S. P. S. Report

Oldest and biggest of the swank preparatory schools affiliated with the Episcopal Church is St. Paul's at Concord, N. H. Haughtily independent, St. Paul's recognizes no traditional rival, takes part in no sports with other schools. Yet its fame rests more upon the hockey players it sends to Harvard, Yale and Princeton than upon its scholarship. Its academic aim has been stated by Arthur Stanwood Pier, its official historian, as "teaching boys to think like other people."* Over this rugged, if not particularly intellectual, school presides as rector and headmaster the Rev. Dr. Samuel Smith Drury. Dr. Drury is a tall, stern man with a powerful, sonorous voice. No mixer, he has little contact with the school's 440 boys until they reach the Sixth Form, when he has them in to Sunday tea. Boys call him "The Drip." Once a year the publicity-wise Rector submits a report addressed to his trustees but intended for outside consumption. Progressive in their outlook, disarming in their frankness, Dr. Drury's reports have become famed. Repeated last week was the curious spectacle of private schoolmen reading the annual report of the headmaster of one of the least progressive schools and finding therein some of the most progressive views. Excerpts: P: "Not at present are we a great school in the sense of producing animated thinkers. . . . An amazing devotion marks the master of St. Paul's. . . . There is much drive, complete attention to duties, but not enough long-range planning of a scholarly sort. ... In scholarly capacity, one might rate our faculty at about 75%; in willing laboriousness at 90%; in successfully awakening independent intellectual interest in pupils, at 70%. The odium of this last score should be borne largely by the institution, not thrust on the teacher, because St. Paul's does not exalt scholarship, and has preferred to turn out what is known as the all-round citizen, which means a person who excels in nothing. All-round means small-round." P: "Education is in part quickened by migration. Sentimental Americans are forever talking about loyalty, meaning a devotion to places rather than to ideas. We are slavish in our school and college loyalties. For some boys it were better far to migrate from one mental locality to another. Five years at St. Paul's and four years at any college you like, for some natures proves stultifying. Those nine years might better be spent: two in a high school, two at St. Paul's, one at Exeter, two at Princeton, and two at Grenoble." P: "A boy from 14 to 18 years of age should be considered an able being, whose capacities are far greater than most schools evoke. His mind no longer needs unexcited vegetating. The brain of a second-decade student, provided there be no economic or competitive anxieties, probably cannot be over-exercised. . . . There should be frank anticipation of the college course, with the view to shortening the latter, for youth's brain power has been underestimated and the process of education, before settlement into gainful occupation and marriage, has been slow and long. The prolonged period of infancy characteristic of the human species has been safeguarded to the detriment of the species."

*An article on St. Paul's and eleven of the other top U. S. boys' schools will appear in the January issue of FORTUNE.

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