Community Letter: January 2018
Dear Gunston Community:
In late December, newly minted Gunston alumni begin making their way back to campus. Having completed their first semester of college, they reunite with old friends, see mentors and teachers, and tour the classrooms and hallways they once knew. The young men often sport scruffy beards and long hair, but now that they've graduated we don't mind.
I sometimes remark that every year in college is like an "emotional dog year", where the growth in maturity, independence, and outlook is accelerated. Our alums, having typically enjoyed success during their first semester, return with a visible and refreshing degree of insight, self-possession, and confidence. This is great to see, but it is also rare, and the capacity for students to launch successfully into their first year of college is where the true value of a Gunston education pays off. Consider this: Only 55% of students who begin an undergraduate degree finish within SIX years, and 30% drop out after the first year! Only 42% finish their degree at the same school where they started, and only 36% finish their degree in four years (19% at public universities). Though we do not have detailed survey data, evidence suggests that nearly all Gunston students finish their degree, and a handful graduate early!
These dropout statistics are eye-opening, and as a college preparatory school we take them seriously. Therefore, my standard question to returning alumni (after asking them about their roommates) is this: "Did you feel prepared?" Although the answer is almost always a definitive YES, this year during our December alumni panel, an impassioned alum articulated an important area where Gunston fundamentally failed him: "At Gunston," he said, "we only learned to use the MLA style of research formatting, and I had a professor that expected us to know Chicago style. I'd never seen Chicago before, and when I did my research paper for the class, I was initially lost." After spending a few moments considering his feedback, and several more minutes strategizing how we might integrate Chicago into our curriculum, I came to the conclusion that as long as students learn how to master one form of research footnoting—in our case MLA, which they learn in depth through our 10th Grade Poetry Project and Junior Symposium—we have given them the tools to master other relevant formats, like APA and Chicago. This "unprepared" Gunston alum, incidentally, finished his first semester with a superb GPA.
The simple reason Gunston students are prepared to excel in college reveals itself in a single phrase. Like the First Amendment in the Bill of Rights that protects Freedom of Speech, the first clause in the first sentence of Gunston's mission proclaims the central value of "intellectual rigor." More than offering an academic program that is "difficult" or "laborious" or "painful" or "arduous" (though these are sometimes features of the pursuit of intellectual rigor), Gunston aims to equip students with the skills and attitudes to use their mind well. Using one's mind well means reading deeply, writing with clarity, fluency, and sophistication, learning to deduce and infer, developing theories and conducting research, and finally, to quote a line from our school's educational philosophy: "acknowledging the wisdom that the beginning of learning is knowing that there is always more to learn."
As students and families review the first semester report cards, let me ask everyone to take a few minutes to celebrate and reflect upon this value of "intellectual rigor." Only by working together can we sustain it.
Here's to a successful and peaceful 2018!
Warm Regards,
John Lewis