SUMMER 2006
Drew Smith
Head of School
wo weeks ago I heard Bill Gates state to a television interviewer that he believes "students today are still receiving a 1956 education." This comment came as part of a longer interview about his foundation's efforts to help improve schools throughout the United States.
The world has indeed changed for all of us, and I have to say that nonprofits, like schools, can sometimes take a while to meet the challenge of change. Most nonprofits serve the public or public interest in some way, and most of us do not have the kind of budgets that would allow for, say, replacing our computer system with whatever is the current top of the line. We do not have the resources to hire a media or marketing strategist to help us say exactly what we mean to say.
I am fortunate to work at a Friends School because continuing revelation exists at a more secular level here. Up until now, full time Spanish instruction commenced in the sixth grade. Next year we intend to teach Spanish every day in grades four and five. We are expanding our offerings in science, particularly lab science. And we will hire a mathematics instructor to supplement our current math program throughout most of the school. We are hopeful that these changes will help to move our school into more current territory.
As I wrote to our parents recently, we cannot know all of the ways in which the world will change in the future. It is, for example, a world that is connected in ways none of us could have imagined just ten years ago. It is a world in which many of the children at Friends School right now will some day take jobs at the home office in Beijing, or Mumbai, or Mombasa. It is a world in which they may be responsible for,or benefit from, the next great advances in technology and science.
I believe, however, that by combining the core strengths of a Friends school – the value of integrity, self knowledge and discipline; valuing the Light of God in others – with the strengths required for the new world – learning to speak the language of another culture and becoming expert in the languages of science and mathematics – that we can prepare children to take full advantage of the world as it will become.
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Last modified:
Monday, May 08, 2006 at 07:24 PM
