In response to last week’s editorial around the horrific events unfolding in Israel and Gaza, I believe it is important to articulate Andover’s commitment to education around global events. As we prepare students to lead and serve in a complicated world, I agree that we can and should do more to educate and engage our community.
First, I will articulate our policy on institutional statements, which is an important part of understanding how we think about our education mission and values. Perhaps more importantly, I will also highlight All-School Meeting as an educational forum to engage with global events.
Our mission prioritizes the education and wellbeing of our campus community. And in times of important global, national or local events, we look to our mission and values to guide us. Sometimes our response includes issuing a statement that speaks to our values and communicates the action we are taking as a community. In the case of this ongoing tragedy in the Middle East, some have asked why Andover has not issued a “statement”.
Given the increased regularity with which schools find themselves pressed to publicly address many societal events, last spring I and the senior staff developed a policy to guide us through these challenging decisions. Knowing that many schools faced the same challenge, our Chief Communications Officer published an article about our work. https://www.nais.org/magazine/independent-school/spring-2023/in-practice-when-should-a-school-issue-an-official-statement/
We regret that we did not communicate our policy to the entire Andover community.
Our basic premise:
In order for Andover to issue a public statement, either we must have meaningful action to share or the issue must directly impact our educational mission. We do not believe Andover should use a public platform to pronounce outrage or condolences without taking meaningful action or adding depth to the conversation. We teach our students to back up their arguments, to add detailed analysis to their stated positions. When a school issues a proclamation that lacks many of these basic principles (for example, by simply offering thoughts and prayers, outrage, or rote denouncement of a tragedy), it does nothing to further educate students.
Regardless of whether we choose to issue a public statement from Andover, our policy prioritizes taking care of the campus community. I remain grateful to the chaplains for their outreach in the early hours of the terrorist attack by Hamas on Israel, and I know that those students who are struggling remain in the good care of trusted adults.
As educational programming was taking shape but not yet fully conceived, we decided that All-School Meeting, our community classroom, was the right place to initiate education on this crisis. I took this opportunity to address students, as my predecessors have done in this same venue for decades. This approach remains consistent with Andover’s history of using ASM to bring the community together to discuss and debate global events. As we continue to strengthen our response to societal crises, I believe ASM should play a more prominent role in how we educate and engage students.
This will certainly not be the last time that the question of when and how the school speaks in an institutional voice about important events—in our community, in our country, and in the world—will be asked. I commit to doing a better job articulating our policy on when we issue institutional statements. Furthermore, at a time in which we are all overwhelmed with often superficial and simplistic messages on our screens, I aim to continue the tradition of speaking to our community about important issues in person at our weekly All-School Meetings.
Dr. Raynard Kington, Head of School
