Education & Religious Education

Quaker College Fair

Photos & Address from the Quaker College Fair Saturday, October 22nd, 2005 Arch Street Meeting House, Philadelphia, PA

Photos from the Quaker College Fair

by Melinda Wenner Bradley                                                                                 

Good afternoon.  My thanks to Philadelphia Yearly Meeting and the Friends Association for Higher Education for bringing us together and inviting me to speak today. 

As I look out among you, I see individuals who are surely scholars, perhaps athletes, too, friends to many, undoubtedly contributors to many communities, and, we hope, future alumni of Friends colleges.  Welcome. 

I.

      I would like to begin by taking you to a place far from here.  A place Friends education took me, and that influenced all the places I’ve gone as a student and teacher since . . . .  

      Imagine a verdant hillside in northern England overlooking fields and vales, and far off, the Irish Sea.  It is a summer evening at sunset, and several high-school age people break over the crest of the hill to find before them the view of the sunset and the sea.  We left a long meeting of our Quaker Youth Pilgrimage group and half-wandered, half-run to release our energy, until we came to this place.  If you read the Narnia books as a child you will understand what I mean when I say that when we walked through the useless gate that hung in the stone fence atop the hill, I felt like I was stepping through the wardrobe.  What lay before us was beautiful in the rosy, dimming light, but it was the openness of the landscape that made an impression on me.  Without speaking, we sat to watch the sun set and settled into a second, more still, and deeper period of silence together.  In that silence, a profound sense of possibility came over me, and I knew that my work in the world would be about communities and cultures.  My view of the world one summer night marked my first experience with the unique intersection of spiritual growth and a desire to mend the world that is often part of a Friends education, particularly Friends higher education.  I returned home for my senior year of high school, and not surprisingly half the colleges I applied to were Friends schools.

       I’ve kept a photograph of the view from that English hillside on my desk in every classroom where I’ve taught.  And when I think of other defining moments in my work as a student and teacher of cultures – sledding down the Great Wall of China during a snow squall, being interviewed by Japanese television about my Quaker perspective on the 1991 Gulf War, listening to far-off drumming during a meeting for worship in Ghana, West Africa – I am certain that my preparation for all these adventures began in the classrooms of the Friends schools and college I attended.    

II.

      In 1652, an Englishman named George Fox had a vision of a people to be gathered.  He stood on an English hillside and looked out over the sheep-dotted fells below and came to know that he was in the presence of God when he prayed, that the ministry of truth is limited to no social class and to no gender, and “as far as any man discovers God it becomes his business to make Him known to others.” [1]   Fox called to his followers: “Walk cheerfully over the world, answering that of God in everyone.”  His principles with regard to that of God, or the Inner Light, in each person compelled him to value education; very early in the Society of Friends’ history he urged for the creation of schools for both boys and girls.  Rufus Jones wrote that it was clear to Fox that in the same way Oxford and Cambridge could not make men ministers, it was not safe to call all [persons] to follow the Light without educating them at the same time in the established facts of history and nature. [2]   In 1667, during a period of travel throughout England, Fox advised for a woman’s school to be opened, “for instructing girls and young maidens in whatsoever things were civil and useful in the creation.”  Jones suggests that on this broad principle, of teaching everything useful and civil in creation, the considerable history of Friends’ work in the cause of education began. [3]   At the end of the 17^th century, there were three coeducational Quaker schools in the colonies, all of which continue to thrive today.  Friends opened schools for those who had none in early America: free Blacks, emancipated slaves, and Native Americans.  In the 19^th century, Bryn Mawr, Earlham, Friends University, George Fox University, Guilford, Haverford, Swarthmore, Whittier, William Penn and Wilmington colleges were founded, followed by Barcley, Malone, Friends World Program, and Pendle Hill in the last hundred years.  (Two other distinguished American institutions of higher education, Cornell and Johns Hopkins, were started by individual Quakers. [4] )  At the root of Quaker education were the same principles which Friends schools hold true today: commitment to cultural, ethnic and religious tolerance and diversity, respect for individual differences, and opportunities to learn first-hand about the problems and possibilities of humanity.

III.

            My family’s journey in the world of Friends higher education began with a 17 year-old farm boy.  My father attended a rural, one-room schoolhouse, and as a lark he took the exam for a Navy scholarship to college.  In the fall of 1944 he was on his way to Swarthmore College, which had on campus at that time the V-12 Naval officers training program.  No one in Fishingcreek Township had ever heard of Swarthmore, save a neighbor whose great-niece who had gone there, and he described Swarthmore to my father as a girls' college where they taught them to ride horses.  Dad literally entered Swarthmore in overalls, but he left, in his words, “enlightened in the truest sense: with an education that was for the mind.”  Swarthmore introduced him to professors like Philip Marshall Hicks, who invited students to his home for afternoon tea and put The New Yorker magazine on his contemporary literature course reading list.  My father thought he would become a chemical engineer, but after a lousy first term and Cs in his science courses, Swarthmore sent him to take an aptitude test that determined his true strengths, which led to half a century of work in government and public service.  He credits Swarthmore with changing the course of his life and truly educating him as a citizen.  The schools represented here today are still making these experiences part of their cultures: they are places where you have the chance to really get to know fellow students, faculty, staff, and administrators, where you are valued and cared for, and where classes (be it in the arts, humanities or sciences) teach skills to be effective local and global citizens.

