By Karan A. Merry, Head of School

Of all places in which to do some serious thinking, I was near the beach in Santa Barbara last month when I attended a talk entitled “Memory and Truth: The Troubling History of American ‘Diversity.’” Surrounded by the heads of schools from all over California, the occasion was the annual meeting of the California Association of Independent Schools and the focus was on what we teach our students.

Harvard professor John Stauffer and film producer Gary Ross told the story of thousands of women who traveled to the South after the Civil War to start schools for black and white children. Sociologist W.E.B. DuBois hailed it as the “crusade of the New England School Ma’am.”

But within years, Stauffer and Ross told us, the movement to provide education for all had been quashed. Thousands of teachers who taught black children were beaten, driven from their homes or killed by vigilantes. Holding up an Advanced Placement history text, Stauffer said that even current accounts fail to tell this story.

Questioning History

Hearing this, my first thought was a renewed conviction to teaching St. Paul’s students to question history. Fifth graders do this when they debate who discovered America. Assigned social roles, students write histories that support various viewpoints. It is a fast introduction to the subjective nature of reality when students compare histories recorded by a wealthy nobleman and by a servant.

My second thought was to continue our work to create what Bishop Marc Andrus, Episcopal Bishop of California, calls “the beloved community.” Martin Luther King Jr. wrote "the end is reconciliation; the end is redemption; the end is the creation of the Beloved Community. It is this type of spirit and this type of love that can transform opposers into friends.”

The Power of Our Stories

If you live in a beloved community – which is what we work at creating, because it’s never finished - it shapes you to see multiple viewpoints. In such a community, all of our stories can be told. These stories have such power! This is part of the work of St. Paul’s: to teach students to think critically about the context in which history is written. And to create a community in which students develop an inclusive understanding of what’s true. This is the path of hope for the future!