True Prep

by Lisa Birnbach

  Thirty years ago, daily chapel was compulsory, and there was an Episcopalian perfume to the campus (unless you were at Portsmouth Abbey or St. George’s). Everyone chose to buy the school ring senior year, and wore them with pride.

  Thirty years ago, students who required medication for their asthma or diabetes would go to the infirmary on an as-needed basis. Today the line for those on daily meds is so long that students are put on a schedule.

  Thirty years ago, The Catcher in the Rye was everyone’s bible. Today it’s A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (see), although reading books for pleasure has become a rare pleasure among teenagers.

  Today each campus has expanded and been beautified. You can find a fabulous new science center (LEED-approved), a museum and/or an art gallery, several ice rinks, new squash courts, a new dining hall featuring a vegan meal plan, and the Ethernet wired through and through.

  Unlike day schools, boarding schools are more realistic in the homework department. They ensure each student’s schedule allows for a healthy dose of sports and arts. Homework is organized to take no more than two to three hours (one free period per day plus the two-hour study hall) so that students are finished before Jon Stewart’s opening salvo. Of course, TV is viewable in students’ rooms via computer, as well as in the lounges.

  Most reputable boarding schools are now coed. Couples can sometimes form, especially in the winter, when people want to be cozy. Dress codes are relaxed—many schools have none whatsoever, except for a scheduled formal dinner. Chapel is now of the nonsectarian, secular-humanist variety, unless the school is Quaker, in which case, plus ça change. Students are allowed to travel home most weekends, except for the rare “closed weekend,” which could mean exams, proms, or the drug education program. Most schools have opened their ranks to day students … local kids who have cars and know how to drive them to the liquor store.

  Mandarin Chinese has replaced German as the hardest language to learn, and it has replaced French as the most popular language to study.

  And thanks to cell phones, you are no longer isolated in the woods. In fact, while at boarding school, many students still are able to ask their parents to do everything for them, just as they did at home, including waking them up.

  Nothing is more fraught than putting one’s very young children (whether they are of the easygoing or the entitled variety) at the mercy of strangers who will decide their lives’ fates for them. That is enough of a reason for parents to be at their neurotic worst when the admissions process must be faced. Personal rejection is humiliating enough; to think that your genes are being rejected (an evolutionary slap in the face) is beyond. People have relocated for less.

  At True Prep Central Command we approached a seasoned admissions director (no names please, not of the director, certainly, nor of the institution) who offered a few words of advice:

  • Do apply online. No points will be taken away for penmanship or lack thereof.

  • Remember that all the children going forward into this maw are “gifted” in one sense or another. Avoid using that word.

  • Flatter the school. It’s only human.

  • Attempt to offer a balanced view of the applicant. (He’s not perfect at everything. Her only imperfection is not her perfectionism.)

  • Try not to micromanage your child’s behavior during the observation session. The admissions personnel are watching the children interact to see how emotionally and socially ready your preschoolers are.

  • And most important, if you can possibly avoid it, do not tell your three-, four-, or five-year-olds that “we are all applying” to private school. Try to relax; they pick up on all your stress. Pretend that you are going to a new place with a new room with new children and grown-ups who like to play and talk with children.

  All the foregoing is irrelevant in Manhattan if you don’t follow the pre-pre-pre-application rules. What you are about to read is all true.

  For nursery-school applications (that is to say, when your child is in his second year) (of life), you must call each individual nursery school on the one day (Tuesday) after Labor Day. Only. You will spend the morning nervously dialing the admissions numbers at the (average of eight) schools you have heard about to be able to get an application sent to you. You will have not ever seen these schools before, unless you have older children. You must dial and redial (and get your spouse, your assistant, your spouse’s assistant, your assistant’s spouse) on speed dial until you speak to an admissions officer. No sense getting huffy; it won’t help. The answer to your next question is: no. If you show up in person—sensible, since the line is constantly busy—you will be turned away without an application, and by then all the applications will be spoken for. At some schools, if you don’t get through their lines until midday, your child will not be eligible to attend the morning session, and you will have to satisfy yourself with the hope of a spot in the less-desirable afternoon session.

