Educators and Open Discourse

THERE ARE MANY PRIVILEGES that come with being Head of School at Hotchkiss. The most rewarding is getting to know our students and witnessing their intellectual and personal maturation during their time here. It is also a great privilege to be among excellent teachers. Much of our conversation centers on the students, their learning, their growth, their successes, and their mistakes. In reflecting on what it is to lead a school, George Van Santvoord, Class of 1908, often invoked the final line of Voltaire’s Candide: Il faut cultiver notre jardin. It remains a relevant reference. A garden exists to enable the protected, orderly growth of living things, and the gardener’s job is to cultivate that growth by carefully tending to all aspects of the environment.

A gardener takes pride in the garden thriving and the plants growing well. I certainly take great pride in the accomplishments of this community, many of which are outlined in the following pages.

Next time you visit campus, I invite you to stand facing the Main Building and look up at the façade that was built in 1995. You will see two Greek words on limestone panels: Apeth, meaning goodness and excellence, and ΛOΓOΣ, meaning logical argument. At its best, Hotchkiss is a place of excellence, of goodness, and of reason. It is a place where curiosity, never fully satisfied, is nurtured to grow stronger still.

In this spirit, we were proud to host a conference on the Chicago Principles of Open Discourse in November. The concept of open discourse itself dates back to ancient Greece and has continued to inspire emotion and controversy for centuries. In the mid-

19th century, John Stuart Mill wrote of the “evil of silencing the expression of an opinion,” while Frederick Douglass famously stated, “liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one’s thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist.”

In 2019, I had the pleasure of traveling to Chicago with a delegation of students and faculty members to attend a “Conference on Freedom of Expression and Open Discourse in High School” hosted by the University of Chicago. Hotchkiss was among 12 independent schools (and the only boarding school) invited to participate.

A key element of the 2019 event was investigating how a set of ideals advocating for the free and uninhibited debate of ideas that had been written for a research university could be applied in a secondary school setting. In a community such as ours, open discussion must be balanced with ensuring a civil and respectful atmosphere in which adolescent students are coming to understand their own sense of identity.

The Hotchkiss event in November, which was attended by representatives from a number of boarding and independent day schools, is one element of the important continuation of this work. I hope you will enjoy reading more about it on page 11, where you can also access a video sample of the engaging material that was covered.

Here in Lakeville, the days are beginning to lengthen, and planning Graduation for the Class of 2023 is well underway. We look forward to the arrival of spring when the plants in our garden will blossom and continue to grow. Il faut cultiver notre jardin. “Il faut” is a phrase that admonishes us to do the necessary. I hope that as you cultivate your gardens, you take time to enjoy their beauty and the excitement of continual growth.

All good wishes,

Mounds of Fun

Editor’s Note: If you have an interesting photo and would like to test your fellow alumni about it, please send it to magazine@hotchkiss.org.

We shared the above photo in the summer issue of Hotchkiss Magazine. It appeared in the 1976 Misch and is from fall 1975, the second fall that girls attended Hotchkiss. Many readers attempted to identify their classmates in the photo, and Sarah Thornton Clifford ’76, P’07,’23 confirmed she is in the middle of the pile of students. Other suggestions are Janegail Orringer Kahn ’77, Alissa Keny-Guyer ’77, Lili Knight Wallace ’78, Angel Lillard ’79, Duffy Long ’76, Chris Shea ’77, Ellynne Skove ’77, Sue Torrey ’78, and Heather Murray White ’77, P’16.

Hearty congratulations to Scott Barrow on his cover photo of Lake Wononscopomuc on the summer edition of the magazine. And what a delight that the magnificent panoramic view continued on the back cover. This lovely reminder of the bucolic setting of our beloved alma mater brought back a flood of fond “memories dear that cluster ’round our sojourn here.” Thanks for rekindling those memories.

Craig W. Bradley