The Manhattan Private School That Tore Itself Apart

Fascinating. I’ve lived in NYC for 20 plus years and have 2 children in school here (public). I have some friends that send their kids to St Bernard’s but I have never really asked them what it is like because - well, I just assumed it was uninteresting. Thanks for a window into a different, old school $$ part of NYC. For the record, learning Latin sounds terrific. Penmanship and calligraphy? I don’t get it. Beyond learning to write legibly, making children spend hours on this seems pointless unless they are interested, and a recipe for frustration and hating school for many.

This disgusts me. Why should I care about the fate of a snooty snobby privileged population who have the money to send children to a school that costs 50k a year when our neighborhood schools can’t afford new books ?! Come on!

I've often wondered why children of wealthy parents succumb to the despair of drug abuse. I guess my thinking runs along the lines of why, with so much at their command, would they ever want to sink themselves into nihilism of addiction. I think this article has given me a glimpse of an answer. Could a child having been molded at a very young age be resentful of not being allowed to be himself rather than a mock-up of his parents? Just a possible factor. I know that many factors exist as a reason for dependence. And, how could a study be implemented? I guess I'm an end product of the modern thought that if a child learns that he is accepted for himself, this may strengthen his ties to leading a drug free and productive life. Maybe this is biased thinking? As for myself, I'm at one to one. One is a daughter who very much enjoys her busy and productive life. The other one is a son who has been an alcoholic for many, many years.

As an admittedly somewhat lapsed "Old Boy", I have to commend Ms Bellafante for such an insightful characterization of the St Bernard's culture, at least the culture that I recall from 1961 to 1969. We have recently been barraged by inscrutable e-mails from alumni with twisted knickers over this affair without any meaningful explanation of what the high crime actually was or its genesis. This murk has led some of us to allow our imaginations free rein - the possibilities for unseemly behavior and lubricious rumor being endless in a traditional little boys' school modeled on the British example. What could go wrong? Thank you, Ms Bellafante, for a clear and beautifully written summary of the actual facts. One can now breath more easily and return to one's Chaucer....

The value of erudition? Latin? penmanship? Quick, someone do a word search through the Common Core ! Ask a hedge fund manager the meaning of erudition and prepare to be told it's a new way to monetize air. Penmanship? You mean with a fountain pen? Inscribing on paper is so 20th century. I hope the search committee can find the email address of Mr. Chips.

Whatever the pros and cons may be of Stuart staying or leaving St. Bernard's, the Chairman of the Board of Trustees and members of the Board's Executive Comittee have forfeited their right to continue as Trustees for the simple reason that they have failed to manage the process, the communication, and the outcome. In business, executives and board members are relieved of their positions all the time for this type of mismanagement and bungling of basic management responsibilities. St. Bernard's board members should be treated no differently. William H. Woolverton St. Bernard's Class of 1964

'practiced the skill of a good handshake several hundred times' for only 50,000 dollars a year. Not a useful skill at the moment.

The parent who needs to let it be known that she is a graduate of Yale Law School says a lot about the type of parents who feel it necessary to send their kids to this school. Is she that insecure that she felt it necessary to add that to her letter?

The alumni and alumnae of numerous private schools are referred to as "Old Boys" and "Old Girls."

You see this everywhere from private schools to synagogues to churches to country clubs. Money buys position and influence at every level. Everyone who has been successful in one endeavor believes they are capable of becoming a decision maker in an entirely different environment. It does not work that way.

Despite what the New York Times emphasizes, this is not really about wealth and privilege. This is a battle between what is measurable and what is immeasurable in education, a part of a larger, more enduring war between languages and linguistics, between art and science, between philosophy and technology, between history and data analysis. This war is being won, handily, by the STEM people, and the more enraptured they become by the measurable the less comfortable they are with the immeasurable. The best teachers at St. Bernards always taught much more than their subject and within their subject much more than skills. This is true of great teachers everywhere, in public schools and private schools, where there is wealth and privilege and where there is none. Great teachers communicate their personal passions, whether that be for Greek myths (thank you, Diana Butterworth) or Shakespeare (thank you, David King-Wood) or algebra (thank you, John Lloyd Evans). Those passions, once communicated, never fade and instill a lifelong love of learning. They turn children into students. But passion, love of learning, has always been part of the immeasurable, the ineffable. St. Bernards puts passion ahead of program. That’s what’s really at stake here. (Disclaimer: the writer is an Old Boy.)

