13 minute read
FOUNDERS’ FAMILY MESSAGE
KIT FOUNDERS FAMILY MESSAGE
Founders’ Eldest Child
It is a great honor and pleasure to be back here as a member of the Roeper Family and the larger Roeper community As a boy, I lived and roamed the hills and had a room in the Hill House
It is uplifting to see so many young, beaming faces, eager to take on the world using your experience of ups and downs at The Roeper School to cope with those of the larger world I believe very much that the Roeper/Bondy philosophy is the key to dealing with the modern world — it is not just a humanistic way to cope sympathetically with sometimes troubled children, but a view of how individuals within a community can tackle modern problems with compassion for every side: for instance, for Ukrainians, and Russians, too
The concept of teachers and students as friends was important for all the Roeper/Bondy institutions I recall how my my father would say — in a quiet voice and strong German accent — to each incoming student: you will make many friends here, and I will be your friend And my great uncle Curt Bondy, who ran a prison for children on an island near Hamburg (he took me there once), said that he would tell each teen-ager who arrived: “You have done things that society cannot accept, but you are no different from any of us I could have committed the crime you committed; I could have done it too,” articulating a notion of human equality and individual uniqueness as the critical element in building a community, even a community of imprisoned adolescents
And another story, with a principle behind it, that I have often told: My grandmother Gertrud Bondy instinctively honored individuality in 1946 when a 14-year-old, who had been in a Nazi concentration camp — stole into the kitchen of the Windsor Mountain School The cook was angry and said the kid was ungrateful My grandmother (knowing how people feared hunger in concentration camps) told the cook to give him a key so he could go in anytime — the only child who had a key (which the other students might envy but understood and accepted) It was a true recognition of individual uniqueness within a community
My mother let an insecure four-year-old follow her around holding her dress for months (her dresses all got stretched because of it) — and the boy was still devoted to her when he graduated at 18 What do these stories tell us? A community can accept responsibility for individuality — even if every child cannot have every privilege I tell my university students that fairness does not mean identical treatment I say, “I will treat you each differently and will grade you differently “ What principle does this follow from? As some have said: education and evaluation are incompatible goals That means: the act of evaluation can undercut the real power and purpose of education, where each person learns and grows in a unique way
Today I want to connect modern Cognitive Science to my grandfather’s vision, which I have recently discovered nicely articulated in a book about the Marienau School which my grandparents, Max and Gertrud Bondy, started and where my father George Roeper met their daughter Annemarie Bondy
As I have said before, it has been my lifetime goal — still incomplete — to articulate the foundations of the Roeper/Bondy philosophy in modern Cognitive Science While free creativity is often acknowledged as critical to human endeavor, it has been only through linguistics — my field — that it has been given a solid mathematical basis It can be seen in a simple recursive formula:
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A Nounphrase contains a PrepositionalPhrase, and a PP contains a Nounphrase. This “recursive” operation — innate to all humans — delivers infinite creativity. The Nounphrase now can carry another Prepositional Phrase: The boy next to the girl next to the house next to the store next to the forest … on forever.
