Do Private Schools Widen the Gap . . .

I have heard the argument often that private schools widen the gap between
the rich and the poor. It may apply to some of the private schools such as
Choate or Grotton (do I have the spelling right here ?), but it doesn't
apply to Exeter. Back when I attended Exeter, something like 60% of the
students received at least some financial aid. And I graduated in 1956.
Many students worked at various jobs for the school to help pay their way,
too.

Since then the situation has done nothing but improve. I can say right now
that if a student has the smarts, character and intellectual curiosity, he
can be admitted to and attend Exeter even if he and his family live in a
Safeway shopping cart.

Back then, one of my closest friends came from a farm in an area of northern
Vermont where the winters were bitterly cold. They had just about no money,
so little that he always had to stay in Exeter during everything but summer
vacation because he didn't have the cash to get back to his family and then
return to Exeter for the beginning of the Fall semester. To save fireplace
wood, they used to sleep sometimes in the barn, where the warmth of the cows
made the temperature more comfortable than that of their very small house.

And bow I will tell you some stories that seem to contradict what I have
just written. Please excuse whatever misspellings of names occur here.

In my math class, which had 12 students, there was one Rockefeller (Michael,
who later died off or in New Guinea), a kid with the last name of Tillich,
whose father was on the cover of Time Magazine that same year, and a kid
with the last name of Reisman, whose father was also on the cover of Time
Magazine that same year. One Monday when I arrived in physics class I
found our usual instructor, Mr. Hogg, sitting in the back of the room as we
filed in. Up front was this quiet, soft-spoken man. Mr. Hogg introduced
him and told us the stranger would be teaching us physics all that week.
His name was J. Robert Oppenheimer.

Exeter's student body wasn't restricted to kids from wealthy families.
Oppenheimer had a number of duties he had been hired to perform during his
two-week stay. One was to give two public lectures. Another was to sit in
the music library when he wasn't teaching and to talk to any student who
wanted to talk to him. What I remember most about those library sessions
was a discussion I overheard between the principal and Oppenheimer. The
biggest problem they had there, the principal explained, was to inculcate in
the students the idea that they were not some kind of special, elite group
better than anyone else, but to give them a sense of humility.

I had a little difficulty on this count for a while -- I look back and
realize that for a few years I really was a snob -- until I spent three
years in the U.S, Army as an enlisted man, and then spent many months
sitting in various traditional Samoan fale (houses) in villages, talking with wise
but uneducated old chiefs. As I look back over those years, I realize that
one of the wisest people I ever met was a Samoan man who could neither read
nor write, but who could read personalities with ease.

Anyway, these days there is little division at Exeter between students from
families with lots of money and students from families with almost none.
What counts is whether or not an applicant has the mental ability to survive
there. Exeter isn't deviating from the democratic ideal at all.

If there is a gap between rich and poor among Exonians, it comes years after
graduation, and is purely because a superb education helps many rise to the
top financially, no matter where they start. Maybe a really good education
is, in this sense, anti-democratic. But isn't a really good education what
teachers are trying to give their students ?