As a longtime public school educator, I believe the pendulum must swing. The danger, as always, is that it will swing too far. That seems to be endemic in education, public and private. Witness the entire "whole language" debacle. Yes, we need to teach the love of literature and the liberation of reading, but not to the exclusion of knowing "when two vowels go walking the first does the talking." Education is not an either-or proposition. Looking at the St. Bernard's fight from far, I wish all concerned well. Some good will come, if only people do not entrench themselves in their current positions with closed ears. By the way, I must say the comments to date are the most literate comments I have read in the WSJ for many a day. And my favorite Shakespearean sonnet begins "Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments." Signed, a graduate of Portland State University

Strange place, NYC, where rich people believe (perhaps correctly) that one has to be rich to educate one's kids. I didn't start Latin (at a neighborhood public school) until grade 7. By the time I graduated from Boston Latin six years later, I had 5 years of Latin, a year of ancient Greek, 3 years of French, and a year each of college-level math and physics. My father worked in a hardware store. Total family income was $8000, the equivalent of less than $60,000 today. My degrees are in physics and journalism, and I have had a wonderful, joyous career. NYC might consider further improvements in its public schools. As Boston has shown, this means paying teachers well but not so well as to preclude resources for anything else. Why does Boston have the best urban district in the country? Why is Massachusetts the best statewide (and among the best in the world) with far lower taxes than New York?

This brought me back to my days at Fordham Prep in the 1940s-50s. My best friend and I were chosen to take 3 years of Greek, in addition to the 5 years of Latin ( up to 8 times a week) and 2 years of German we were studying. We elected instead to take an exra year of math, a third year of German and physics. We were marked as being less than bright, despite the fact that my buddy was second in the whole freshman class and I received the only 100% in advanced algebra in the entire Eastern Jesuit Province. Our Headmaster delighted in coming into a classroom, having committed the entire 7 books of Virgil's Aenied to memory in Latin and Challenging us.I won a prize in somthing called the Auxilium Latinum contest, but they refused to announce my name. Still the Headmaster did receive the loudest ovation at our 25th anniversary celebration.( The announcement of his death.) Yet I value the classical part of my education over the practical. And I have to admit maybe I should have settled for the 3 years of Greek

As an international expert on the Pre-Raphaelites and with eight-years of experience of St. Bernard's (my son is a seventh grader), I very much appreciated your fine article and its recitation of the facts of this situation. I have also been teaching as a college professor for almost thirty years. The education my son and his peers are receiving is exemplary, engaged, and effective. That goes for Latin, and Art, and French, and History, and also Science -- his biology this term is on a high school level. The irreplaceable Headmaster Johnson is a steadying and delightful presence, and is overseeing the preparation of these boys for absolutely anything they may encounter in life, or would like to pursue. I wish all high school- and college-bound kids had the preparation that these boys receive. In a world where the general knowledge of spelling, writing, public speaking, foreign languages, and history has diminished markedly over the past three decades, St. Bernard's is doing the work all schools should be doing. Headmaster Johnson is one essential reason for this, and his exceptional staff. We want to see him given the credit he deserves, and the opportunity to guide the school through his transition to retirement. The compromise proposal is sensible, forward-thinking, and a large body of parents fully support it. Sincerely yours, Jason Rosenfeld Professor of Art History Marymount Manhattan College

An interesting window into a world of which most of us are blissfully unaware. It is worth noting that at bottom, we all want what we think is best for our heirs, er, children. One thing I find delightful is the author's wry drollery--I'll bet even the Old Boys can't resist it

