Beyond Measure Panel Discussion

PFS Head of School Jane Fremon’s Remarks
following the screening of “Beyond Measure”
October 20, 2015
Sponsored by the Princeton Library and the Princeton Public Schools
at the John Witherspoon School Auditorium

Though I sit on this panel as the Head of Princeton Friends School, I want to begin by describing an experience I had as a student at Princeton High School, forty-five years ago, that illustrates many of the themes that are central to this film.

In my senior year at PHS I “opted out” of honors English in order to enroll instead in a class taught by David Carr, a teacher who was doing it all quite differently. In Mr. Carr’s class was a mix of students from diverse backgrounds who came to trust and learn deeply from one another in the course of the year. Though Mr. Carr assigned some readings to the class as a whole, we were also expected to carry out and present to the group projects of our own choosing. And though Mr. Carr was obligated to issue grades for our work, he actually didn’t. Instead he asked us, at the end of each term, to present to him, with justification, the grade each of us thought we deserved. And as far as I know, he followed our recommendations.

Most important, though, was that we were each required to keep a journal. Not only were we to use its pages to reflect on the work of within the course, but we were encouraged to write as well about our lives outside the English IV classroom, and outside of school altogether. While Mr. Carr would collect them periodically to see what was on our minds, he regarded them as strictly ours. He responded to our entries on memo paper rather than writing on the pages himself. And he made it clear that if we needed to write just for ourselves, on topics that we didn’t want to share with him, we should simply turn the page over on itself, and he would skip to the next entry. We absolutely trusted him to do this.

In preparation for this evening, I actually managed to lay my hands on my own English IV journal. Reading through it over the weekend was quite a journey back in time, but was also enlightening in terms of all that we’re considering tonight. Its pages are filled with ruminations about relationships and the college admissions process, notes on my independent research projects, lines of poetry and song lyrics. And when a friend was killed in a motorcycle accident, the journal was a place where I could ponder, for the first time in my life, mortality. In Mr. Carr’s class, the journal was a vehicle for us to carry out our most important work – coming to know ourselves as thinkers, as learners, and as people.

This being the case, an entry I wrote in the spring of my senior year is especially interesting. Speculating about possibilities for the upcoming summer, I wrote, “I may want to be a counselor at a day camp somewhere around here. Who knows? I may end up being a teacher after all.”

So fast forward fifteen years, and much of what I’d experienced in Mr. Carr’s class found expression in the founding vision of Princeton Friends. Like Mr. Carr, we too knew from the start that in order to create a true learning community, one in which students would feel free to take risks and welcome mistakes as part of the learning process, there was simply no place for competition in the classroom. Recognizing as well that learning is a complex and creative process that cannot be reduced to a letter or a number, we have never issued grades nor administered standardized tests at Princeton Friends, and instead we assess student progress through observation and description. And just as it was in Mr. Carr’s class, student choice and voice are woven into the fabric of our work with children, as these inspire authentic student engagement and ownership of the learning process. And above all, just as it was in Mr. Carr’s class, a Princeton Friends education is about all of life as the social, emotional, ethical, and spiritual dimensions of a child’s being are valued at least as highly as the intellectual and the academic. As this film illustrates, a full and well-rounded education truly “cannot be counted.”

In June of 1970, to express our gratitude to David Carr, our class presented him with a bound book of letters that we’d written describing what his course had given us. On the title page of this book were some words we’d lifted from Mark Twain and tweaked for our purposes. “To David Carr,” it read, “who never let our schooling interfere with our education.” What we’ve been aiming for at Princeton Friends for nearly three decades, what is depicted in this film, and what we’re seeking here tonight, are more and more examples of learning communities that not only don’t interfere with the education of young people, but in fact promote it in the best ways imaginable. And we know from experience that with courage and wisdom and conviction, this really can be done.