Dialogue, Not Curriculum

By Elizabeth Oppong

When I fill out an application or a questionnaire, I am always infuriated. Between the dark black lines, I scribble, “Elizabeth A. Oppong”, “female”, African American, 16 and so on. Easy. But what angers me is when I get to the question on religious affiliation, and I am expected to pick one or check the “other” box. What is an affiliation anyway? The dictionary lists it as membership, connection, or link. I am indeed Catholic because of my baptism and confirmation into the Church, so that is a membership. But what gets tricky is “connection” and “link”. My mother was a Methodist before she married my father and got confirmed as Catholic, but the rest of my maternal extended family is still mostly Methodist. Isn’t that a “connection?” And I should also mention that before colonization in Ghana, many of my ancestors practiced local ancestral worship. What...

Culture in Religion

By Derek Farquhar

In Scotty Fleming’s May 14th article, he proposes that the Bible become required reading for all students. He argued that reading the Bible would further our understanding of Western literature and promote religious conversation on campus. Although the Bible may do both those things, simply requiring students to read the Bible is not a feasible option for enhancing religious dialogue.

The Bible is a very large collection of writings, and much of it has little relevance to modern religious conversations. Long genealogical pedigrees, ancient customs and ideas make the Bible both tedious and difficult to read even with annotations. If the Bible were required reading, it is likely that most students would simply read it as they do any other book without considering the religious context. Considering that the reason the Bible is so ubiquitous is because of its religious affiliation, you simply cannot, and should not, try...

Preserve Our Differences

By Jack Sykes

Along with a dedication to the pursuit of knowledge, one of our community’s most heralded attributes is the diversity of its student body. The experiences of students from a wide range of economic, racial and national backgrounds combine to form a diversified cultural foundation that in turn supports a richer educational experience. Because of the heterogeneity of our community, many cultural issues are often brought to the forefront of student discussion by means of various clubs, All-School meeting speakers and CAMD forums. But despite all of this, religious matters seem to assume a somewhat secondary nature. In order to revitalize the role of religion on campus, Scotty Fleming ’10 suggested in a Commentary article two weeks ago that we “make the Bible a required text for all incoming students.” Though it may be theoretically justifiable, in practice, mandating the reading of the Bible would undermine the core...

A Letter to 2010

By Tia Baheri

Dear Class of 2010,

As the year comes to a close, I am overcome with a rush of feelings that I must share. I know that when we come back to to campus next fall, none of you will be here. You will be going to college, traveling the world or moving on to the next chapter of your life in some other way. Your high school days will become a fond memory. You might look back on a particularly hard day, thinking, “Huh, that History 310 paper wasn’t so bad after all,” and wishing for a moment that you hadn’t taken it all so seriously. Beyond that, you will be living in the real world. Not everyone you talk to will be the same age as you and hardly any of them will know what Head of School Day is. I am incredibly excited for all the...

Letter to the Editor

By Abbot Academy Association Representatives

To the Editor:

Thank you very much for Dennis Zhou’s excellent May 21, 2010 article (page 7) about the Abbot Academy Association’s “focus group” in Paresky Commons on April 29th. That meeting was wonderful for us, and was the first of many. We will do it again in the fall of the 2010-2011 school year. Meanwhile, the AAA met last week, listened to you all present your proposals and awarded over two dozen grants to students, faculty and staff. Details will be forthcoming soon.

In your daydreaming moments this summer, please think of the AAA. Our next round of proposals will be due in late October. We are open to all kinds of ideas. They can be large, world changing or small day-to-day routine ideas. They can come from students, faculty and staff. We particularly encourage joint proposals, a faculty-student, faculty-staff or student-staff proposal would be welcomed. Proposals can...

The “Forbes” Approach

By Derek Farquhar

Recently, the Admissions Office announced this year’s admissions statistics. Only a record low 14 percent of all applicants were accepted. Out of those accepted, 78% of them have decided to attend Andover this fall, a yield tied with last year’s as the highest ever. They come from 33 states and 25 countries, with a median SSAT score of 94%. These statistics portray the incoming class as the some of the most academically elite youth in the world, and they most likely are. However, highlighting the academic abilities of new Andover students is ignoring one of Andover’s greatest attributes. It disregards the fact that academic excellence is not the only way one can contribute to Andover and its image. Considering that Andover is home to hundreds of students and faculty, academia is just one small part of a community that encompasses nearly all aspects of life. When a...

An Isolated Environment

By Kian Ivey

Although Andover promotes “a deeper awareness of the global community,” we, as PA students, are often content with only thinking about our own community. This relative isolation can be seen as both positive and negative. We are protected from the horrors that we so often hear discussed, but we are neither aware of nor are we involved in these events to a further extent than raising money for a Haitian earthquake or some such charitable action. Taking such actions can only be beneficial, but wouldn’t be even better for us to be educated on global events than to simply toss a few coins into a can for charity? There is no doubt that PA students feel sympathy for the Haitian earthquake victims, but how many of us actually know what the ramifications of such a catastrophic event are? Many Andover students travel, both abroad and within the...

Blast from the Past

By From The Phillipian Vol. Cxvi, No. 9, May 28, 1993

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Just Numbers

By Marilyn Harris

Finis origine pendent. The end depends upon the beginning. One of the cornerstones of an Andover education, this motto was not what ran through my head as I sat in Davis Hall for the AP Physics Exam. I think my internal conversation went more like this: It’s 2:45 and we haven’t started the second part of the exam. We’ve been here since noon. At this rate, we won’t get out until five. I’m starving, and I have a headache. Why am I even here? Seriously, I’m not going to major in physics in college. I’m probably not even going to do very well on this exam. Did I just waste $172 of my parents’ money? I have other homework. Get me out of here!

AP exams are just one part of the lucrative standardized testing culture into which we come of age. If you are a typical Andover...

Be Social, Don’t Network

By Tia Baheri

Although they come with many names, social networking sites or “keep-in-touch” tools have a common effect on our privacy. I’m not the first to criticize social networking sites such as Facebook, nor will I be the last, but I think many of us have forgotten what life used to look like before Facebook. While websites such as Facebook and MySpace were questioned and criticized upon their conception, that air of skepticism soon flew out of the window. Eventually, even corporations and politicians started using these forums to attract more followers, like President Obama, whose Twitter page updates us on his daily comings and goings. We make private information extremely accessible by putting it on websites and communicate important facts to our friends by writing on their walls. While we are somewhat aware of this almost willful disregard for the sanctity of personal information, it is as if...