We need more entrepreneurs. My experience with entrepreneurs is that they have the ability to gain a little altitude and see the world more clearly from a vantage point that is not overly influenced by what everyone else thinks. To be an entrepreneur means that you are entirely comfortable acting as if the future will not be the same as the past. Entrepreneurs don’t look at opportunities like they are snap shots where everything is frozen in time. Entrepreneurs watch film where you can look at historical patterns, discern hints and project trajectories in order to make educated guesses about what is going to happen next.
Sandy Spring was founded by tobacco farmers that had moved away from the soil-depleted lands of the earlier settled Tidewater. The Quakers that moved here all seem to have had the entrepreneurial gene (although neither of those words was in use 350 years ago). These Quakers were entirely comfortable with innovation, risk taking and collaboration. They knew they were going to stay and be successful; consider the big houses they built. While there were a number of reasons for this including, I suppose, the prospect of finding gold (thus Gold Mine Road), it was the experimentation with different types of fertilizer, including the use of guano from South America that allowed Sandy Spring farms to grow and prosper.
It is the descendents of these same Quakers who again and again displayed their entrepreneurial spirit by founding a series of schools including Sherwood Friends School in 1883 (which became a public school in 1906) and, fifty years ago, Sandy Spring Friends School.
My first entrepreneurial moment came in the 1990’s when we were living in Hong Kong and part of my job was to work with Chinese officials to figure out how to fund electricity projects. It was at this time that the Chinese leadership decided to introduce market reforms (a prerequisite for entrepreneurs to flourish). At that time, China’s economy was considerably smaller than Italy’s. There was no private property. There were no land titles, no court houses to file the title in if you had one and no lawyers to opine on whether you had done it right. China was very short of power and it was this lack of electricity that everyone was predicting would be the thing that would hold back China’s economic growth.
At that time, it was far from obvious that China was destined to be an economic super power. China was poor. By poor, I mean it had no money. So when an official wanted to build a new plant, someone called the state owned factories that made the different components. And over a period of time, rail cars full of stuff would come to a certain place, equipment would be unloaded and a bunch of engineers would walk around and decide whether they could use it (nothing was never not used). No complaining was allowed. You were glad to get whatever you could. Over these last twenty years, China’s economy has been transformed by technology, investment, improved regulations and the unleashing of entrepreneurs. Today, China is the world’s second largest economy.
I have had a few entrepreneurial moments in between going to China in the 1990’s and now but none seem quite so promising as today’s wonderful opportunity to consider how Sandy Spring Friends School can educate, stretch, confound and delight our children so that each will proceed as the Way Opens to making their contribution to family, community, nation and the world.