Parents who send their children to Sandy Spring Friends School choose to do so. It is not the default choice (that would be public school) and, in fact, requires effort and (as we well know) money. Different parents look for different things from the school, or at least have different priorities. This is natural and, I suppose, has something to do with what each of us remembers about our own experience in primary and secondary school.
Sandy Spring is a community of lifelong learners. We believe that persistence, curiosity, love of discovery, tools to explore the intellect and critical thinking are among the essential elements to a Sandy Spring education and are essential elements for those who will fully participate and lead in the world that our children will soon inherent.
This is a presidential election year, and many of our SSFS seniors will be eligible to vote for the first time in November. While there are many ways to characterize the key social, economic and global issues that are being debated, editorialized, and otherwise promoted, many of the issues that intrigue and divide Americans relate to differing views on individual freedom and responsibility to the community. Highway speed limits (let alone speed cameras), metal detectors at airports, censorship on the airways, limiting the right to purchase firearms, special taxes on unhealthy products such as tobacco and building permits that require old buildings to build ramps for wheelchairs (look at Scott House) are just a few of the countless ways that we, as a society, acknowledge that individual freedoms co-exist with (or are subjugated to, depending on your point of view) rules that protect and serve something larger than the individual.
Pick up the newspaper or turn on the news. Should individuals be required to purchase health insurance? Should individuals have the right to marry no matter who they love? Is it ok to require pollution controls on cars and trucks even if it increases the price of the vehicle by thousands of dollars? How you answer these questions may form the basis for how you will vote in November.
Of course questions around the balance between individual rights and community rights are not limited to national politics. Someone must decide whether children can eat Ramen noodles for dinner rather than stir fried tofu, do homework with the TV on, or get a paper route if they want to go to overnight camp.
Our school community, on many levels, also wrestles with determining the right balance between the individual and the community. This is important stuff and is part of our academic curriculum (the US bioethics class recently had a rousing debate about the ethics of stem cell research); it's also part of how we also learn from each other outside of the classroom. At a recent Upper School Meeting For Worship with a concern for business, our students challenged Karen, Steve, Ben and other administrators on numerous individual/community issues. Questions included: Why does the School care what students do off campus and on the weekends? Why does the School seem to focus on money? Why can't everyone who wants to be on a varsity team be on that team? Where is the simplicity in complex technology?
I was impressed with the questions, even more impressed with how they were asked, and absolutely blown away by students who were moved to stand and share their perspectives. Our students, our kids, engaged in civic discourse; they were respectful, articulate and wonderfully coherent. Mostly they were wise; they understood that the School had to determine an appropriate balance between the community and the individual that might result in some individual restrictions, but that this was ultimately in the best interest of the individual. Some things are done to protect young, still inexperienced people. Our students are precocious enough to challenge authority and mature enough to know that they don't know everything and that some annoying things are the way they are not because it is unfair, but because they are loved.
These are great kids, and I am proud to be part of an environment that helps them learn to think for themselves, make informed choices, and express their opinions civilly and articulately.