The following remarks were delivered during Parents Weekend 2022.
I am really welcoming you on behalf of our superb faculty. Most of you have already begun conversations with your child’s teachers, coaches, and advisors—and you know we have the greatest boarding school faculty on earth. These people are working 24/7 for your children, for their education. I am so grateful to them, and I am so grateful to you for the time you’re putting into building relationships with them.
And, thank you. Thank you for showing up for St. Andrew’s, and thank you for everything you do to support the school and your children.
It is such a privilege to have your students at St. Andrew’s, and I hope in your conversations and experiences throughout the weekend you will feel our gratitude palpably.
It is an honor to partner with you and extend your work as parents and family members of these children. It does take a village, and I am glad you have chosen ours and we have chosen you. You trust us to educate your children, to help them practice and prepare, to encourage them and embolden them, to support and guide them, and we honor that trust. For us, this education is joyful and happy work, and I know you will feel that throughout the weekend.
In our reflective practice as a faculty at St. Andrew’s, we often consider, together and as individuals, what is education for? What is this education for?
And, if you read our mission statement carefully, and if you watch carefully what we do, we are relentlessly focused on the growth and development of your children, our students.
You will doubtless hear and witness this focus as you move through meetings with your child’s teachers, coaches, and advisors this weekend.
Many institutions say they educate young people to be citizens, or to change the world. And, indeed, our students will change the world, and they will be prepared to fulfill and exceed their moral obligations as family members, friends, citizens, and community members wherever they land. But, this is not the purpose of the education. It is a side-effect.
Rabbi Zusya was a famous 18th century rabbi who said, “In the coming world, they will not ask me why I was not Moses; they will ask me why I was not Zusya.”
The story about Reb Zusya illustrates that the ultimate judgment of our lives, and I think the ultimate judgment of our education, is whether we become ourselves fully, whether we realized our own potential. Our creator endowed us each with certain gifts, and expects us to recognize them, cultivate them, and use them joyfully.
Throughout their time here, we will challenge your children to practice and prepare and flourish. They will dance, sing, perform, compete, write, calculate, and speak. But in doing so, we do not expect them to be Baryshnikov, Elton John, Yo-yo Ma, Courtois, Morrison, Turing, or Obama. We expect them to be Shania, John, Sophie, Ema, Emily, Sarah-Rose, or Harry.
We expect them to find—and then to be—exactly who they are. Works in progress; ever practicing, ever preparing, ever improving.
I recently re-read a talk that then-Prince Charles gave at Harvard’s 350th anniversary in 1986. In it, he talked about the purpose of education and he cautioned the crowd gathered that day that "moral and intellectual training” would be required, “if we are to escape from the leadership of clever and unscrupulous men.”
“Moral and intellectual training:” In some circles, these terms are unfashionable. And indeed, in the speech I’m quoting, it was 1986—and although most of us don’t care to admit it—it’s getting on 40 years now.
But this is exactly the education—not only intellectual, but also moral—that must precede citizenship. To conquer the challenges they will face in an increasingly complicated world, to lead all of us ahead, our children will need to know who they are. Their principles clear, and their minds and talents sharp and ready, they will be able to separate the signal from the noise as they are inundated with information and disinformation, flooded with interlocking and intersecting conundrums.
“Clever and unscrupulous” leaders will always seek to confuse us with half-truths and lies. Technology that floods us with so-called “content” will aid that cause. Humans always will chase after what some will call “progress,” but which will lead us away from what is simple, and good, and meaningful, and true.
Having standards by which we live—knowing who we are and what we are about—sounds so simple, but we know that developing—and using—a moral compass, like anything worthwhile, is not easy. You know this as parents and family members who have worked on this every day since your children were born.
And that is why we approach our schooling at St. Andrew’s with simplicity in mind. An unbroken focus on the child in front of us, finding that exact right mix of push and challenge along with support and uplifting—that is our goal as a faculty. And we do it simply: just being with the kids, seeing them, hearing them, and loving them. This is where we have such a strong advantage as a fully residential boarding school. Your children are known and loved here. Our rituals support this, as we spend time together in chapel, dorms, sports, meals, in the arts and classrooms.
It was in the service of such communal simplicity that I encouraged you before arrival this fall to remove things from the family car. Stuff is the enemy of all that we are about! Technology, too, distracts from our aims—how can we be with each other, see each other, hear each other, and love each other, one ear stuffed with an airpod and one eye on our TikTok feed?
This is why we leave our phones behind each day and gather in person, in class, at family meals, in chapel, afternoon activities, and in School Meeting. Our entire community gathers in one room eight times each week. What a privilege it is to be able to do that, to be together as works in progress, practicing.
As you join us this weekend in this community, I am grateful that you, too, are always in the room with us. You join us in supplying to our students inspiration, expectation, love, and support in equal measure. There is no reason for anxiety or strain, as we know these young people are becoming exactly who they need to be, and exactly who they are: people of good principle and high character; people who possess both knowledge and wisdom. We are so proud of them for stretching and growing as individuals, trying, and sometimes falling short, and getting up, dusting themselves off, and trying again. In so doing, in becoming their best selves, they happen also to be just what the world needs and all that we could hope for.
Thank you again for your partnership, thank you for your presence, and thank you for sharing your children with us!
Watch Joy's remarks in this livestream video.
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