Education for Citizenship, for Life

Throughout the planning process, alumni, trustees and parents alike returned repeatedly to the importance of St. Andrew's mission of educating students to embrace lives of service, responsibility and integrity. Perhaps because the professional world has witnessed such a dramatic change in ethical practices and habits, perhaps because we as a culture have embraced an ethos that rewards individual or corporate achievement by any means necessary, perhaps because we have embraced a goal of individual success at the expense of a larger civic vision, our St. Andrew's trustees have encouraged the School to work intentionally on making sure that St. Andrew's students see their education as opportunities to, in the words of former Princeton University President Harold T. Shapiro, "serve society as both a responsive servant and thoughtful critic."

To teach the life of service, the life of responsibility, the life of integrity, we must reject the narrow definition of the college preparatory school. While we see our mission to prepare our students for distinguished work as undergraduates, while we work very hard to help our seniors find great colleges where they may continue their work as scholars and citizens, we strive to be much more than a School that simply moves students along an educational continuum. The obsession with the college process has distorted the morale, spirit and energy of schools and students across the country. We have seen throughout the country a marked and widely publicized increase in cheating at schools and the abandonment of honor codes and ethical practices. The media and educational researchers report that schools have abandoned missions that emphasize learning as a way of igniting curiosity, passion and commitment to authentic work, learning to make the world better and learning to serve others.

We believe that by redefining the purpose of the American boarding school we will succeed in inspiring our students to focus on what they learn and who they become when they are here. As our students live as citizens in their communities and the world, the essential question we will ask is this:

How did St. Andrew's inspire you to embrace engaged learning and responsible stewardship and citizenship in your lives? How did St. Andrew's prepare you to live and work in an ethical, honorable way?

We believe the following initiatives will support this more expansive and distinctive vision of St. Andrew's purpose:

• We will support a diverse and talented faculty that lives with students, creating trust that leads to honest and authentic academic work. We will continue to support the tutorial program, with its emphasis on authentic engagement and understanding of topics and texts.
• We will examine the jobs program and the availability of time for meaningful student work on campus. Student experiences working to clear woods, grow food in the organic garden and cleaning the campus have engaged them with the experience of working with their hands and working on the land, tangibly emphasizing a tradition of systematic work, sustained effort, moderation, self-sufficiency, wisdom and stewardship.
• We will initiate a program of speakers to introduce students to alumni, parents and other leaders who have developed ethical approaches to life, and who can share their experiences and teach that the ethical life always results in success in the long run.
• We will study how our students connect with the world to be informed and engaged global citizens. We will bring speakers to campus who can direct students' attention to critical issues in the world, issues in which they can become involved and engaged, even as students. We will find new ways to ensure that students read the news and are critical and well-informed consumers of the news each day.
• We will study the impact of our current community service program and the recent introduction of service learning and international service to our program. We will use this study to inform the growth and expansion of these programs as they serve to increase students' understanding of others within their community here as well as in other cultures.