The purpose of life is not to be happy.
It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate,
to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Dear FA Families
As I mentioned in an earlier correspondence, each month I am going to highlight an attribute or two from the composite manufactured by the faculty and staff in their pre-planning exercise to create a Portrait of an FA Graduate.
This month I am writing about honor and honorable behavior, which received more than twice the number of nominations as any other trait during our exercise, and to our way of thinking is the foundation on which all personal development is constructed. Possessing high character does not necessarily excuse all other faults; and having less than stellar character does not completely negate other important qualities, but being honorable in word and deed serves as a solid base on which to build a life.
Honor is both a powerful word and a powerful concept that is used in a wide variety of situations and can mean lots of different things to lots of different people. The truth is that what honor means to a second grader might be entirely different than what honor means to a faculty member or a parent… or, in fact, it may not. At any grade level or any age, in its purest and simplest form, honor is simply adhering to what is right.
Everyday life can both test and forge honor within a person, and there are doubtless opportunities for both in our children’s lives here at Frederica. But it is often a crisis or even a great crisis that reveals honor in its highest form, and learning from other’s stories is crucial part of our own development.
Two simple anecdotes involving the now infamous crisis of the Titanic will be instructive for our students and your children as they think about and continue to define the role of honor in their young lives. The Titanic disaster provided many examples of both craven behavior (as with a man dressing in women’s clothing to enter a lifeboat prioritized for women and children), and great dignity in the face of disaster. A pair of the anecdotes illustrating dignity and high character involved two families, the Astors and the Strauses.
John Jacob Astor was one of the richest men in America. When it came time to abandon ship, he and a steward lifted his pregnant wife into a lifeboat, and Mr. Astor insisted that she go. Then he asked if he could join his wife in the lifeboat, but a ship’s officer said no. Mr. Astor walked politely away without arguing that a man of his station deserved special treatment, or bribing the officer, or otherwise behaving in any unseemly manner.
Mrs. Straus, who was on a retirement trip with her husband, climbed into a lifeboat but then climbed back out. She went to her husband and told him, “We have been living together for many years; where you go, I go.”
One can assume that the strength of character shown in these two different circumstances was not built by a lifetime spent cutting in line or otherwise wallowing in self-absorption. Building a core of integrity and strong character begins when one is young, and a primary goal of an FA education is to provide positive role models, curricular and extracurricular support, and unfailing reinforcement for the development of strong character and honorable behavior in our students during their formative school-age years.
Respectfully,
Scott L. Hutchinson
Head of School