Education in the Face of Adversity by Vincent Scanlan ’79 When the novel corona virus spread across the globe in the spring of 2020, leaders around the world were quickly predicting the pandemic would be the most disruptive world event since World War II. Throughout its 95-year history Portsmouth has faced many external events that have challenged the operation of the school. For many in the current Portsmouth community, it is hard to imagine a more significant event that has touched almost every aspect of their educational experience than COVID-19. These include such inconveniences as virtual classrooms, quarantine, sports cancellations, temperature checks, travel disruptions, and countless numbers of pandemic protocols. To put this all of the recent events into perspective, I recently sat down with my father, Joe Scanlan ’46, to help compare the challenges faced by Portsmouth today compared with those of the 1940s that had a world war raging in the
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background while Portsmouth tried to maintain a semblance of normalcy for a small group of high school boys pursuing a secondary school education. As a former student and parent to five Portsmouth students (Thomas ’77, Vincent ’79, Brian ’80, Michael ’82, Daniel ’89), Joe was able to provide a unique viewpoint of the school through a lens that goes back nearly eighty years. In the fall of 1942 Joe was a 14-year-old boy living in Danbury, Connecticut, preparing to enter high school. Joe was the youngest of four children being raised by his mother, having lost his father twelve years earlier. Joe’s mother maintained the educational philosophy that high school should be a two-part experience. The first two years of high school were to be spent in the public schools developing a network within the town.
P ORTSM O U T H A BB E Y S C HO OL
