For over 200 years, the motto of this institution has been a clarion call for selfless dedication to service for others. In the last 40 years, however, that motto has been modified by deleting service to one’s country in her Armed Forces. This is not, of course, a development unique to Andover, but rather it is a malaise infecting the so-called “elites” of American society. As two young Andover alumni put it at a reception I attended not too long ago, “It’s just not what we are all about.” My guess would be that what “we are all about” is the pursuit of wealth, material possessions and status to the exclusion of more altruistic motivations. In my student days in the late 1950’s, we used to call this “the real end and business of living,” but it almost always left plenty of room for what we felt strongly then and probably even more strongly now was our duty to the great democracy we all felt so privileged to be citizens of. Past Andover alumni, students and, yes, even faculty, much preferred to focus on duties and obligations of citizenship rather than rights and privileges. Even as callow youth, we still were raised to think this way and most of us came to embrace the concept readily. Starting in the late 1960’s, however, this country and particularly this school have grown self-absorbed, selfish and surpassingly materialistic. Our students are constantly told that they are the greatest, the highest achievers, and name your superlative. Based upon what? This encomium comes from teachers who are well-meaning and no doubt talented, but many of whom have little or no experience in the world – you know, that place where you will spend the rest of your lives. I fear that George Bernard Shaw was not entirely wrong when he claimed “Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach.” The vast majority of current American teachers have no military background and not much more business experience. If the American standard for teaching excellence is strictly college degrees from prestigious schools, together with high academic achievement, then we might as well turn the country over to the Harvard faculty and watch the United States implode. Granted, neither military nor business service guarantees a better teacher, student or citizen, but I’ll bet that it produces someone who has a more balanced and pragmatic view of the world. I would like to suggest that we need to remedy this disconnect between actual participation in all facets of American citizenship and the current subsumption of 8-12 years of higher academia, by instituting non sibi: the 6.0 version. Let’s call it universal service to America. How about every person in America does some sort of civic service for one or perhaps two years, starting immediately upon graduation from high school. Look, it won’t stunt your intellectual growth if you don’t get to go directly from Andover to Stanford. They’ll still hold your place and your National Merit Scholarship for you. And you get to pick what you do: Peace Corps, AmeriCorps, Habitat for Humanity, Push, City Year, Rainbow Coalition, you name it, even the horrible dictum: the military or the government. You owe this country big time for what you have and you have not yet earned all the rights and privileges you take for granted. Being born here is a happenstance which befell you. Becoming a fully contributing citizen is what you need to do to build on that marvelous accident of birth. Non sibi has worked for over 200 years now; let’s just tweak it a little and put it back on track.