It is the same analysis for sentences inside sentences which allow us to capture other minds in a single thought: A six-year-old said: “I know you think I think Easter is three days long, but it is only one day long ” The child has embedded three mindsets in a single sentence: think inside think inside know Because it comes from an innate mathematical formula, we can carry it out in milliseconds I believe very much that the Roeper/ Bondy philosophy is the key to dealing with the modern world — a view of how individuals within a community can tackle modern problems with compassion for every side
This is a model for the whole mind, including emotions — I’m mad that you’re mad that your sister is sad Every act, every moment involves precise instantaneous mental operations that are unique for each one of us When you glance around a room, your eyes compose an image in a unique way — with your personality and immediate context and situational goals being integrated Every sentence you say has a unique structure and meaning in context Every day you mean something no one has ever meant before How you walk has a unique organization — we recognize people in their stride from 100 feet away
Handmaiden to creativity is another concept largely suppressed in the intellectual world: the role of Free Will1 Current work by two MIT neurologists2 have pointed out that they can explain every aspect of how you lift your hand or your finger — every electrical neurological connection in the body except one: the voluntary aspect — how you decide to lift your finger It must be within the same millisecond mechanical computational ability, but we cannot yet capture it
By contrast, most of science is reductionist and denies free will — as academics will admit We explain ourselves to ourselves in myriad ways (environment, habit, genetics, society), but none acknowledge free will as an explicit component One college graduate told me the main thing he learned in college was ”you are determined by your environment ” But the main thing he learned in college is really not true Environment has a role, but so do you Don’t let that view be your experience of social science (psychology, sociolology, or anthropology) Listen instead to what my mother said “You are ultimately responsible for who and what you are” — a view which also departs from the Freudian doctrine that you are determined by early experience So as you go off to college, do not forget that the deepest, most important aspect of human nature and of you — free will — remains a scientific mystery and almost every field in the sciences (not the Humanities), including the premiere domain of physics as my physics friends tell me, fails to acknowledge the critical reality of free will to every day of your life Entailed in this perspective is the notion that — unlike Cartesian dualism — the mind and body are not really separate Your body captures ideas like when you blush if embarrassed
I think that free will, the core feature of each individual, is what my grandparents sought to articulate, and which so inspired and empowered my father Let’s listen to my grandfather, Max Bondy’s words (freely translated) in 19283:
Every young generation has its own destiny of necessary obligations to fulfill — they fulfill them with and without the aid of adults.... The problems of the youth in the 1910s is hardly understandable to those in the 1920s. I can only together with you perceive the inherent nature of the problems of 1925, a time of pathetic materialism, quite different from 1915 when the youth risked their lives for the fatherland.
The youth have the strongest capacity to reject the comfort and convenience of bourgeois life — and now [we must think] how to fulfill the challenges of 1930? I can only grasp together with you your inner understanding as openminded youth. That is the primary reason why I am better able to live with young people, to create a new image of mankind and a better future.
A young man today cannot understand the old demands. He must be free with his own autonomy and responsible for himself to fashion his life ... for a meaningful life he must see beyond “I” to draw from within himself a unity and responsibility to a community, to its values and an obligation and service to the whole. In a word “you must become who you are,” and move the “ideal world” into ideal actions ... and go against an intellectualized, life-denying, convention-bound civilization ... a vision of community must come through the heart. Such a vision with the impulse of love cannot be commanded, but we can practice the conditions that bring it about.
5I believe the Roeper School continues this quest admirably
Now let me tell you the problem with this perspective on mind and action — contemplation can undermine action My favorite high school teacher at Putney School, a progressive school modeled in part on my grandparents’ school in Marienau — cautioned me not to accept Cartesian dualism, the division between mind and body He said thoughts and actions are and should be automatically linked — like a mother who screams when a child crosses a road in front of a car However, the inclination toward endless rumination makes too many of my university colleagues unable to act or too slow to act For instance, we have all been slow to resist the state legislatures’ passing laws that block Critical Race Theory and efforts to fight racism in public schools Professional societies have passed resolutions Some universities as well — but schools and their associations have not spoken forcefully and officially
We let our style of contemplation impede action too easily and too often Should we ever tear down an apartment building (as we have done at UMass and Amherst) when we have refugees with nowhere to sleep? The leadership of youth is a good and natural starting point in enabling us to see and imagine what actions are necessary
