SPRING 2006
Drew Smith
Head of School
serve on the Committee on Friends Education (CoFE), which is a subcommittee of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting's Standing Committee on Education. The mission of CoFE is straightforward: "To advance the cause of Friends Education within the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting." Members include teachers from both Friends' and public schools, administrators from the same, board members from Friends' schools, and concerned members of the Religious Society of Friends. The committee's membership reflects the geographic spread of the Yearly Meeting.
The agenda of our most recent meeting reflects the priority that CoFE invests in enrolling Friends' children in Friends' schools. At our January meeting, we approved the level of tuition aid for Quaker students for the 2006 2007 academic year. We considered a survey to try to measure the impact that Friends' schools have upon the membership rolls of monthly meetings within the Yearly Meeting. And we discussed how much the tuition aid endowment would have to grow to bring about a significant increase in the amount of tuition aid PYM has at its disposal.
Our own Friends School Marketing Committee, clerked by Lori Talbot of Greenwich Monthly Meeting, shares CoFE's concern. Lori's son, Will, is one of a handful of Quaker children in our school. It has been my experience as a teacher that Quaker students like Will offer a peer perspective on the world of which most of my students are unaware.
Without Will, our students might not know that there are those in the world, like all of us, who believe that violence is not an exercisable option for individuals, groups, or nation states. Without Will, to whom would our students turn as the peer best able to describe to meaning of silent worship and why its practice might be central to the school experience of all Friend School students?
I suppose one answer to that question is that students might turn to the adult Quakers in the school community as resources and role models. But it's not the same. Not for them, and especially not for Will.
Neither CoFE nor our own Marketing Committee wishes to place the burden of outreach solely on the shoulders of Quaker students at Friends School. This would be unfair to them, and to our non Quaker students, who need the rich variety of Quaker experience, from young to old, to shape their understanding of our perspective on living in the world.
As a former "outnumbered" Quaker student, what I wanted at the time was some more teammates. Peers who understood what "First-day," or "sense of the meeting," or "covered dish" meant. The Friends School and its Board, the Yearly Meeting through its Committee on Friends Education, are each working to ensure that no Quaker student who wishes to attend a Friends' school is denied for lack of family resources. I invite you to take us up on that work and join the team for Will.
RETURN TO TABLE OF CONTENTS
Last modified:
Sunday, March 05, 2006 at 05:42 PM
