"We Have Created Something Unique"

"Not only am I a child genius, but I can blow a four-cuspid hypo-cycloid smoke ring."

A young man with motley Kentucky side-burns is talking to a pale blonde boy. The side-burns belong to Dan Gordon, a 16-year-old Exeter graduate who teaches phys-ed and math at the Palfry Street School in Watertown; the blonde hair belongs to his student, one year his junior, who despised the Cambridge public schools and so came to Palfrey.

At Palfry the Director plays recorder duets with his pupils; the math teacher is younger than his students; the dog under the classroom table is named Leo. The kids who hated school before are still hanging around after 6 p.m.

And nobody tries to shoo them out, since the rationale for this new school, according to Director Edward Ryerson, is to provide an exciting place for kids who have not achieved or enjoyed themselves in either private or public schools.

It is not rare for students to come to Palfrey with D and E averages which might disqualify them from admission to other private schools. In most cases faculty members claim that the small classes, the lack of competition for grades, and the easy communication with teachers has transformed their school careers.

No test scores are used to select candidates for admission and IQ scores are also disregarded. Reading and writing samples, school records and personal recommendations, "and a lot of intuiton" are taken into consideration, Ryerson explains. "We have kids who dropped out of high school. We have kids who, when they came, never thought they could go to college," he adds.

In a Foolish White House

The school is situated near Watertown Square in a foolish old white house with a large squat steeple and a barn behind. Its 18 rooms held 20 students last year, the school's first year, when the school had only grades nine and ten. By adding an eleventh grade this year the school has doubled its enrollment to 41.

The students are carefully chosen to represent a cross-section of metropolitan high schools, drawing almost half from public schools despite the high tuition rate of $1450. Twenty per cent of the students are on full scholarship and more are on partial scholarships.

Though the scholarships mean a drain on the small income of the school, Ryerson insists that the presence of the students holding scholarships is so essential that they would never be sacrificed. Private donations, added to the school's tuition, have thus far covered expenses.

Ryerson began to think about starting his own experimental school while teaching at Shady Hill, Brattle Street's private elementary school. Teaching English to the ninth grade there, one of his concerns was with placing students in secondary schools. "I was very dissatisfied," he said. "Private schools were taking only sure fire bets and public schools were effectively doing the same by putting such students in top sections."

An immensely popular teacher at Shady Hill, Ryerson is now the major force behind the Palfrey Street School. Working with his wife, Alice, the school psychologist, he is putting into practice his own theory of liberal education, teaches daily English classes, maintains a constant personal involvement in every detail of the problems of individual students and faculty members, as well as fulfilling his administrative duties.

How does he deal with the students who have not succeeded elsewhere? First, he discourages pressure and competition as motivation for work. "All they wanted before was intellectual excellence and quick answers," said one boy, referring to his former school. "A school like this inspires you, it doesn't force you."

But it is not only the classroom which has created the students' enthusiasm for their new school. "It's not all academics. Other things are stressed here," the boy added.

"Other things" include informal seminars on "race relations," "adolescence," and "child psychology," school clean-ups, Community Activities, and many, many meetings and discussions.

Every student spends one afternoon a week on Community Activities, doing volunteer service in Watertown or Cambridge. Tutoring, teaching modern dance, and special work projects on the school grounds show a desire to "be careful not to isolate a person from the vaster community outside of the school," as one student wrote in the yearbook, explaining this facet of school work.

Ryerson is very wary of what he calls the "preciousness and snobbishness" of private school education. He seems to see such volunteer projects as a partial antidote to the inbred community characteristic of experimental private schools.

There are many different kinds of discussion groups. All of Palfry school seems to be a spontaneous discussion group, slightly self-conscious, always taking itself very seriously.

Whatever the method, "communication" has become the password at Palfrey. To this end the whole school, all 55 members, meets together several times a week for special community discussions and assemlbies.

Smoke in a Pure Community

Last week the discussions centered around the question of smoking. The question, which seemed to intrude rather rudely on this pure little community, reared its head because faculty members could smoke on the school grounds while students were not allowed to.

True to the Palfry style, the school divided up into small groups to discuss smoking and the question of "maturity and immaturity" among the students as a correlative. Also true to Palfry style was the faculty's concern over the students' decision to meet separately from the faculty. The faculty feared that the rapport between students and faculty might be breaking down.

But the students were perfectly frank as they reported on their discussions. The two points they brought up in connection with the debate on smoking underlined the main concerns with the school of both students and faculty. The first is a concern over the relative quality of students and faculty. The second is a desire to keep the school united, in this case by not separating the smokers from the non-smokers.

The questions over this issue pinpointed very clearly though unintentionally the important problems of the school and of its liberal philosophy.

"If this is a moral question, then there should be no difference in smoking rules between us and the faculty," said one student. "Whatever problems the faculty had when they made their decision must be the same ones we are having now."

"But the faculty are adults," Mr. Ryerson injected.

"Aha," was the lone response.

The Obvious is a Matter of Controversy

Anywhere else an obvious statement of this kind would arouse no controversy. Yet at Palfry the division between students and faculty is intentionally de-polarized and sometimes risks being obscured.

"You are not ready to be teachers yet," the political history teacher, Richard Mandel, commented tersely. Yet this too is not as obvious a statement as it would seem. For in many senses the students are teachers and they are conscious of this.

"I don't think the whole responsibility of teaching is on the teacher," Ryerson explained. Courses are arranged without regard to grade levels, he explained, in order to have students teach one another in class. "They wouldn't have to participate in as many ways in a more homogeneous group," he said.

Participation is made easier by the small size of the classes, partially determined by Ryerson's "Palfry's Law." "As the size of the class decreases," says the law, "the need to decrease it is further increased." The closer each teacher gets to his students, the more he realizes how much more attention and time they need. In recognition of this principle the Palfry school will never have more than 60 students and the largest classes will remain under fifteen.

The students not only feel free to speak out in class but are very indignant when not given a chance to do so. In Mandel's political science course one boy burst into the teacher's long-winded interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine with: "It's not fair. You've been talking for fifteen minutes along this line. You've got to let someone go against you."

The teachers share the concern and commitment felt by their students. The school draws them in, engaging them beyond a normal teaching job. "I feel personally involved and committed to this place," said Ross Harris, teacher of photography. "It's not just like another job. We've created something here. But it takes a lot out of you."

Every member of the Palfry Street Community carries a careful protective air about with him. There is something unique in the light corridors and among the open doors. And the fear of losing that something is very evident. And division among its members, be it between student and faculty, smoker and non-smoker, tenth and eleventh grade, poses a threat to the atmosphere that pervades the school.

Yet, from the outside, Palfry does not seem threatened at all. The students it transforms, the teachers it liberates and the long unanswered educational need it touches aren't going to allow it to dissolve, unless it analyzes itself into non-existence.Director EDWARD RYERSON "Palfry's Law"