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    Philadelphia Friends Schools
    Philadelphia Friends Schools
    Philadelphia Friends Schools
    Ebook202 pages1 hour

    Philadelphia Friends Schools

    By Friends Council on Education, Janet Chance and Mark Franke

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    William Penn envisioned a society dedicated to religious toleration, participatory government, and liberty. Central to this Holy Experiment was his belief that all children deserved a moral education. In 1689, Penn established a Friends Public School in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Over the years, many Quakers have been similarly inspired, and today there are 81 member schools in the Friends Council on Education operating in 22 states. This book includes images from the 10 Friends schools founded in or near Philadelphia before the 20th century: Abington Friends School, Frankford Friends School, Friends Central School, Friends Select School, George School, Germantown Friends School, Greene Street Friends School, Plymouth Meeting Friends School, William Penn Charter School, and Westtown School. Philadelphia Friends Schools tells the photographic story of an educational philosophy rooted in three centuries of faith and practice.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateMar 16, 2009
    ISBN9781439637005
    Philadelphia Friends Schools
    Author

    Friends Council on Education

    Janet Chance serves as the lower school director at William Penn Charter School and cofacilitates the Friends Council on Education�s Spirited Practice and Renewed Courage program. Mark Franek is a former dean of students at a Friends school. He is currently a member of the English department at Cabrini College. The Friends Council on Education promotes the theory and practice of Quaker education and provides a professional development network that preserves the heritage and inspires the future of Friends education.

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      Book preview

      Philadelphia Friends Schools - Friends Council on Education

      School.)

      INTRODUCTION

      Let your life speak.

      —Quaker adage

      Quaker education in the United States began in the late 17th century with the arrival of William Penn and continues to this day with the rich diversity of Friends schools in and around Philadelphia. The historical thread can be traced to 1681, when King Charles II gave William Penn territory in the New World, which removed a debt to Penn’s father, an admiral in the Royal Navy, and provided a clear path across the Atlantic Ocean for a despised religious group, the Quakers. Penn, a young idealist, named the large tract of land Pennsylvania, or Penn’s Woods, and transported the principles and values of the Religious Society of Friends to the New World. Philadelphia became the center of his holy experiment. Penn realized that a society built on religious freedom and participatory government, and concerned with the practical applications of love and justice, needed schools rooted in the same philosophy. In 1689, with Pennsylvania’s provincial government and the Philadelphia Friends Meeting, Penn established the Friends Public School in the heart of Philadelphia, making the City of Brotherly Love the birthplace of Quaker education in America.

      This book contains a unique series of photographs from the archives of the Philadelphia-area Friends schools that were founded before the 20th century: Friends Select School and the William Penn Charter School, both of which trace their roots to 1689; Abington Friends School, 1697; Plymouth Meeting Friends School, 1780; Westtown School, 1799; Frankford Friends School, 1833; Friends’ Central School, 1845; Germantown Friends School, 1845; Greene Street Friends School, 1855; and George School, 1893.

      After a glimpse into the origins of each school (chapter 1), this book focuses on the unique pedagogy of the Philadelphia-area Friends schools during the 20th century. The chapters highlight distinctive features of Quaker education: meeting for worship (chapter 2), inquiry and innovation (chapter 3), community and collaboration (chapter 4), experiential learning (chapter 5), and peace and social justice (chapter 6). An introduction explains the importance of the each chapter’s theme and its relevance to Quaker pedagogy. Concluding the collection is a chapter on the Friends Council on Education, the umbrella organization for Friends schools in the United States.

      In creating this book, the archivists and publicists of the 10 Philadelphia-area Friends schools founded before the 20th century helped construct the book’s themes by finding photographs that illuminated the unique qualities of Quaker education. The editors 9 pored over the images to see what themes organically emerged. The archivists provided caption information for the final photographs, which the editors then used to create the narrative told by the themes. Every person involved in this project generously volunteered time and expertise to gather and organize information amid the hurly-burly of the school day.

      Curiously, many of the images and captions in this book would not surprise Quaker schoolchildren in a bygone era of modest schoolhouses and meeting rooms, of cobbled streets and dirt roads, nor would this book seem quaint or mysterious to current students. Friends schools have always had a distinct philosophy of education. Friends believe that each person has the capacity for goodness, and the school takes responsibility to nurture that goodness. Friends schools believe that education is preparation for the whole of life: the lively development of intellectual, physical, and social-emotional capacities, as well as the development of the spirit. Friends schools are spiritual communities based on the belief that there is that of God in everyone, yet Friends schools do not proselytize or seek to convert students or faculty.

      The curricular approach in Friends education is committed to the rich exploration of multiple perspectives. Friends schools develop peace studies and practices for creative problem-solving and nonviolent conflict resolution and teach each subject in a way that enhances student understanding of justice and human dignity. Friends schools encourage students to become informed and compassionate people who use analysis and reflection to take action. The values learned and lived by students and faculty in Friends schools influence their communities, and those communities influence the world. Modern Friends schools operate in complex environments and have opened their doors to increasingly diverse communities while continuing to attract students from Quaker backgrounds. These realities have not fundamentally altered their mission.

      In the pamphlet The Peculiar Mission of a Friends School, Quaker educator Douglas Heath suggests that Friends schools are moral communities concerned with empowering members to seek the Truth, specifically by helping students grow in the areas of honesty, compassion, integrity, commitment, and individual courage. Over the centuries, Friends schools have heralded new ways of teaching and learning. Such practices as collaborative learning, experiential learning, service learning, and learning communities have antecedents in Friends schools’ values, which have remained remarkably consistent over 300 years and inspire students today to live up to what is best and brightest about the human spirit.

      This volume presents images from the archives of the oldest Philadelphia-area Friends schools that provide glimpses into the universal heart and spirit of all Friends schools. Let their lives speak.

      Mark Franek and Janet Chance, Editors

      One

      ORIGINS

      The school is grounded in the Quaker belief that there is that of God within us all, a Divine Spark, which when nurtured can illumine our lives.

      —From a 17th-century Friends school statement of philosophy

      In 1668 in England, George Fox, the founder of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), advised Friends to set up schools where children could be taught to be useful members of society. Shortly thereafter, in the New World of the colonies in 1689, William Penn implemented this advice in Pennsylvania by establishing the Friends Public School in Philadelphia to provide a moral education based on Quaker principles. Three Friends schools currently operating in the Philadelphia area come from this early period. Friends Select School and the William Penn Charter School date their beginnings to 1689. Abington Friends School started in 1697.

      In the 18th century, 13 more Friends schools were founded in Pennsylvania. By 1779, there were five Friends schools in Philadelphia under the overseers of the Friends Public School, a Quaker committee set up by Penn’s charter. Six other schools were founded by Quakers in Philadelphia. One of these, the Negro School, was founded by a

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