A WORLD OF OUR OWN: Notes on Life and Learning in a Boys' Preparatory School

by Peter S. Prescott ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 12, 1970

Patrician preserve, crucible of character building, archaic leftover, and a Fort Knox of standards, stabilities and ""absolutes,"" Choate School (Wallingford, Conn.) has been revisited by an alumnus of fifteen years standing. His book, an evaluation of the school and the modus vivendi of faculty and the hundred dollar a week privileged students, is non-partisan but inferentially critical, and by necessity most of the responsibility rests with its presiding, civilizing headmaster Seymour St. John who has served about two-thirds of his proposed thirty years tenure. In an article ten years ago (1958-the book here covers the 1967-1968 academic year) St. John said ""In education, the closeness of students to a good and great man or woman is the finest we can offer our children."" Before you're through, one may well question whether the student body is in the presence of anything more than a good, viz. moral and traditional, man upholding a closed community in an open ended world. (""This is not my background and all of you don't share it""--re littering in chapel.) Among the particularized givens Prescott, a precise recorder, covers admissions at Choate (the boy who will adapt), the compulsory chapel service where religion comes off badly, its teachers (and the overload--6:30 A.M. to 11:00 P.M.) and the teaching--before heading into areas of current controversy and dissent (the blacks; pot; etc.) to which St. John applies whatever restrictive measures possible in ""purring"" or ""thundering"" tones of voice. True there are no more Rectors of Justin but only too clearly to be seen are the ways in which the headmaster and the private, sorry--the secondary, school are out of phase. Mr. Prescott keeps his fifteen years distance and has permitted all in residence to speak for themselves; a thoughtful, incisive, and inordinately interesting vista of a small world which has lost its special state of grace.

Pub Date: Oct. 12, 1970

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Coward-McCann

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1970

Categories: NONFICTION