"St. Bernard’s had not been maintaining its record of sending its boys to the most coveted schools. This rankled certain parents both on and off the board." ...the boys as rankled than parents. Exmissions staff has been junior and unavailing for about 5 yrs now, esp w recall of a retired counselor to right the ship. A sonnet among the Old Boys' favorites: When I was young, it seemed that life was so wonderful A miracle, oh it was beautiful, magical And all the birds in the trees, well they'd be singing so happily Oh joyfully, playfully watching me But then they send me away to teach me how to be sensible Logical, oh responsible, practical And they showed me a world where I could be so dependable Oh clinical, oh intellectual, cynical There are times when all the world's asleep The questions run too deep For such a simple man Won't you please, please tell me what we've learned I know it sounds absurd Please tell me who I am I said, watch what you say or they'll be calling you a radical Liberal, oh fanatical, criminal Won't you sign up your name, we'd like to feel you're acceptable Respectable, oh presentable, a vegetable Oh, take it take it yeah But at night, when all the world's asleep The questions run so deep For such a simple man Won't you please tell me what we've learned I know it sounds absurd Please tell me who I am, who I am, who I am, who I am 'Cause I was feeling so logical D-d-digital One, two, three, five Oh, oh, oh, oh It's getting unbelievable

As an Old Boy, it is important to emphasize that the nexus of the current crisis at the school, to which the article only briefly alludes, is that the Executive Committee of the Board determined in the spring of 2019 to fire Stuart Johnson for reasons they have never been willing to discuss. They proceeded to negotiate a severance and Nondisclosure Agreement, and then to arrange that Stuart would announce his departure as if it was his choice after the school's Christmas carols just before the Christmas break. They did not even discuss any of this with the Board at large -- and in fact they first informed the full Board of it as a fait accompli in the November (or maybe even December) Board Meeting. Nor had they any discussions whatsoever with any of the school's constituencies: current parents, past parents, Old Boys -- anyone. Had they discussed any of this with the school, they would have heard what they have heard unambiguously since: that all the school's constituencies wanted Stuart to remain for a reasonable time to come, and that whatever issues there might be could be addressed over time. In addition, the Board heard that we expected them to honor the life lessons St.Bernard's had taught us: that they be honest, that they admit their mistakes, and that those irrevocably committed to this wrong decision resign. Because what we are dealing with here is hubris. And St. Bernard's never taught us hubris.

I am a former student of Saint Bernard’s, and agree with parents who believe that it’s time for St. Bernard’s to re-evaluate itself and its leadership. St. Bernard’s was an amazing school for me between Kindergarten and Grade VI. However, I (and many of my peers) found the Upper School (7th-9th grades) to be a soul-crushing and hyper-competitive environment that I do not reflect warmly upon and that I do not wish for future students to endure. Many of the parents who wish for Mr. Johnson to stay are those whose students have not yet experienced the Upper School. Although I am appreciative of my strong education in Latin, history (shoutout to Mr. L) and literature and writing (and am still reaping the benefits), other areas of the education were lacking. Art, for instance, is a class that met only once per week, almost as an afterthought, and I frequently had to turn to after-school programs to do more meaningful work. As a current high school student, I am encouraged to learn in a variety of ways and am much more satisfied with this environment. St. Bernard’s needs to redevelop itself in order to accommodate a diverse community of students, not just the singular type that they seem to love so dearly. To their credit, St. Bernard’s has been beginning to redevelop itself during the past several years. The new head of the Upper School has a more progressive view of education and is working to support his students academically and emotionally. Change is not always bad.

What's wrong with being fusty? This only seems to be a conversation between new wealth and old, or between the have mores and the have everythings. It's actually a conversation that is being played out across the country where educational stalwarts are under attack by people who really believe the magnificence of their money equates to a magnificence of the mind. For example: Ken Griffith has his eye on the University of Chicago (and I can't imagine isn't involved in the University's decision to sell the Yerkes Observatory). In any event, they're buying up major institutions and if you read DARK MONEY you'll understand why .

Let's be honest, the whole race for schools among us parents in NYC is ridiculous. It is riddled with pretentious nonsense. I was humored by an article not so long ago showing no correlation between where kids went to school and happiness or success later in life. So it's all one big fat illusion driven entirely by parents and school administrators trying to convince us how "special" their schools are. Spare me please. This is the hallmark of education in the 21st century, the commoditization of education leading schools to aggressively lay claim to a "brand position." St. Barnard's offers little better nor little worse education than any other school. But people believe it does. Oh how they dearly believe that it does.

This is an interesting article: The Blue Bloods vs the Oligarchs. Here in New Orleans, you are rarely asked where you went to College. Rather, where did you go to high school. Regardless, the Oligarchs will win this battle.

