18
| on the mountain winter 2013-2014
Among the lovely images of the
now-long-gone, white clapboard campus
buildings like Tower House, Old Main,
the Gymnasium and Arts Center, the
call to early rising, calisthenics and cold
showers seems quaintly dated. [ed. note:
Cottage House and Spy Rock House
are the only buildings from that era still
standing today.] Clearly Storm King was
among that group of old-line boarding
schools which “promoted values like
courage, determination, persistence and
forbearance.”
The Storm King School and all
boarding schools have evolved over the
years, just as our culture has evolved.
One of the biggest changes began during
the 1960s, when a more open, egalitar-
ian spirit emerged nationwide, and the
demographic profile of our schools dra-
matically changed. Rather than serving
what Thomas Jefferson had dubbed the
“
artificial aristocracy” — children born
into positions of privilege and eventual
leadership — what emerged was a mis-
sion to recognize and develop a “natural
aristocracy” of talent and ability…a
meritocracy. Students were accepted to
our schools increasingly based not upon
their parents’ social position, but upon
their own promise. A successful stu-
dent was one who worked hard, made
the most of his natural abilities, and
achieved excellence across a broad range
of endeavors — one who would eventu-
ally assume a position of leadership on
the strength of his accomplishments,
not on the privilege afforded
by his birth. Our schools
“
opened up” noticeably,
and our student bodies
increasingly reflected the
religious, racial and eth-
nic diversity that remains
today at the center of
our country’s national
identity.
However, as this
phenomenon occurred,
sparked by the post-war cultural
upheaval, the notion of character
development became somewhat passé.
It did not happen all at once, of course.
One can leaf through the pages of a
1966
Boy Scout Handbook and see
embedded therein the very strong hand
of traditional character development.
But during this unprecedented period of
economic growth and prosperity, nur-
turing replaced discipline in Dr. Spock’s
child-rearing guidelines, self-actualiza-
tion replaced duty, and the American
dream gradually became synonymous
with immediate gratification and self-
indulgence. Increasingly, as we became a
more open and global society, notions of
social relativism and tolerance made our
traditional values seem dated, irrelevant,
even culturally repressive. The pendulum
had swung, and judging one’s character
seemed, well…too “judgmental.”
In the past few decades most board-
ing schools diminished and eventu-
ally abandoned many of the rigorous
exercises, routines, rituals and traditions
that had distinguished them, adopting
the look and feel of the newly emerg-
ing independent day schools. This new
breed of American prep school was cre-
ated for an entirely different purpose: to
provide the highest quality educational
facilities and opportunities for urban
and suburban families who found public
schools inadequate and boarding schools
too remote. The strong emergence of
these day schools, with their stunning
physical plants and “best of everything”
appointments, reflected Americans’
growing desire to provide every oppor-
tunity for our children to prosper in the
new meritocracy. It also reflected the
desire of many parents to keep their kids
closer to home, to provide the best of
both worlds: first class academic prepara-
tion and a comfortable, secure home
environment. Affluent families were hav-
ing fewer children and affording them
with more and more of the trappings of
privilege. “Corrective salutary depriva-
tion” was not part of this equation.
Quite the contrary. Increasingly coddled
and sheltered from life’s inconveniences,
few of these children had walked to
school, shared a bedroom, waited in line
to use the bathroom, or wanted long
for any desire. Suburban day schools
multiplied and grew like topsy, despite a
declining birth rate among the affluent.
Inexorably, as boarding schools com-
peted with day schools for the steadily
declining numbers of U.S. students, they
joined in the luxury appointments arms
race — fewer demands, more opportuni-
ties. Hicks calls this the “deconstructed
boarding school,” which, he writes, “…
looks and acts more like a day school,
except without parents.” He concludes
his article by asserting that most Ameri-
can boarding schools have lost their
center. They have abandoned their tra-
ditional role to develop good character
and have evolved into virtual shopping
malls of educational opportunities to
meet every conceivable desire and need.
They compete for prestige with day
schools and each other using the metrics
of facilities, standardized test scores, col-
lege lists and won-lost records. Boarding
schools have become unfocused patch-
works of caregivers and service providers,
he writes, “attempting to meet the needs
of everyone.” An impossible undertaking
to be sure, but more importantly, one
that breeds entitlement and privilege
rather than responsibility and service.
As a lifetime educator and now
Storm King’s headmaster, I have a long,
personal interest in this business of
character development, having benefited
from some of the rigors of “salutary
deprivation” in my own education and
formation(!), but particularly because I
lament what I see around me, read in the
LUCIAN MILASAN
