

“Barack Obama.”

“Good. And the Vice-President?”

“Joe Biden,” I answered, wondering whether I should use the full name Joseph instead of Joe.

“Very good.  And the Vice-President before him?”

“Dick Cheney.” Why am I using these diminutives? Should I not be using the formal Richard?

“Good!” And the Vice-President before him?

 “Al Gore.”  Or should I have said “Albert”?

The doctor seemed puzzled by my answers because he suddenly said, “Who was Herbert Hoover’s Vice-President?”

“Charles Curtis,” I replied. At least Charles was not known as Charlie or Kit or some other familiar name like that.

My answer did not seem to make the doctor happy.  His nice lines around his eyes seemed to harden slightly.

“Well, obviously you have made a study of vice presidential politics. What are your other interests?”

“I teach philosophy and ethics to the seniors.”

“Philosophy, good!” He took down one of his leather bound books. “Ancient philosophy?”

“Yes,” I said. “That is one of my real interests.”

“When did Socrates live?” he suddenly leaned over to ask in a somewhat aggressive voice.

“469 BC to 399 BC.”  I was beginning to enjoy this test, but the doctor did not seem to be getting the same pleasure.

“Hmm,” he grunted. “And Parmenides?”

“Do you mean Parmenides of Elea?” I asked.

“Yes!” he snapped. 

“515 BC to 450 BC.”

“And Heraclitus?”

“Of Ephesus?” I asked politely.

“Is there another one?” he barked back. By now a thin bead of sweat appeared on his forehead. His voice had clearly changed and he had put down his notepad.

 “540 to 480 BC.”

 He took down another book. “How are you with modern philosophers?” he asked.

“Post Cartesian?”  I asked.

 “More modern,” he said, looking at the new book.

“I know some of them,” I said.

“When did Edmund Husserl live?” He was looking at his new book.

“1859 to 1938.”

“And Henri Bergson?”  There was definitely sweat on his forehead and some of it had dripped on his beard. His whole face seemed to have transformed into one of prosecutorial anger.

“1859 to 1941?”

“In what year did Martin Buber publish I and Thou?”

“In 1923.”

Suddenly, he stood up. “Why are you here?” he asked in an angry voice.  “I am the expert on stress-induced Alzheimer’s and your memory seems to be functioning fine.”

“I am sorry,” I replied, trying to be conciliatory. “I thought you were the expert on degenerative cognitive function.”

“I am, particularly when it is stress related.”

“Well, I write a monthly blog known as “Headmaster’s Thoughts.” I have written it for years, and lately I have had difficulty thinking of new topics to write about, so I thought…” My voice trailed off as I saw him getting red in the face. 

“You mean,” he spat the words at me, “you have come to me because you have writer’s block?”

“Well, yes,” I said timidly, feeling ashamed that somehow I had made a terrible faux pas.

“Get out!” he yelled at me. “Get out!”

I walked out of his office. Actually, I slunk out of it, if slinking can describe my slow hunched crawl down the long corridor with the happy earth-tone walls and the optimistic sayings.

Behind me, I heard the doctor come out and say to his secretary, “I am going out now, Miss… what is your name again?”

“Miss Hutchins.”

“Well, Miss Hutchling, I am going out. I am going to take the rest of the day off.“

……………………………

So I have overcome my writer’s block for this month, and my seniors may happily rip this story apart.  I hope they have fun with it! 

Ronald P. Stewart, Headmaster
E-mail: rstewart@yorkprep.org

Since this is August, and no one reads “August’s Thoughts” anyway, I can indulge in a confession.  I understand it is good for the soul.  My confession is that I do not seem to be as fond of food as everyone else seems to be.

