George School
George School is a private Quaker boarding and day high school located on a rural campus in Middletown Township, Bucks County, Pennsylvania. It has been at that site since its founding in 1893, and has grown from a single building to over 20 academic, athletic, and residential buildings. Besides the usual college preparatory courses, including an International Baccalaureate program, the school features several distinct programs deriving from its Quaker heritage. These include community service requirements, an emphasis on social justice and environmental concerns, required art courses, and community-based decisionmaking.
History
19th century
George School was founded in 1891 and opened in 1893. John M. George, who donated much of the money for the school, is the school's namesake. It was intended as a school for Hicksite members of the Religious Society of Friends. They wanted an alternative to Orthodox Westtown School. The two schools have remained friendly rivals in athletics, although they resolved the sectarian rift between them in the 1950s. The Patterson Cup is awarded each year to the school which has won the most varsity and junior varsity contests between the schools. An alumni fundraising competition between the schools, the "Machemer Cup" also exists.The campus was built on of the Worth Farm. The owners retained, including the 1756 Tate House and 1804 Worth House. The school gave over the bulk of its property in the early years to a farm managed for its benefit. The farm produced the school's milk and meat until the farm closed in 1967. The school purchased the remaining property, including the two historic houses, in 1945. The school leased or gifted parts of the campus to Newtown Friends School in 1947 and the Pennswood retirement community in 1979.
The first headmaster, George Maris, had been a strong voice in favor of "guarded education," separated from worldly vices, for Hicksite Friends. Maris was one of the group of Hicksites who courted George and secured a codicil to his will 74 days before his death. Maris was an ineffective headmaster, although the reasons for his lack of success are unclear; Maris was forced out of his position in 1901 and replaced by Joseph Walton, who had also been part of the founding group.
The new headmaster, Joseph Walton, had been a leading candidate for the presidency of Swarthmore College, the Hicksite-sponsored Friends college, in 1898. During Walton's tenure as head of George School, the school overcame what had been a troubled balance sheet by expanding.
20th century
The school built a new dormitory, Drayton Hall, in 1903, and the first separate classroom building, Retford Hall, in 1903. Unlike Maris, Walton opposed the idea of "guarded" education and encouraged arts education. Walton died of a duodenal ulcer, aged 57.George Walton, the son of Joseph Walton, served as headmaster from 1912 to 1948, the longest term of any head of school. There was little new construction during his term, but considerable social change. The enrollment nearly doubled, from 226 to 425, while the number of Quakers attending remained about the same, lowering the proportion. The school accepted its first black student in the 1940s and introduced social dancing and football. Outside of the school, he was a prominent voice within the Friends community. He was part of the group that founded the Pendle Hill study center in 1930; he accompanied two of that group, the well-known writer Rufus Jones and D. Robert Yarnall on a 1938 mission to Germany on behalf of the American Friends Service Committee to allow that group to distribute relief in Poland, then under occupation. After retiring from George School, he was an instrumental figure in reconciling the Hicksite and Orthodox Philadelphia Yearly Meetings in 1955.
Following World War II, teacher Walter Mohr, who had also worked with the American Friends Service Committee, organized affiliations with two German schools, Jacobi Gymnasium for boys in Düsseldorf and Gertraudenschule for girls in Berlin, at first sending relief supplies and organizing student exchanges. In 1950, the first of almost twenty years of German workcamps began. In the late 1960s, these affiliations and work camps began to spread to Russia, Africa, and Latin America and included work projects domestically.
The next headmaster, Richard McFeely, ushered in an era of campus growth and a change to a less formal relationship between students and faculty: McFeely insisted on being addressed by first name. McFeely was generally known as "Mr. Dick." McFeely had contracted polio while a student at Swarthmore. McFeely was friendly with Franklin D. Roosevelt, having spent time with him at Warm Springs, Georgia. During McFeely's time as the head of school, the school constructed the Alumni Gym, Hallowell Hall, McFeely Library, and Walton Center. McFeely retired because of poor health from polio and died within the year.
During the mid-1950s, Julian Bond, later a prominent civil rights leader, attended George School. While Bond encountered some cases of racism while attending there, he was impressed by the anti-racist philosophy of the school and first encountered ideas of non-violence and social action. One event, in particular, involved Bond, a varsity athlete, going to Philadelphia with his white girlfriend while wearing George School apparel. Upon returning, the school dean reprimanded him. George School has claimed it was enforcing a policy of not wearing George School insignia apparel off-campus; Bond alleged that the reprimand was racially motivated and "That was just like somebody stopping you and slapping you across the face."
