Head of School Letter

HEAD OF SCHOOL LETTER

“Look, Look, Look!” exhorted the biology teacher to the students standing at lab tables around the room. In one hand, she was holding a sheep’s eyeball, and in the other hand, a scalpel. Her students, in groups of two, all had the same equipment and were talking excitedly with each other as they dissected the eyeballs. There was not a student in the class that seemed disengaged, distracted, or disgusted. Instead, they appeared as if they were young medical students, not your typical 10th graders. This talented teacher had prefaced the lab by explaining that a number of animals have the ability to see much better than humans at night, including sheep, and had the students ponder how this might be possible. The students had proposed a host of reasons and were eager to test their ideas against the anatomy they were in the process of dissecting. This lesson had played right into our natural curiosity to understand how things work, to take things apart, and to try to understand the operational structures that make our universe work — even if it was just in the microcosm of a sheep’s eye. The search for understanding of how things work stretches back to our earliest ancestors. It has been a driving force throughout human history. Even today, you see a spark to understand in the youngest of infants and it stays with us until our final days. It is one of the two great questions that drive all meaningful educational endeavors. The other great question asks how things matter. What does it all mean? What is of value? What gives our lives meaning? If you stumble into a good literature classroom, you will see this question debated and discussed daily. What made Jay Gatsby great? Is Okonkwo’s death in Things Fall Apart brave or cowardly? Is Holden Caulfield a hero? Questions like these help us think through our own lives. They help us wrestle with powerful ideas about how to act and what is truly important. Unfortunately, if you visit many classrooms in schools around the globe, it will appear that we have lost sight of these questions. The focus seems to be on being able to recall or memorize a set of facts or details that are far removed from these two big questions. Asking students to select the correct answer among the five possible multiple choice answers is more pressing than living a life full of meaning. Getting an “A” on the math quiz is more important than actually understanding how or why you might ever use mathematics to better understand the natural world.

Head of School Adam K. Man P’15 and All-School President Doug Baker ’22 compete to see how many student names they can remember during the first Friday Assembly of the 2021-2022 school year.

I recently had an interesting conversation with a young Forman alumnus who was in his final year of college. He was a business major and had completed a summer internship at Bain & Company. He was slightly disheartened at the start of his final year because he felt he learned more about the workings of business in his summer internship than all of his business classes combined. He wondered aloud whether all the time, effort, and energy he had put into his classes were really preparing him for success when he graduated. His lament is not an uncommon one. The news is often filled with individuals or organizations questioning whether the high cost of college is worth it. They question the value of the education students are receiving to enter the working world. Are they really prepared? This raises the question of the purpose of college. Is it meant to provide you with a discrete set of skills and knowledge that can be immediately applied when you join the workforce? Polling indicates that the majority of college students expect and want this type of training. Many also seem disappointed by the training they are receiving. They feel that it is too theoretical and lacking in the practical skills they need to easily transition into professional careers. But, they also feel that without a college degree, no employer will seriously consider their candidacy. They are taking on debt for a credential they do not see a great deal of value in. There is another group that feels that college is not about preparing you for a specific job, but rather providing you with the critical thinking skills and knowledge base to successfully manage any job, and, more importantly, be a well-informed and contributing member of our society. My own affinities lie more with this school of thought. This group, though, is often equally critical of the higher education experience. For example, a 2017 Wall Street Journal investigation found that the majority of college students make little progress on the College Learning Assessment Plus, a test of critical reasoning, over their four years in college. Students’ critical and evaluative skills changed little from the time they began to when they graduated four years later. It is very challenging to truly assess the dispositions, traits, and abstract skills of critical thinking at this level and we should probably take this one critique with a grain of salt. But, it is indicative of an internal debate within higher education circles about how well they are actually doing on this task. These issues have all led to the serious evaluation of the purpose and value of a college degree. I have more than a dozen books written by college or university presidents in the past few years on this topic alone on my bookshelf. I am encouraged by the number of leaders in higher education who are not just bemoaning this challenge but are instead leading a process of redesign at their schools. They are reinvigorating the ancient philosophical questions of “how does it work?” and “what does it mean?” to think deeply about their curriculum and programs. An interesting example comes from a cluster of colleges combining internships, courses from STEM, or business departments to address how members of a profession get at how things work in their disciplines. The colleges then combine the findings with classes from the humanities to look at the ethics or larger meanings related to those fields. This method helps prepare their graduates for the real work related to their potential careers, but also the critical thinking skills necessary to go beyond the parameters of a specific job.

The COVID-19 pandemic forced all of us to evaluate our programs and priorities. Our shift to a modular schedule, due to the virus, was something we found compelling, even after not necessarily having to think about the same constraints. We have changed some of the initial ways the schedule worked based upon the experience last year but kept key elements. It helped us move away from a breadth of topics covered quickly to a deeper dive in which we can explore those deeper questions. As colleges and universities think creatively about their programs, we feel we are joining good company in our own thinking. I think we are living in exciting educational times, where innovation may be drawing upon those ancient questions that make us uniquely human. At Forman, we continue to discover new answers to our questions, propelling all of us to a future of endless thinking, learning, and understanding.

Adam K. Man P’15 Head of School