This is really sad. Good restaurants are wasted on me.  I have been taken to them, but I appreciate the atmosphere and the creature comfort of the seat more than the food.  My excuse, and it is not a bad one, is that I was brought up in post-war England when the food was execrable.  It was a true disaster.  We had powdered eggs instead of real ones, no candy (it was rationed until 1952 as was meat and most other “luxury foods”), and the ice cream was actually vanilla-flavored lard.  To compound all this, we were forced to drink a tablespoon of Seven Seas (Ministry of Health approved) Cod Liver Oil every evening.  If you have ever drunk Seven Seas (Ministry of Health approved) Cod Liver Oil, you will sympathize. You not only have to hold your nose against the revolting smell, but you also have to add sugar (which I should have mentioned was also rationed) because the taste was indescribable. If you want to really punish yourself for something you may have done, try a tablespoonful of Seven Seas (Ministry of Health approved) Cod Liver Oil and you will see what I mean.

The result of all this is that I am comparatively thin. I do not eat lunch. Since I am not excited by food, why eat what I consider an optional meal?  My wife used to ask Vivian Garneier, my administrator, if she would get my lunch. Vivian tried, but most of the time when she gamely asked me what I would like, I replied, “Nothing!” and meant it. Not surprisingly she gave up fighting this losing war.

I have eaten exactly the same breakfast every day for as long as I can remember: Kashi cereal with blueberries and tea.  That gets me through to a cup of coffee and a cookie at 10:00am and then nothing until dinner which is often just a bowl of soup.

This may all sound (and probably is) unbelievably narcissistic to tell you what I eat, but I realize how sad it is. You get pleasure from food; I get virtually none.  My sense of taste is a casualty of post-second-world-war English cooking.  I know it has all changed now and that London is a center of gourmet cuisine, but I wasn’t brought up “now,” and my taste buds, if they exist, were developed (or crushed) in the fifties.
 
I think I am a real disappointment to those well-meaning (but, I find, annoying) restaurant waiters who interrupt your conversations at dinner to ask if the food is fine. I am sorry… I wouldn’t know if it was.  It is food—something one has to consume to keep the body alive.  Scrambled eggs on toast would do as well as whatever you are serving with its drizzles of this and its soupçon of that.  I usually respond to these waiters in a low voice, “Sure,” thinking at the same time that I wish they would not interrupt with a question that has no relevance whatsoever.  I may have written in a previous month that I don’t drink alcohol at all.  Let’s face it; I really am a bore!

What this has to do with August I have not the least idea.  Since my students have to critique these Headmaster’s Thoughts, I thought I would give them an easy one to attack. I am clearly a whining old man who, in a world of starving people, should be grateful that he gets Kashi in the morning. Okay kids, have a field day!

For the rest of you, enjoy your food.  Enjoy the textures and the tastes.  Enjoy the aromas and the spices.  And be assured that I slightly (maybe not so slightly) envy your pleasure.
 
Next month I will be back to normal in my thoughts. Foolish, inane, irrelevant: normal!

I wish you all a great summer full of many and varied delights.

Ronald P. Stewart, Headmaster
E-mail: rstewart@yorkprep.org

After our commencement exercises, we had a party for the graduating class and their guests. Every parent I met at that party thanked me for York’s contribution to their child’s success.  Without exception, I was thanked for how far their child had come while at York Prep.  Nice listening, but part of me wondered if the thanks were not premature.

There really is no test now to know how well we have done. Just getting graduating seniors into their first-choice colleges, as my wife and Janet Rooney did so successfully with this class, is not the test.  Jayme does wonderful work, everyone knows that, and Janet has proved an invaluable associate.  But getting into a great college does not, in itself, translate into a successful life.  Getting good scores on SATs, or a good high school grade, or learning calculus, or even getting the diploma, is not proof of a school’s successful impact on the student. No, the true test of how we have helped our students will only occur with the passage of time.  It will be the way our students successfully deal with the challenges ahead, and by ahead I really mean over many years.

Even then, it may be difficult to know whether the school was the critical part of a student’s success.  I believe that my history teacher was the mentor who helped me become curious.  His parting words to me as I thanked him when I was awarded my scholarship to Oxford were, “Ronnie, always be curious!”  Words I have tried (and probably frequently failed) to live by.  But who knows if I am ascribing to him qualities that I should be ascribing to others?  Who knows if I am a success?  If I am, and I am not being disingenuous, there just doesn’t seem to be a way of judging my school’s impact.  So how do we test York’s impact?

