During a special reception and dinner at Darlington Sept. 16, members of the Board of Trustees and Board of Visitors, faculty, and special guests officially welcomed Darlington’s new president, David Hicks, and his wife, Betsy, to the Darlington community. After an invocation by Frank Stegall ’62 and introductory remarks by Board Chairman John Thatcher ’44, both members of the Presidential Search Committee which selected Hicks, President Emeritus Jim McCallie, who served Darlington as president from 1979-1999, gave a rousing account of his nearly 40-year career in education. Hicks, Darlington’s sixth president, then followed with a challenge to the Darlington community. What follows is the text of his address, edited for space:
As we stand on the threshold of a new century, nay, a new millennium, it is natural and I think necessary to look with a critical eye at our times and to remind ourselves of the principles and purposes on which Darlington School was founded. Now, more than ever, as the world changes rapidly around us, we must remind ourselves of what is changeless and enduring, and hold fast to that. There is hope for the future, but only if we have learned and put into practice the wisdom of the past.
Our Lord sounded a warning similar to this when he asked, “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world if he loses his own soul?” As its new president, I’ve tried to find Darlington’s soul, knowing that whatever we accomplish here, it must never be at the soul’s expense. Indeed, it would be my hope that our school, more than any other, is one in which body and soul are united and undivided. One in which the appearance of the body reflects the reality and health of the soul. One in which everything the body does strengthens the soul and is obedient to its precepts.
How are we to describe Darlington’s soul? One way might be by meditating on the school’s motto:
Wisdom more than Knowledge
Service beyond Self
Honor above Everything
These simple guiding principles are distilled from the aspirations of our founders and from our school’s distinguished history. The last, for example, first appeared in a 1923 article in The Forum (Darlington’s first yearbook, the predecessor of the Jabberwokk) and referred to a night in 1915 when a group of Darlington boys declared honor above everything as the guiding principle of their school.
Each statement bespeaks a virtue: wisdom, selflessness, integrity. The soul of Darlington is the teaching of virtues like these. Virtue, Aristotle reminded us, is a habit: a pattern of behavior, once conscious and chosen, that becomes engrained and reflexive through years of repetition and unquestioned allegiance.
How can a school like Darlington teach virtue? ... Let me suggest that we can teach virtue in three ways: in the way and in what we teach; in the way we are organized; and in the way we worship.
First, virtue is taught in the way we teach as well as in what we teach. But before looking at the way we teach and what we teach, it is important to understand why we teach. We are not teaching merely to inform, nor are we teaching to make our students good test-takers and competitive college applicants. We teach to make our students wise, to liberate them from the tiny prison of the self, and to encourage them to act upon what they know or believe to be true. Wisdom. Selflessness. Integrity.
Wisdom, for example, is traditionally passed on in stories, so the stories of history and literature are very much a part of what we teach. We deliberately choose stories for their wisdom, not for their popularity or singularity, and we consciously teach stories for their wisdom, drawing out in our questions and discussions the lessons of how pride blinded Oedipus, of how anger confused Achilles’ thinking and friendship clarified it, of how Jacob’s faith counted for more in God’s eyes than Esau’s machismo, of how the patience of Penelope and Ruth was rewarded. In a dialogue with our students that never ends, we try to persuade each one, as Socrates said in the Apology, “to concern himself less with what he has than with what he is, so as to render himself as excellent and as rational as possible.”
Coaches also teach virtue. Indeed, in schools like Darlington the distinction between coaching and teaching is meaningless. Take the simple habit of getting up after you’re knocked down in football....Every day boys throw themselves on the ground and leap to their feet hundreds of times, learning by repetition the virtue of perseverance....
Second, schools like Darlington teach virtue in the way they’re organized. Organizing a school community is a complex and multi-faceted task. Too often the complexity of this task turns schools into soulless bureaucracies concerned only with finding efficient and cost-effective ways of managing people, without regard for the underlying and overarching imperative: to teach virtue.
On the other hand, schools that teach virtue will manifest the following organizational characteristics:
They give young and old a high degree of autonomy and trust while holding them accountable to high standards of performance and behavior....
In their communal rituals and celebrations and in their traditions and codes of conduct, they are bold and unequivocal in naming their gods and heroes, in defending their standards and beliefs, and in celebrating the good and censoring the bad, as they understand them.
They ensure that everyone has a voice, everyone receives respect, everyone knows his or her part and understands its importance in relation to the whole.
They offer their students and teachers a compelling vision of their obligations to one another and to the community – a vision that in many respects will be at odds with the assumptions and entitlements of current popular culture. For this reason, they emphasize responsibilities rather than rights, knowing that the only guarantee of one person’s rights is the next person’s sense of responsibility.
They give young people the opportunity to exercise authority responsibly and to learn how to accept authority in their peers. Toward this end, they bring the young into the management of the school so that young people can learn firsthand the methods of effective leadership and consensus building.
They expose everyone in the community, particularly the young, to intellectual, spiritual, and physical challenges that will stretch them, sometimes to the breaking point...
Finally, we teach virtue in the way we worship. I am one who believes that we cannot effectively teach virtue without teaching and practicing religion. Without God, there is no basis for morality other than the will of the powerful, or in a democracy like ours, the will of the majority and of the forces that shape public opinion....
Moral philosophers throughout our century have searched in vain to find a basis for morality outside religion. Their failure has gone largely unreported since its implications are so disturbing and controversial. But one doesn’t have to be a moral philosopher to appreciate the disastrous effects of excluding religion from our public life and public schools.
Without religion, there is no God; no absolutes; no transcendent truths; no soul. Without God, it is difficult even to speak of virtue. Instead we speak of “appropriate behavior.” Now, I ask you, what is appropriate behavior? Do or not do? It keeps changing with circumstances. It differs from culture to culture. It depends on who’s doing the talking and who owns the microphone. It’s an ever-changing social construct, which ultimately has only one referent in a secular, democratic society like ours: the individual....Service beyond self? What can it possibly mean in this crumbling context?
It is my own belief that one could teach virtue in a Hebrew or Islamic school as easily as in a Christian school, but you could not do so by excluding the study of scared texts or the worship of Yahweh or Allah. Darlington is a Christian school. The implications are obvious and straightforward.
In the years to come, Darlington’s body will no doubt undergo profound changes. A magnificent, new sports complex is about to be added. Someday perhaps a beautiful center for the visual and performing arts. We may see the day of national and international school collaborations, joint ventures with local colleges, virtual classrooms and global networks, home stays and work studies abroad, international diplomas, professional apprenticeships, city service programs, perhaps even rowing on the Coosa and eventually at Henley on the Thames. Who knows? The body will have to change to remain healthy, vigorous, and young.
But the soul must never change. Every physical metamorphosis and every programmatic innovation must serve the same ends:
Wisdom more than Knowledge
Service beyond Self
Honor above Everything
This is the great work that has forged the characters and influenced the fates of many in this room. This is the good work that all of us...are pledged to support and uphold. Can there be a more fortunate group of people on God’s green earth at this time? Is there a more noble work to be done, a better investment to be made, a higher calling to be won than to preserve the soul of Darlington School for this generation and the next?
