The news that Stanley Bosworth, the founding headmaster of Saint Ann's, passed away on August 7th will, and should, make the start of the this year different for all of us, whether we knew Stanley or not. There will be formal and impromptu moments to commemorate, to remember, to laugh and to weep. Yet surely Stanley above all else would want us each in our own way to return with renewed focus on what it is that brings us together as a community—the revelry of education, the pleasure of shared discovery, the bringing of something new into the world.
In one of the earliest statements of our purpose, Stanley wrote in 1971 that "An educational program, if it is to be excellent, must find ways of imparting to children the best of man's traditions and discovery in such a manner that learning becomes both a pleasure in itself and an organized pursuit of the infinitely greater pleasure of a rich and subtle questioning of the world." The pleasurable pursuit of excellence has always been at the heart of our enterprise, and we strive always to motivate students to seek out not only, in the cultural critic Matthew Arnold's words, "the best which has been thought and said in the world," but to find the best within themselves as well—whether it is mastery of a language, the composition of an essay or poem that commands our attention, or the developing capacity of a four-year-old to comprehend the emotional core of a sensitive classmate. Our students also motivate us, with their energy and creativity and desire, and we strive throughout the year to give productive shape to their encounters with the unknown and the unknowable. Together we learn, and together we have fun.
And so, in a few weeks, we fling open the doors to our workshop, our laboratory, our living, breathing, ever-changing experiment. Welcome back!
Vincent TompkinsHead of School