Sometimes former students come up to me at reunions and tell me how life-changing my comments to them were.  They then repeat these life-changing comments which invariably, I am embarrassed to admit, I cannot remember saying.  I wonder if I actually ever said those remarks or if, in the glow of reunion nostalgia, I was assigned them.  As an undergraduate, I heard stories about the Warden of my college saying something witty, in a very typically English type of toast, at a wedding of a young couple in the College Chapel. He was in his late seventies and he toasted them by saying, “Splendid couple, know them well, slept with them both!”  I have since heard the same remark ascribed to other “grand old men” in similar situations at different times. Clever remarks get stolen and re-ascribed.

Obviously, graduation is one of those moments when gratitude is on everyone’s minds. Gratitude to parents first, and then teachers and school.  It is a virtual ceremony of gratitude, and a celebration of thanks.  But the school has passed no test because of the ceremony, and no test will ever be devised.  In the end, our work is for the student’s whole life, not the next few years.  Perhaps that is why I teach ethics to all the seniors, at least to get them to think about ethical issues and approaches to life’s problems. Schools should try and teach you to be good as well as smart.  But frankly, no student has ever come back to me to tell me that their ethics class helped them in a real life situation, nor would I expect them to.  Education is a long-term affair that drips character and knowledge slowly into the mind of the student. There are no “eureka!” moments; it is a process, not a happening.

I have always believed that educators must be optimists and that we must intrinsically believe in the value of what we are doing; that we are assisting in the process of producing members of society who will lead extremely satisfying and rewarding lives.  But we need to understand that there can never be any expectation of proof of our success, if indeed we are successful.  All a school can do is hope that in the richness of their students’ lives, their secondary school will have played as substantial a role as it was possible to do at the time.  And maybe the teachers at the school can also allow themselves the indulgence of wishing that their students will, in hindsight, recognize that they were helped by their efforts.  But we will never really know.

Ronald P. Stewart, Headmaster
rstewart@yorkprep.org

Farewell speech to Seniors at Graduation 2009

Well, here we are… Almost time to give you your diplomas. Congratulations to all of you.

I will try to be brief because I am looking forward to your graduation speaker, Wally Lamb, whose books I have read and admired, particularly because he was a High School English teacher for 20 years.

But first I feel I should say something.  We have been together for so long, and I have had the privilege of teaching you all.

So, as I thought of you going off and leaving us, I was reminded of Moses leaving Egypt. You are right. It is a bit off the wall. I don’t know why I thought of that either. Maybe because I never really bought the Charlton Heston version of the parting of the Red Sea. I like to think that Moses did not stand on a rock, stretch out his staff, and bingo, the sea parted. It just isn’t that easy to get miracles. I think Moses actually got in the water; he got in and said “Help!” Nothing happened. He went farther and the water came up to his waist. Nothing happened. Even farther, and only finally, when the water got up to his chin, did God, in an imitation of Mel Brooks say, “All right, I’ll part the sea!”

My point is that I don’t believe that miracles occur without some real activity, some heavy lifting if you will, by the person who is going to get the benefit of the miracle.  What this means to you is that when you go to college, you have to go to the classes, do the work, and sweat, before the magic of your success will happen.

We create wonderful exams that test young people’s abilities: their mathematical skills, their proficiency in answering multiple choice questions, and their grammatical prowess. But none of those skills, in my opinion, are going to be the critical factors in your success at college.  What will be the crucial factor is your motivation; if you want to succeed enough that you are prepared to work toward that goal, you will succeed, regardless of those tests you have taken. And there is no real test for motivation. Your high school transcript certainly reveals some sense of how goal oriented you are, but it doesn’t really give you the Moses test.  He, at least in my version, had to get pretty wet.  There is little doubt about his motivation. He was, after all, escaping from plagues and boils.  In fact, he was desperate considering Pharaoh’s army was on his tail. Though he was probably not sure where exactly across the Red Sea he was going to finish up, he knew he needed to get there.  He had to move forward. I hope you act with at least some sense that you also have to move forward. So I agree with Malcolm Gladwell who says in his new book “Outliers” that what we call talent is really the strong DESIRE to work at something. It is all about desire.

