As we begin this New Year in Blairstown – a very cold start to our “spring semester” – I look forward to reminding our students about the “selves” I hope they are working on. At my first Chapel talk in September, I presented some general goals for each class to consider, goals which are individual in nature but can be focused on one of the four classes that make up the student community – freshmen, sophomores, juniors and seniors. (Blair as a modest school with humble mid-19th century beginnings does not use the English nomenclature – “forms” and so forth – to designate our grade levels.) These “selves” reflect the various stages of personal development to which a student should aspire, gaining and adding to one’s qualities and abilities as each student progresses through the School.

For freshmen, the goal of gaining self-control during their first year is critical, as they are required to be prepared for class, organize their academic planners, get to places on time, and do all this with a variety of extracurricular and social distractions that come with residential life – and this is true even for our day students. But mostly self-control means keeping a good grip on their emotions and feelings and managing the high and lows that are inevitably part of early adolescent life – and to do that working with their faculty advisor and other teachers is critical. Having developed self-control to a greater or lesser degree, sophomores must next work on establishing a clear sense of self-discipline and persistence necessary to achieve their goals and our expectations of them. Blair offers a structured environment that allows students to develop parameters and borderlines as they move through adolescence. The goal for our younger students is to develop self-control and self-discipline during their younger years, internalizing a healthy structure that will guide them through the complexities of the upper school and life generally.

In the upper school – junior and senior year – I remind our students that we offer more flexibility, more autonomy and also more challenge – and for seniors particularly important leadership opportunities. Keeping in mind that we are defined by what we do, not by what we say about ourselves, we encourage juniors to become increasingly self-reliant, using the internal structure they have developed to sort through the options and choices each day offers, knowing that the faculty are always there to serve as guides, advisors and sounding boards for their various issues. The senior year is the ultimate step in the Blair experience, offering significant rewards for the success a Blair senior has had while asking of him or her significant responsibility toward the goal of a high functioning Blair community during that class’ senior year. Thus, we focus on a senior boy’s or girl’s progress toward being self-aware, gaining the objectivity and maturity to see oneself more as the world does and moving away from the self-centeredness that is an adolescent norm. At Blair, we feel that a senior’s growing self-awareness is critical to good leadership since such awareness carries with it a sense of understanding, empathy for other views and feelings, and a better sense of one’s own personal abilities that are more or less strong. Self-control leading to a greater self-discipline in the lower school boy and girl should lead to more self-reliance and ultimately self-awareness in our upper-schoolers. This individual progress is not an abstract ideal but a viable goal, and as such, is part of the nomenclature and indeed life of the community.

Of course, I emphasize, too, that a Blair education, the Blair experience, is not an end in itself but a bridge from childhood to a successful adulthood. We are aware of the research that tells us people are motivated in life less by money, status and material possessions and more by autonomy, mastery (in an area of expertise) and purpose in their daily lives – to that end does the Blair education lead.

T. Chandler Hardwick
Headmaster

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