And again, we must not be too slow In 1934-35 Max and Gertrud and my father — my mother was just 16 — began, I believe, a progressive school response to fight the Nazis through a journal my father edited, linking five or six schools in Germany and Switzerland But the Nazis were infiltrating the Marienau School and others They were forced to escape before they could collectively resist It is important to note that resistance did not always fail A small but outspoken group of parents of children with birth defects (no arm, or leg, or nose, blindess, etc ) demonstrated in front of government buildings and refused to let the Nazis kill their children Though few in number, the Nazis relented Wikipedia summarizes: “Hitler ordered that the systematic murder of the mentally ill and handicapped be brought to an end because of protests within Germany on August 18, 1941 ”
We should learn from their experience about how to think deeply about problems, but not let them block action — to know when to act before it is too late Anyone concerned with the climate change will recognize a familiar challenge
The same applies to institutional actions As anarchists have pointed out: we must know how to fight obsolete institutions; for instance, the notion that geography should necessarily be the basis of democracy (e g , think: gerrymandering)
How do we make sure contemplation does not impede action when needed? That is the question I would put to you all — and the graduating class — for us to grasp and solve I do not have the answer, but I believe it can and should emerge from the tradition of community-thinking found in the Roeper philosophy and this school
One principle is this: There is always a way to respond personally and institutionally to every problem in the world
Right now I hope The Roeper School reaches out to Afghan women — forced to be covered — and brings some of them here My grandparents’ school in Germany, Marienau, which is still going strong, has just brought in a 13-year-old Ukrainian child Perhaps a Roeper family with the school could do the same here
And, in particular, the 400,000 Roma Ukrainians — present there for centuries — includes many seeking asylum I am working with one of the only Roma Professors in the world and could help establish contact between Roma and Roeper students
I look forward — as my grandfather did — to the novel and innovative solutions that Roeper graduates will move from imagination to reality F
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1 List, Christian, Why Free Will Is Real (2019)
Harvard Press Cambridge, Massachusetts
Roeper, Tom, The Prism of Grammar (2007)
MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts
2 Emilio Bizzi & Robert Ajemian, A Hard
Scientific Quest: Understanding Voluntary
Movements (2015) The American
Academy of Arts & Sciences
3. Der heutige Mensch muss frei sein.
Ein grosser Teil alter Bindungen ist für ihn bedeutungslos geworden, er kann mit ihnen nichts anfangen. Er will und muss lernen, in autonomer Weise vor eigener
Verantwortung sein Leben zu gestalten. Der einzelne soll ganz das werden. was er seinen Anlagen nach werden muss und in möglichst vollkommener Weise aus sich herausholen, was die Natur in ihn hineingelegt hat. ... Die Jugend soll ihren eigenen Wert erkennen und zur Selbstdndigkeit gelangen. ... Aber diese Befreiung vom Zwang falscher Autoritäten genügt nicht, um die Ganzheit des Lebens zu gewinnen. ... Zu einem sinnvollen Leben gehort das Einfrlhlen in eine dem Ich r-ibergeordnete Einheit in sozialer und religioser Bezj.ehung, das Erlebnis des Wertes der Gemeinschaft, das Pflichtbewusstsein und der Dienst dem Ganzen gegenuber.
BONUS: LABELS AND IDENTITY, Tom’s Founders’ Day Remarks
This day is devoted to respecting and extending the vision of the Founders I thought I might explore a concept dear to my mother and her sense of the individuality of each child and then extend it somewhat
We inevitably identify people in terms of their characteristics: charming, beautiful, odd, dangerous These terms — in the world of institutions and bureaucracies — can turn into LABELS
The school uses them too: gifted, autistic, twice exceptional, impulsive, neuro-diverse, talented, artistic, a leader — the list is growing forever
And yet, every term fails to capture the true diversity of qualities inside each individual My mother always worried that labels tend to diminish people, even in their own eyes, and prevent the interaction of people of all sorts It is one reason the school sought to have more diverse ages together So we need to be careful not to use labels too much, or see each other or ourselves too narrowly
There is a related term that pops up constantly: identity
Who am I after all? And now it is common for people to “seek their identity,” discover their identity, search for it The term has an unusual history It was only around 1950 that the term was popularized by a Harvard sociologist, Eric Erikson (a friend of my great-uncle Curt Bondy), who was a Jewish refugee who changed his name from Hamburger — seeking to not have too narrow an identity He explored the fact that “identity” seemed to define voting groups — Polish, Southerners, Germans, Hispanics, etc — who seemed to often vote in blocks Then the notion expanded to become something each person needed to determine on a personal quest
But do we? Must we make an alignment with some group I am an American, sort of, but also with European roots I am a professor and therefore an intellectual But I found myself strongly resisting when someone asked me to “admit that you are an intellectual ” I felt like saying, “I’m just a person ” And like not having a label, maybe we do not have to have a fixed identity So if you find yourself “searching for your identity” but cannot quite find it, don’t worry, maybe you can just be the you you decide to be
I am pretty sure that is what my mother would say F 7