On the other hand, I went to two elite private schools through 9th grade. They were abysmal. I learned how to immediately spot the entitled and fake. I had teachers who were blatantly abusive and neglectful. But as of 10th grade I flourished in .... PUBLIC SCHOOL with students from all walks of life, wealthy and poor. Consequently I ended up empathic, socially aware and active, caring, and a contributor to society, and well educated mind you. Today I know no strangers. The poor and the homeless do not frighten me. The St. Bernard’s parents seem woefully out of touch with the real world. Having well educated children is great but ... will these very rich children know how to work in a Soup Kitchen where the human kindness is desperately needed? They will truly be well educated when they understand how these two worlds are one and that having a lot of money is not what counts. Compassion and elbow grease are what makes the world turn.

Doing a calligraphy workshop for the 3rd grade boys was a very special event ! I saw the young minds of St. Bernard's boys full of vigor and excitement about learning; they dived into the projects I planned for them, and wished to excel. I saw firsthand the care and conscious teaching of St. Bernard's faculty, and reflected on how lucky these boys are, and hopefully, will be, to have such classes, now, and in the future. May Mr. Johnson be willing to extend his stay if the Board is wise enough to ask him to do so. And may the school community at large learn a heavy lesson from what has recently transpired - not a pretty profile of education at this juncture.

I am a St. B’s parent of color with children at two other NYC independent schools. I hate the negative light this situation has put on what I have found to be one of the most loving, family oriented and educationally rigorous institutions in NYC. This school is not a popular choice with families of color but it has been an amazing choice for my family. Mr. Johnson has been an great mentor to our son and a reason for remaining at the school when having other educational options. I hope that people look past this dark period and see this gem of intellectual pursuit and grooming for its great worth during a time were many have loss sight of the need for both attributes.

I attended high school on the UES with many St. Bernard’s boys. They were, above all, young men of character and poise - familiar with Shakespeare, European geography, and the definition of “gamboling.” The St. Bernard’s old boys that I knew (less than a decade ago) were great project partners in APUSH, study buddies for Latin class, and always knew how to properly wear a tie. Their character greatly surpassed the boys from my own grammar school. It only annoyed me that they didn’t admit girls (looking at you too, Regis).

A school like St. Bernard's belongs not to a single long-serving headmaster no matter how successful he may have been nor to any one camp of constituents, no matter how passionately expressed their beliefs, but to all who have attended, to all who have served as faculty and as board members, to all who have entrusted their sons to this school for their education. The problem here, I suspect, was one of governance and of process. The self-perpetuating Board governing an independent school like St. Bernard's is to hold in trust the future of a school that belongs to all the above named groups. As I understand it, the full Board did not make a collective decision to terminate Mr. Johnson. It seems it was just the Executive Committee of the Board that, I'll bet, made it clear to Mr. Johnson that he'd best take their offer, sign the NDA and retire gracefully. I wish Ms. Bellafante had examined this particular facet of this regrettable situation. I do not know the details of the St. Bernard Board's bylaws but if the full Board did not vote in support of a confidential offer made to Mr. Johnson, then the full Board may have been deprived of it's right to make a decision that I believe should only belong to the collective voice of the full Board. Anything else seems to me to be a violation of the trust invested in the Board. I'm not suggesting there isn't a component of the traditional vs. the possibly "stem"-obsessed behind this battle, but it also a tale of poor governance.

I attended St Bernard’s sixty-plus years ago. Many of the textbooks and primers at the time dated to the turn of the century (20th century), designed to foster traditional learning through constant drills. To offset this discipline the faculty leavened the lessons with humor and wit, tossing in quotes from “Wind in the Willows.” The classroom was never a dull place. In this era of text messaging, imbecilic reality shows, and rampant me-ism the values of St Bernard’s, and the education it imparts, is incalculable. Latin is not about a “dead” language, but a vehicle to learn about how language is both disciplined and structured. Painful perhaps as a young boy, but a skill forever remembered. Mr Johnson has been exemplary in sustaining these traditions. If being learned and kind, with a keen understanding of boys, is anathema to certain trustees, then I suggest the wrong person(s) is being removed. It is easy to undermine a cherished institution, and something else to create an effective alternative in its stead.