Eric Curtis, an Englishman and a former faculty member at Earlham College, was brought in to be the headmaster after McFeely, serving from 1967 until 1979. Curtis oversaw a tumultuous time of change in the social relationships within the school, as assertive students and younger faculty battled older faculty and administrators over various procedures. The two significant new buildings in Curtis' time were the Science Center and the Sports Center.
David Bourns was head of school from 1979 to 2001 when he left to head the Paul Cuffee charter school in Providence, Rhode Island. Bourns' time began as a recentering after the tumult of the previous decade. A new emphasis on academic rigor was enforced, along with more focused activism. The school built an Alternative Energy Center in the mid-1980s and for several years hosted a regional "Peace Fair." Nancy Starmer, the first non-member of the Society of Friends to head the school, succeeded him.
21st century
On September 18, 2007, Barbara Dodd Anderson, George School Class of 1950, gave a gift of $128.5 million to George School. The gift is to be received over twenty years from an irrevocable charitable lead trust and is the single largest gift to an existing private school in U.S. history. The gift has its origins with billionaire businessman and philanthropist, Warren Buffett. Buffett was a student of Anderson's father, David Dodd, an economist and professor at Columbia University School of Business. Dodd became an early investor in Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway. Ms. Dodd Anderson, Mr. Buffet, and Mollie Dodd Anderson, granddaughter of Barbara Dodd Anderson, were present for the dedication of the new LEED Gold Certified Learning Commons and Mollie Dodd Anderson Library on October 17, 2009.On April 27, 2015, George School became the first preparatory school in the nation to divest its endowment from coal.
Governance
The George School Committee governs George School, self-perpetuating by approval of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Society of Friends. Quaker influences on the school are apparent in many of the Friends-derived procedures of the school, especially in the consensus format for faculty and other committee meetings, in which all present must either agree to proposals or "stand aside" for them to be approved. A four-year course of spiritual study begins with a term of Essentials of a Friends Community in the student's first year, followed by two terms of Faith Traditions, an in-depth World Religions course. Additionally, all students and faculty gather for a thirty-minute Meeting for Worship once a week, and all boarding students and resident faculty attend a longer meeting on Sundays. Also, in the Quaker spirit, since 1942, every student has had a "co-op" job, the equivalent to other schools' work-study jobs, but shared equally among all students regardless of their financial aid status. Finally, in the most apparent difference between outsiders, teachers and students usually refer to one another on a first-name basis.Curriculum
George School offers a college-preparatory course of study. To graduate, students must complete four years of English, three years of mathematics, three years of history, three years of science, three years of arts, and religious courses, and demonstrate third-year proficiency in a foreign language.George School offers the two-year International Baccalaureate program, which certifies students to attend colleges and universities worldwide.
George School also offers Advanced Placement courses and examinations in Biology, Calculus, English, U.S. History, Human Geography, Chemistry, Physics, Statistics and the school's four foreign languages: French, Spanish, Latin and Chinese. Additionally, students in the Portfolio Preparation class have been known to submit their work for the Art AP.
Students must take three full years of art. George School offers classes in
ceramics, chorus, dance, digital imaging, drama, music seminar, newspaper, painting and drawing, photography, stagecraft, film production, orchestra, woodworking, and yearbook.
Service
All George School students must complete a 65-hour community service project before graduating. Students work on projects and in programs that reflect Friends' practices. Projects must be grounded in one-on-one contact with communities and persons who are disempowered because of social, racial, economic, or health factors. These projects include intense, two-week experiences in school-sponsored, domestic or international work camps; once-a-week experiences that extend throughout the school year; and preapproved independent projects. Students may complete service projects during the school year or on vacation after their second year.Recent service trips include India; Nicaragua; Cuba; Costa Rica; Boston, Massachusetts; Coastal Mississippi; and The Palestinian territories; France; South Africa; Ghana; Arizona; New Orleans, Louisiana; Americus, Georgia; South Carolina; Virginia Beach, Virginia; Washington, D.C.; West Virginia; South Korea; Vietnam; and China.
While more than half of the students at George School are on significant financial aid, proportionally few of those students can afford to go on international service trips as the maximum scholarship offered on most trips amounts to roughly half of the total costs, which range from $2,000 to over $5,000.