Quaker Education
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With the truth as our guide Heads of Quaker schools speak to the testimony of integrity The testimony of integrity is one of the pillars of Quaker faith and education. Here, current and former Heads of Friends schools offer brief reflections on the centrality of this testimony to our everyday lives both in and outside the school setting. Through speakers, worship sharing, and discussion groups, William Penn Charter School recently focused on integrity as the Testimony of the Year. The campus banners are a way to “make Quakerism visible” to the school community and visitors.
“Quakerism is not easily reduced to a simple definition or a simple credo. It is a clear and reasoned approach to life, a way to be open to and honest with the world, a way to acknowledge multiple voices and multiple viewpoints, a way to be contemporary while rooted in simple, basic values, a way to being what Friends term “in right relationship with the world.”
Rose Hagan, Friends Select School
“It is my hope that we all will be truth-telling, that we all will be fair, that we all will act honestly with each other, and that our relationships with each other will all be upright, reflecting the inner light found within all of us.” Darryl Ford, William Penn Charter School
“We strongly believe that the development of character is the foundation on which all else depends. By educating this way, we ask all members of our school community to live more fully in the truth, to understand that moral agency does make a difference in the world.”
William Morris, Jr., Friends Academy
“Cambridge Friends School honored Andy Towl [one of the school’s founders] on the occasion of his 100th birthday at an all-school meeting for worship. We have been most fortunate to be able to learn from Andy. He reminded us that within each one of us, there is an inner light; that it is our job as teachers, students, and parents to help that light glow, to cultivate each person’s capacity to find and respond to truth, wisdom, and love; and that this is our best preparation for a life of purpose and meaning. As Andy noted in his impromptu remarks at the close of the meeting: ‘Thank you, Cambridge Friends, for helping to provide the words to help us understand our true selves . . . and our being true to ourselves and being true to truth is such a tremendously important thing that you all are learning day-by-day.’” Peter Sommers, Cambridge Friends School
“As we prepare to gather for New England Yearly Meeting, we are called as people of faith to live with integrity, to ask hard questions, and to hold each other firmly and lovingly accountable. This means stopping to ask: How do we move deeper into personal witness and collective action? How does our work and witness impact our neighbors, our meeting, our community, our county, and the earth? How are we called to change our behavior? What is God calling us to do next? Choosing integrity means faithfully taking those risky steps into unknown and difficult places for the sake of truth.”
Jacqueline Stillwell, former Head, The Meeting School Presiding Clerk, New England Yearly Meeting
The search for truth is “a lifelong pact with our inner lives that encompasses seeking the truth, speaking the truth, and living the truth — which is to say, letting our lives speak.” Robert Smith, former Head, Sidwell Friends School Author of A Quaker Book of Wisdom
A Publication of the