            The experience my sister had at Guilford College resonates with some of the same themes.  She hearkens to strong, working relationship with professors and activism on campus as two benchmarks of her time there.  Indeed, Guilford was recently named in a national college guide, “hottest for social conscience” referring to students’ passion for service, activism and social justice.  It’s important to note that these qualities, along with commitment to diversity, leadership, lifelong learning, and freedom of conscious are shared by many institutions of higher education in this country, but perhaps most fervently and historically by Friends colleges and universities. 

IV.

      My own Friends education took me from Westtown School to Bryn Mawr College.  Bryn Mawr was founded in 1885 for the education of young Quaker women, and remains the only women’s college founded by Quakers, although the school is now non-denominational.  From its beginning, Bryn Mawr was committed to providing exceptional programs for women at all levels of higher education; the college has always offered bachelors, masters, and doctoral degrees.  Thinking back to George Fox’s advice for the education of women – that it be “civil and useful” –  I perused the current course offerings and was not surprised to find titles like: “Enlightenment and Decadence in Modern Chinese Literature and Film,” “Crystallography and Optical Minerology,” and “Anthropology of Dance.”  Bryn Mawr has a special relationship with Haverford College, which is about a mile down the road; while maintaining their separate identities, the two colleges form a cooperative academic and social community which extends to nearby Swarthmore and the University of Pennsylvania as well.  Bryn Mawr defines the liberal in “liberal arts” in the traditional sense of the word: free.  Students have the freedom to explore ideas and expand their thinking.  The paths which lie before them are rich and varied.  My path was marked by new (and lifelong) friends from around the world, professors whose creativity and high expectations inspired me to take risks, the choice to take classes and even major at Haverford, and the realization that I wanted to be a teacher.  Similar to my father’s experience, I entered Bryn Mawr certain of one career path, and given the opportunity to explore, another was illuminated for me. 

      The freedom inherent in a liberal arts education – and the trusting relationships between students and faculty which balance it in the life of the college – is also illustrated by Bryn Mawr’s Honor Code, which allows for responsibilities such as self-scheduled, take-home and unproctored exams.  Long before those exams, in the fall when the nights have turned just a bit crisp, Lantern Night is held in the Cloisters of Bryn Mawr’s old library.  Each first-year student is given a lantern, which they raise in unison.  This rite of passage into the college community illustrates a number of things important to the college’s culture: tradition, community, and illumination.  Toward the end of the 19^th century, M. Carey Thomas, the college’s second president, wrote about the lanterns: “[…] their soft glow is a symbol indicative of the college woman’s responsibility to other women.  We are the lantern bearers, the leaders.”  The colleges, universities and study centers represented here today are diverse in geographic location, and course offerings, and connection to the Religious Society of Friends.  At each, you will find a unique combination of students, faculty and institutional culture.  But M. Carey Thomas’ words ring true for all of them.  One of the purposes of Friends higher education is to academically and spiritually prepare the bearers of the Light, future leaders in many fields.   

V.

      William Penn said: “True godliness doesn’t turn men out of their world, but enables them to live better in it, and excites their endeavors to mend it […].”

The women and men I knew at Bryn Mawr and Haverford are:

Physicians, physicists, and psychologists;

professors, high school English teachers, a founding Head of a Friends school,

and, as parents, their children’s first and best teachers.

They work in theater; they are artists, and event planners.

They have founded internet companies; they are bankers, lawyers, executives.

One even works for Fox News.

            What they have in common, and we can add graduates of the other Friends institutions here to this group, is a belief in the importance of community, a curiosity and a concern for others, and a sense of responsibility to “mend” their worlds.  Friend’s colleges and universities are communities based on the Quaker testimonies of integrity and equality.  They are places where honor codes exist and students develop connections with professors that transcend a traditional pupil-teacher relationship.  These schools are in a unique position to integrate peace studies in their curriculum, supported by the 350 year old Peace Testimony of Friends.  If there is one thing we can hope for – even assume of - the graduates of Friends institutions in our century, it is that they will propagate an interest in making this country and our world more peaceful places for future generations.

      Most of you will have heard of the author E. B. White, who wrote books you may have read – or had read to you – as a child like Charlotte’s Web and The Trumpet of the Swan.  White’s wife, Katharine Sergeant White, was a respected editor and Bryn Mawr graduate, class of 1914.  In 1956, E.B. White wrote an essay entitled Call Me Ishmael, Or How I Feel About Being Married to a Bryn Mawr Graduate.  (If you’ve read Moby Dick you’ll recognize the echo of that novel’s opening line; apparently marriage to a Bryn Mawrter is an epic adventure of its own.)  I am going to take the liberty of extending his vision to the panoply of Friends schools here today. He wrote:

“I have known many graduates of Bryn Mawr (Earlham,Whittier, Barclay, George Fox University…).

They are all of the same mold.  They have all accepted the same bright challenge: something has been lost that has not been found, something’s at stake that has not been won, something is started that has not been finished, something is dimly felt that has not been fully realized. […]

As they grow in years, they grow in light.”

There’s much work to be done, and graduates of Friends colleges and universities welcome you to join us in these endeavors.  May The Light illuminate the exciting process and decisions before you. 

Thank you.