FROM THE HEAD OF SCHOOL Dear Frederick Gunn School Community, Did you know that in 1922 you could buy a share of stock in our
A remarkably positive future
school? Frederick and Abigail Gunn gave the school, then known as
There are two primary and absolutely essential types of deliberate effort
The Gunnery, to their son-in-law, John Chapin Brinsmade (1862), and
that the leaders of an institution like The Frederick Gunn School must
their daughter, Mary Gold Gunn, in 1881. Mr. Brinsmade served as
practice in order not only to withstand the forces of entropy, but also to
Headmaster for 41 years when, in 1922, a group of alumni, parents, and
give the institution its best chance at a remarkable — and remarkably
local friends of the school offered the Brinsmades a buyout. The school,
positive — future. For reference, we’ll use this definition of entropy: “a
including its assets and liabilities, belonged to Mr. and Mrs. Brinsmade
process of degradation or running down or a trend to disorder.” Neither
as a private institution. His leadership coincided with transformative
type of effort is more important than the other, though the first often can be undervalued because it is less
moments in our history (including the installation of the telephone and electricity, and the outbreak of World War I) along with the evolution of the school outside of the original family home (with the construction of the first Schoolhouse, a gymnasium, and dormitory), and the expansion of the curriculum to include labs to meet the competitive demands of college entrance exams. It is the nature of institutions to change over time, just as it is the nature of all things to change. (I tried to find a counterexample but came up empty.) The nature and quality of change at an institution, however, is neither inevitably good nor bad. All things, including institutions, eventually succumb
By locating our Entrepreneurship Program and the Center for Citizenship and Just Democracy in this new building, we are both architecturally and programmatically connecting the work our students will do in math, science, and technology to questions of public purpose and active citizenship, and doing so at the heart of campus.
to the forces of entropy, unless those responsible for them make deliberate efforts to create a better future than that to which entropy leads.
and they are linked inextricably. The first is the work of maintenance/ stewardship with the long term in mind. The second is the work of creation/evolution. Maintenance/ stewardship are essentially conservative — having to do with conserving and preserving — while creation/evolution are essentially progressive — having to do with creating a future that is in some way different, and presumed to be progress, from the present. The generative interplay of the two is an ideal toward which every institution ought to strive. In 1968, the school took a significant creative and evolutionary
step when we constructed the original Science Building. Prior to that
It was just such an effort that The Gunnery Reorganizing
building, math and science (lab sciences in particular) were taught
Committee was making in 1922, when they initiated the buyout and
in classrooms, often in basements, retrofitted as labs. To create one
installed W. Hamilton Gibson (1902), then a teacher at Berkshire
building that brought together all of these classes and provided the
School, as the school’s third Headmaster. After 72 years as a family-
lab sciences with the latest tools for high school teaching, as well as
run enterprise, enterprising people connected to the school wanted to
an amphitheater, was the right next step for the school. To locate the
ensure that its future would be bright. The history is rich and complex.
building at the center of campus and choose a late-Modern, Brutalist
I encourage everyone to spend time learning more about this and all
design was a bold risk. (Some readers — alumni who began in the fall of
phases of this extraordinary school’s life. The short and medium-term
1966 and graduated in 1968 or 1969 — may remember the experience of
results were mixed. Much of Mr. Gunn’s founding principles, practices,
campus before the Science Building and after it arrived.)
and ethos was lost amidst the well-intentioned attempts to modernize
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inherently exciting than the second,
In the half century since the Science Building’s construction, the
the school and put it on firmer footing. The school endured and here
school has maintained it and has helped it to evolve. The forces of
we are today.
entropy have not been kind to the building and teaching in the sciences,
The Frederick Gunn School Bulletin