  It is estimated that there are approximately 2,500 places altogether in a year’s entering class in Manhattan nursery-school land. Of those, perhaps half will be lost to children who are legacies or siblings. Still, there are no sure things. If you get through on your Tuesday morning, you might have leveled your playing field, and won the opportunity of sending your child to a wonderful nursery school, costing anywhere between $16,000 and $25,000 per year.

  When we think of the seventeenth century, we mostly think about Europe, don’t we? According to various sites online (what’s a library again?), 1628 was a busy, event-filled year: The Massachusetts Colony was founded. Cardinal Richelieu became prime minister. Louis XIII occupied La Rochelle. Emperor Ferdinand demanded that Austrian Protestants convert to Catholicism. Rembrandt, twenty-two years old, painted his self-portrait. Construction began on the Taj Mahal, and the Collegiate School in New Amsterdam (Manhattan) was established, “the oldest day school in North America.”

  Funny, that. Look up the Boston Latin School wherever you “look up things.” Five signers of the Declaration of Independence are alumni (Adams, Franklin, Hancock, Paine, and Hooper). Founded in 1635, it shares its birthday with that of the painter Tintoretto and the scientist Robert Hooke (he coined the term “cell”). It is also the year that Bernini completed the Palazzo Barberini in Rome, and that Connecticut opened for business as a colony. When Boston Latin was founded, it was known as the English High and Latin School.

  Now on to Roxbury Latin. Although it was founded much later, in 1645, it wasn’t a dull year. That was when Sweden and Denmark signed a peace agreement, as did the Dutch and Indians. It was also the year that both pirate William Kidd and explorer Louis Joliet were born. And although tapestries were still popular, the year marked the beginning of wallpaper.

  Kerry P. Brennan, the twelfth headmaster of Roxbury Latin (and formerly the twenty-sixth headmaster of the Collegiate School), maintains he is “the youngest and most handsome” of all the antique boys’ school heads. We would agree. The founder of RLS, John Eliot, was a “Protestant divine, who was an apostle to the Indians,” meaning he translated the Bible into Algonquin in order to convert the Algonquin. Since Harvard was already established, Eliot opened Roxbury Latin to be its feeder. (He had a son.) While Brennan does admit that Collegiate is the older institution, it did educate girls for a time—dodgy—and closed during the Revolutionary War. And while Boston Latin is older, it is public and it also shut down for part of the Revolutionary War. So Roxbury Latin—young Roxbury Latin—is “the oldest boys’ school in North America in continuous existence.” It not only stayed open during the Revolutionary War, its patriotic students “hurled appropriate patriotic invectives, and the schoolmaster, to spite the Tory troops, would not call off school for even one day.”

  Consider it official.

  The average tuition for a private day or board- ing school for academic year 2009–2010 was $37,341.60. Lest you think this is a high price to pay for mere social connections, allow us to make the case for the education that comes along w
ith them. The following may make you think you’re reading a college course catalogue.

  Dalton School, founded in 1919 as the Childrens University School, in Manhattan, has 1,285 students from kindergarten through twelfth grade. Some of the classes offered might include Contemporary Dance and Improvisation; Zen Dance; American Literature: Gender and Sexuality; and The Sixties and the American Prophetic Voice. Always strong in the arts, the school maintains a “composer in residence.” Alumni include Jennifer Grey and Tracy Pollan.

  Episcopal High School, Alexandria, Virginia. Founded in 1839 as the first high school (for boys) in all Virginia, it has been coed since 1991. One hundred percent of its students board on campus. Between 1861 and 1866, school buildings were used as a Union Army Hospital. (Walt Whitman served as a nurse there.) Today’s students, 30 percent of whom receive some aid, can study Religious Thought in Music; Honors Multivariable/Vector Calculus; Salvation, Judgment, and the End of the World; and The Philosophy and Literature of Medicine. Beloved pediatrician T. Berry Brazelton and Sen. John McCain are both graduates.

