oldschool

In the new school there will very possibly be naptime, not only in the primary grades but right on up through. Schools already provide breakfast and lunch, and sleep is just as necessary as food.

There will not, however, be sports the way we have now. There will be recess every day over the lunch break, and a little gym class every morning or afternoon, but afterschool sports will have to be reduced, and in a very particular way. There will be no coaches as such; a teacher or staff member will sponsor the team, but players will organize their own sessions and any games against other schools. The focus will be on enjoyment, camaraderie, sportsmanship, exercise—and disengagement from the win-at-all-costs mentality perverting every level of sport today.

Equipment will be kept to a minimum: bats, gloves and balls for baseball, footballs for football, and nothing for cross-country. Sports will be just like any other club, having a sponsor to supervise and mediate in any disagreements but springing completely from the prerogative of the interested students. And if they choose, of course, the students need not make their pick-up games an official club at all—that is what we are moving towards, the voluntary, the seamless life, in which schools become as nearly as possible what they were in Athens, a marketplace, an open square in which to read and discuss, a grove in which to meditate, rather than what they were in Egypt and are again, offices in which to train a scribe class in thrall to business and the state religion.

Of course, this level of independence in going to learn is not to be expected from the very young; but while they should be given more time to play and talk amongst themselves, they absolutely must continue being sent to school and subjected to a certain amount of discipline when it is time to learn to read, write, and count. We must inculcate a certain respect for school, not make it a game, a place to sit on the floor and play with counting manipulatives. This is the crucial time in which the whole world is new, and it must be the foundation for the whole endeavor in good living the school is meant to direct, as a trellis on which the vines grow upward and outward.

Isabella Gardner and Miss Goddard

The secretary’s desk will be in the common room at the entranceway, at the front of the school; beyond, a teachers’ commons and department offices. There are no administrative offices, because the teachers run the school; every staff member, from the janitor to the head of school, gives a class of some kind. Everyone employed by the school is a teacher. They’re encouraged to ask students questions all the time, to get to know each student.

Past the teachers’ room, a courtyard, with the arches and cloisters of beautiful places, and balconies on the second floor; more flowers and trees, birds, a class or two engaged. The wings will be arranged like this: on the first floor, the ninth grade will be on the left and the twelfth grade on the right; the commons up front and the dining room and kitchen along the back; on the second floor, tenth grade on the left and eleventh on the right, with the library up front and an auditorium in the back.

The classrooms will be spacious, including various musical instruments and art supplies and incorporating their instruction into the day. There’s no need for a desktop computer in the whole place, though printers would be there to have hard copies of certain things, and projectors, if funds allow, laptops and wireless internet. Books of all kinds, pens and lined paper, chalkboards—not whiteboards, or else the slidey kind that doubles—yes. One old TV to wheel around, for nostalgia, and all the utilities and storage in a basement—maybe a swimming pool down there, too, and a chemistry lab. Student work everywhere—of good quality, to inspire study and a little competition—awards and honors belonging to the school and its esteemed faculty or donated by alumni, photos of us on field trips and sabbaticals, baby pictures, family pictures, rock stars.

Rain or shine, games are outside on the field and courts, in the schoolyard doubling as a neighborhood park. If the weather’s really so bad, we’ll stay in all day, playing chess and dominos, older pastimes, or the odd videogame smuggled in. I don’t think there needs to be a gym. But on the roof there should be another garden, quieter, and a little patio, a railing all around; a telescope, more bookshelves. This is where the counselor will often bring kids struggling with something to talk; and for elegant meetings with donors and alumni, what have you. The end beyond end of the school, and another metaphor and dream of mine—flight. Then back out in the park for barbeques and field days, birthday parties, holidays. A big public fair once a year to benefit community service and showcase the community. Kids living in the surrounding houses will attend the school, but without it being too insular—exchange programs and service days, visiting teachers and community members. And this is just a model, but one whose heart should be translatable in many places.