Anyway, enough of these earnest words.  Your diploma is next and this is the most important of the prizes that is being handed out today.  It gets you into the next round, which is college.  Many believe this prepares you, in turn, for the next round after that, which is graduate school, which prepares you for the last round, the moment your parents have been waiting and praying for, which is when you actually earn a living.  And then, my young students, it goes very quickly.  From the youngest to the longest serving (in my case, headmaster, but in your case it can be in whatever field of human endeavor you can dream of) is not as long a ride as you might now think it is.  The trick is to have fun, and it is more fun if you are successful.  It is even more fun, in my experience, if you have someone to share it all with.

I want to tell you that I have enjoyed teaching you, and I assure you that most of the people in this hall are watching you, a bright, intellectually curious, and attractive class going off to college, with a considerable degree of envy.

We hope that we can get some vicarious pleasure out of hearing of your successes in life, that you come back and see us, and that you stay in touch with each other.  In these tough economic times, we also hope that you send your children to York Prep in due course. So, congratulations again! I hope God parts the seas for you.

My wife and our Principal Chris Durnford will help me (I hope) give out these diplomas along with all of our affection and praise.

Ronald P. Stewart, Headmaster
E-mail: rstewart@yorkprep.org

They say that everyone has different talents, which is just a nice way of saying that some of us are totally untalented in certain areas. I know about this because I was, and always will be, bad at art. There are lots of other things I am bad at (you would definitely not want to hear me sing) but being a rotten artist has always galled me.

In my high school, art was included as part of your general grade average. So I really tried. And failed. I went to a school where the headmaster and I got on very well together. Occasionally, he would come into the art class and look, hopefully, at the art teacher and then at my attempt to paint, and the art teacher would sadly shake his head.

The only time I ever made acceptable artistic objects with my hands was at Oxford. There, on the way to the law library, was the inorganic chemistry laboratory. And, for no reason that I can now recall, I once went in, put on a white lab coat which was hanging on a hook, and tried to look as though I belonged. Since you just study one subject as an undergraduate at Oxford (law, in my case), there was absolutely no reason for me to be in the building. Nonetheless, I approached the center desk where they gave things out and asked for small capillary tubes. I took these over to a Bunsen burner, lit it, and started to make a little glass dachshund by stretching, twisting, and attaching the tubes in the fire. It is not difficult to make a little glass dachshund out of glass capillary tubes, and I made quite a few of them before I branched out into birds and cats (none of which looked as realistic as my dachshunds).

I have really fond memories of making these little glass ornaments. For the first time in my life, I actually had made something I could show others. I was hooked on the whole glass capillary tube animal making skill (maybe there should be commas there but they would break the flow). I discovered that the inorganic chemistry lab had an inexhaustible supply of these tubes, which they gave to me without question. On reflection, it was very generous of them.

I wanted, in return, to hang a sign in front of the lab which read “We Make Little Glass Ornaments,” but then I figured out that they might put a halt to my new-found and sole artistic expression of making glass dachshunds, and so (and in retrospect, wisely) I did not hang the sign.

Now that the holiday season is upon us, I sometimes find myself nostalgically lingering over tree-hung ornaments in stores and those so beautifully presented in windows throughout the city, with the hope that one day I will come upon a little glass dachshund. At least I could say, “I can make those!” It is these little things in life that give us comfort as we grow older.

If you are not decorating your tree (or Menorah, or whatever you may decorate) with dachshunds, hopefully you will consider covering it with objects that stir up happy memories and inspire you. And like the chemistry lab did for me, make sure to give without asking for anything in return. While you are at it, celebrate with the ones you love.

May your holidays be full of joy and creativity!

Ronald P. Stewart, Headmaster
York Prep School, NY
rstewart@yorkprep.org