  Gilman School, Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1897 as The Country School for Boys (and the first “Country Day School” in the United States). Now home to 1,015 boys in grades K–12, Gilman offers a solid college prep curriculum, in addition to being famous for lacrosse (whose home is Baltimore). Sophomores have a required year-long course in Art History/Music History. Other offerings include Dreams and Disasters in Western Literature; European Ideologies; Comparative Legal Systems; and History of Anti-Semitism. Graduates include Frank Deford and Ty Ruff. Upperclassmen may take electives at all-girls’ Roland Park Country Day School (alumnae include Julie Bowen and Adrienne Rich) and the all-girl Bryn Mawr School, whose first headmistress was Edith (Mythology) Hamilton.

  The Hockaday School, Dallas, Texas. Founded in 1913. Hockadaisies, which is what all 1,083 students at all-girls Hockaday are called, are able to study Classical Genetics; Science and Pseudoscience, or How We Know What We Know; and Military History: Terrain, Tactics, and Technology. Recent speakers on campus included astronaut Sally Ride and Soviet poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko. Fewer than 100 girls board at Hockaday.

  Lakeside School, Seattle, Washington. Founded in 1919, merged with St. Nicholas in 1971. Coed, grades 5–12, 785 students. The alma mater of high-tech royalty Bill Gates, Paul Allen, and Craig McCaw, among others, Lakeside now caters to their children. Besides Mrs. Steve Ballmer, other trustees include a Skip and a Whimsy. Offerings include Race Matters: A (Fairly) Contemporary Intellectual History of African America; Infectious Disease: Culture and Science; Salmon Behavior and Ecology (this is the Northwest, after all); and Linear Optimization. Outdoor education is stressed in Middle School, tremendous study abroad available to juniors.

  Marin Academy, San Rafael, California. Founded in 1971 by a group of parents and faculty, Marin Academy is a coed day school of 400 students in grades nine through twelve. With a diverse population from all corners of the Bay Area, students study Field of Dreams: Baseball Lit; Russian History: From Vladimir to Vladimir; and Why War? (English dept.); Every January MA offers week-long mini-courses, just like some colleges do. Past courses have included the Marin AIDS Project, Southwest Archaeology, Whale Watching in Baja, Marine Biology, Raku Ceramics, Theater in Ashland, Skiing and Singing, Vision Quest, and the Cuisine of China and the Caribbean.

  Milton Academy (also known as MA by some) was established in 1798, and then again in 1884, in Milton, Massachusetts. With about 960 students on 125 acres, the Upper School enrolls about 670 students, half of whom board. It is coed. Jazz Improvisation; Microeconomics: The Power of Markets; and Advanced Latin: Lyric Poetry are a few of the classes offered, in addition to an extensive semester- and year-away program. Each dorm has its own tradition, taken seriously by all the campus. Buckminster Fuller and Governor Deval Patrick are both alums.

  Imagine our surprise at learning that the canon of books and movies that examine the world of prep schools is a legitimate genre. Even better, it forms a syllabus at the Hotchkiss School. Sam Prouty (Worcestor Academy, Swarthmore BA, Middlebury MA), an English instructor there, has been teaching this course every spring term since 2005. “This class is available to seniors only, as a college-style elective. The students are on the downside of their careers here, and in the beginning of their nostalgia period. I’m hoping this will help them process what it has meant to them.” School’d is popular, and ends with students reading and analyzing recruitment materials published by America’s boarding schools themselves to see what messages are beginning to define the prep experience.