We have allowed this city’s educational and cultural institutions to be compromised by transplants who, in many cases by sheer luck, have sufficient funds to redefine the mission of a school or a museum or a foundation. They do so, in so many cases, based upon an almost comically naive understanding of the city in which they live. A city that they project from their own aspirations onto others just like the books and movies that no doubt have helped shape their own sensibilities. This city has always been better when it’s back is against the wall. It’s better when crisis hits. It’s better when money won’t simply make the problems go away. That’s because the true character of this city must then rise up. But there will come a time (now?) when the stateless few who so completely fail to understand what this city is about will have succeeded in hollowing out its core. And then what. We’re about to find out.

Old Boys- are not what are painted out to be here. When I met my husband decades ago I noticed a difference between his St B friends (kids he went to school with for 10 years) vs Buckley and Collegiate friends. There is a deep kindness with St B boys and they pursued careers in the arts and science. They are not the wealthiest if they parents at St B’s. Those are the hedge funders (some did go to St B’s but most did not). We are not part of the wealthy at StBs and paying for tuition is a priority and not a given.

I don’t understand why Mr. Johnson signed an NDA. What needed to be protected from disclosure? After so many years of loyal service, the headmaster certainly would have deserved a generous severance. And it seems many curent parents and members of the alumni community would have gladly supported (emotionally and financially) a large farewell package. Is there more to this story?

'Things got personal. Intellectual snobberies were revealed. One parent who supported Mr. Johnson confronted another who did not: “Are you fluent in Latin? What is your favorite Shakespearean sonnet? Who is your favorite Pre-Raphaelite artist?” The parent on the receiving end of this interrogation shrugged in response.' I remember visiting St. Bernard's once. The boys were in their blue blazers in the assembly room -- reciting poetry. Mr. Johnson's vision for the school sounds right to me. Glitzy laptop projects, long introspective personal essays (often going over the same territory year after year and, accordingly, many simply resubmitted with some tweaks), group work, the disruption of classes for special "community" assemblies, undereducated teachers who talk the new lingo of "the whole child" (as if more traditional educators were not interested in their students' inner lives) -- all that is overrated but for years now the norm in many private schools. While I would not badger people about their favorite sonnet or their knowledge of art, it is Americans' lack of interest in art and literature (along with their watching of reality-TV shows) that is in part responsible for bringing money-hungry, shallow louts like Donald Trump to power. This lack of respect for the life of the mind cuts across all social classes.

My uncle, David King-Wood, was a St Bernard's institution for decades. His theater productions were treasured. He would, if he could, be spinning in his grave.

As a parent seeking a school for my son years ago, I was delighted to find the treasure that was St Bernard's. The school's list of recommended books alone was enough of a find, and the possibility that our boy might one day write even half as well as Mr Johnson was my dearest wish. As it happened, he got all that and a great deal more from his nine years in the school. It saddens me to think that this venerable educator, this good and wise man, might have been treated shabbily; if that's what happened, I wish the perpetrators luck with the karmic backlash.

I'm rather confused by the tone and angle of this article. I personally have a love for all things antiquity - I never learned Latin in school, but in my adulthood I wish it had been offered as I dig into the classics and wonder what how they sound in the original tongue. I frequent the Met and immerse myself in greek sculpture and medieval art. I read the Bible because I love history and want to better understand the works of literature that I read. I probably wish I had the education that boys at St. Bernard's had. However, I attended the Bank Street School, on the Upper West Side, one of NYC's most prominent, and unflinchingly dedicated, progressive schools. The school's pedagogy is grounded in cultural competency, social justice, and equity. I left Bank Street with a passion for learning and a desire to change the world for the better. Today I am a high school English teacher. I am not an investment banker or a hedge fund manager. Yet what I'm gathering from this article is that parents historically send their kids to St. Bernard's because of the promise that their children will go on to pursue these fields of wealth and excess. It seems like any change in the school's culture would be for the better. In an age where we are increasingly seeing the corrosive influence of extreme wealth, where we are seeing the dangers of boys of privilege being raised in homogenous cultures of toxic masculinity, don't we *want* there to be a change to these traditional institutions?

I have known Stuart for over 40 years. I once had the misfortune of giving a toast following his own which made me sound vacuous and uneducated. He is a fine, compassionate and educated man who comes from an equally remarkable family of women and men. You could not wish for more than to have your child educated at a school under his leadership. May this situation be positively resolved for all involved.