I would like to spend a few moments explaining why the faculty and staff of Harbor Day are here. On the surface such an explanation seems simple, but I will ask for your patience while I address a few easy questions and provide their more complex answers.

The quick and easy answer is to say that we are here to teach. Of course, the quick and easy answers are usually wrong, or at least incomplete, and this is no different. How about to say that we teach for citizenship? Still incomplete. How about to create a well-informed citizenry? We’re not done. In fact, the faculty, staff, and parents are not done until we have molded a well-informed and actively-involved citizenry. I agree that it is a mouthful, but I believe this captures it.

Every culture has its citizens. Well-informed citizens have always been around. Nazi Germany was created from a country that had arguably the best centuries-old universities, a citizenship well versed in democratic government, and a seemingly strong judicial system. Now many secondary schools offer curriculums to explain what and why this country changed. The common answer in these curricula is that too many “educated” citizens stood back and watched events unfold before them, hoping that eventually things would improve. These citizens saw injustice happening to others and were just glad that it wasn’t they.

Our job then is to collectively build habits in our students, so that when our generation hands off to the next, we can feel secure about the future. This means that we have students who can think critically and stand up before their peers and discuss the world around them. As with the Classical Greeks, we expect our students to write clearly, understand poetry and plays, be involved in sports, appreciate music, believe in their country, and be an active participant in its welfare and thus the welfare of everyone. At Harbor Day it begins on a student’s first day of school.

Yes, this is a mouthful for a school that is primarily elementary and has students as young as five years old. I’m sure it sounds pompous to some and presumptuous to others. You might say that some of the thoughts expressed here would be better posed to a group of older students in, say, high school or college. To those doubters I would ask another question, “Have you every tried to turn around a high school student who is going in the wrong direction?” The heavy lifting of building strong citizens starts early and goes on for many years. Of course, we’re all in it together, moms, dads, teachers, administrators, grandparents, aunts, uncles, everyone.

All this is pretty heavy, but I can tell you that from my vantage point at Harbor Day, the world looks very bright. The 400+ students here are wonderful. They sing and dance, fall down, skin their knees, and pick themselves up, say ”Please” and “Thank you,” ask good questions, play hard and fairly, laugh loudly, read well, compute with enthusiasm, and, most of the time, tie their shoes.

The future is bright.

Douglas E. Phelps
Head of School