  SHORT STORIES

  The Palace Thief

  Ethan Canin

  The Lie

  Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

  NOVELS

  The Catcher in the Rye

  J. D. Salinger

  A Separate Peace

  John Knowles

  Black Ice

  Lorene Cary

  Prep

  Curtis Sittenfeld

  Outside Providence

  Peter Farrelly

  New Boy

  Julian Houston,

  Hotchkiss graduate

  “OTHERS THAT WE SOMETIMES LOOK AT, BUT THAT I SKIP IF TIME GETS TIGHT”

  The Sixth Form

  Tom Dolby,

  Hotchkiss graduate

  The Upper Class

  Hobson Brown, et al.,

  Hotchkiss graduates

  The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

  Muriel Spark

  Never Let Me Go

  Kazuo Ishiguro

  When the Moon Turns Away

  Tracy Ma

  NONFICTION

  The Headmaster

  John McPhee

  Selections from Hotchkiss:

  A Chronicle of an American School

  Ernest Kolowrat, ed.

  PLAYS

  The History Boys

  Alan Bennett

  Six Degrees of Separation

  John Guare

  Tea and Sympathy

  Robert Anderson

  FILMS

  Outside Providence

  The Emperor’s Club

  Dead Poets Society

  Six Degrees of Separation

  Igby Goes Down

  Goodbye, Mr. Chips

  TEACHER OF THE MONTH: MRS. RADCLIFFE

  Name: Alice Anne Swanson Radcliffe

  Hometown: Rutland, Vermont

  Subject: English, Drama, touch typing

  Husband: Timothy J. Radcliffe, insurance salesman/mortgage broker

  Children: One daughter, Darcy Elizabeth Radcliffe, eleven years old

  Pet: Persian cat, Emma

  Favorite Spot: The beach at Hilton Head with a good book

  Favorite Season: Summer

  Hobbies: Needlepoint, Antiquing (rare editions of Austen, a specialty), Anglophilia

  Alma Mater: Trinity College (Connecticut)

  Favorite College Memory: Semester Abroad, St. Andrews (That’s where I met my husband!)

  Favorite Food: Chicken enchiladas

  Favorite Drink: Diet ginger ale

  Favorite Book: Pride and Prejudice

  Favorite Movie: Pride and Prejudice

  Favorite Actor: Colin Firth

  Favorite Actress: No one who’s ever played a love scene with Colin Firth

  Favorite designer: Calvin Klein (see photo!)

  Fantasy: To sit on the beach at Hilton Head with Colin Firth

  Graham Kent is a science teacher. Unfortunately, very few of us at Pine Coast Country Day speak “science.” We don’t speak its dialects, “Physics,” “Chemistry,” or “Biology.” If Mr. Kent spoke to us in English, it might help. But we barely can concentrate. It’s not because Graham Kent is so cute (you know . . . for a teacher). His lab is on the fourth floor, and it’s hot up there. (Wasn’t it in first form that we learned about heat rising? Or was that in that People story about Justin Timberlake?)

  Which are the elements of the particles? The particles of the element
s? Anyway, word is that Mr. Kent and Miss Zuckerman . . . ? The calculus teacher? We can’t believe it; it’s pretty upsetting. Miss Pierson—at least they have something in common. They both coach cross-country and went to UVA, but Miss Zuckerman? Doesn’t she, like, play chess or cello? She probably doesn’t even ski. It’s bogus. If she likes science people so much, why doesn’t she play duets with Mr. Srinivassa? He’s quiet, too. They could sit in the Commons and think their deep thoughts and not even say anything.

  But to make a perfect person, you’d have to take parts of Mr. Kent, Miss Pierson, Reverend Watson, and Coach Jones, and put them in a blender. You’d get a smart, cool distance athlete who sings karaoke and does community service who could get into UVA. And has green eyes. But for now, we’ll take Mr. Kent, and his Vineyard Vines ties and matching belts. Even if we don’t understand him.

  Here are two friends, Callie and Parker. Callie and Parker have known each other for years. They have never dated each other. Didn’t he once like Polly, Callie’s sister? (Hard to remember. Ninth grade?) Things they say about each other: “He’s like a big brother to me.” “She’s way too young. Forget it!” “He’s practically engaged to that Margot Spooner.” “She’s not my type.” “He’s not a jock.” “She’s into jocks.”

  But that winter weekend, when they both need someone to bring to the Christmas formal, they go together. It’s nice when things work out the way they’re supposed to.