Traditions Evolve at Saint Ann’s

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The New York Sun

Saint Ann’s School shuns grades and lets students write their own tickets, offering courses ranging from Advanced Puppetry to Philosophical Problems. It was more than a little surprising when the Brooklyn progressive school was shopping for a new headmaster last year, and it didn’t offer the job to, say, Ralph Nader or Debbie Harry.


The man who ended up getting asked to come to Brooklyn was Lawrence Weiss, a 55-year-old academic with a Ph.D. from Columbia who comes from the traditional private school world, where there are such things as required courses are grades on tests (he was most recently head of the upper school at Horace Mann).


He says his role at Saint Ann’s is to shape up the institution’s greater organizational framework, but as for the academic side of things, he plans let it be. “Certainly the school’s facilities can be improved but the program is fantastic,” he said. This year he’ll be leading a 30-person seminar called Contemporary China.


And if he were a student, which seminars would he sign up for? “Great question! That’s a Saint Ann’s kind of question!” he said before leafing through the course catalog and settling on Literature of Ideas, Greek Tragedy, and Poetry Writing. His finger stopped at a seminar on revolutions. “This is what Stanley was supposed to do,” he said in a tone that wasn’t exactly the opposite of disappointed.


After stepping down last spring, Stanley Bosworth, the brilliant and controversial founder and former headmaster of Saint Ann’s, had been planning on keeping an office and leading a weekly seminar. But when he cooperated with New York magazine on a scabrous article in which he managed to insult some and offend more, the board of trustees sent him on his way. Mr. Weiss explained that Mr. Bosworth has been away for the summer, traveling and working on a book project about a Baudelaire poem. Why not a tell-all memoir of his 39 years at Saint Ann’s? “I think he’s pretty much done that.”


Mr. Bosworth’s third-floor office has since been converted into a sanitized-looking computer room for teachers’ use only. The new headmaster’s office is huge and airy, and is located in the former middle school library on the building’s fifth floor. Mr. Bosworth’s office was set apart by a steep set of red stairs, but the new headmaster’s suite is located on the main stairwell that connects the school’s 14 floors.


It’s hard not to read such a real estate shuffle as a sign of a new leaf turned. “It wasn’t my choice, but it’s terrific” Mr. Weiss said. His wife works across the street at the Brooklyn Historical Society. “You see that window up there on the right?” he asked, pointing out the window at the society’s newly restored, red-brick building. “If she were at work today we could wave at each other.”


Mr. Weiss’s workspace is coming along rather nicely. The walls of bookshelves are about half-full with his reference books and tomes on China (he’s a China scholar), and the “Dr. Lawrence S. Weiss Head of School” plaque is already hanging, although he might want to rethink such a traditional office fixture. After all, even though he was “Dr. Weiss” when he was head of the upper school at Horace Mann, he’ll now go by “Larry.” Last names are about as popular as grades at Saint Ann’s, which was recently ranked no. 1 for college admissions in a Wall Street Journal survey (apparently not all rankings are frowned upon; a clipping of the article, with the top rank smeared over in yellow highlighter, hangs in the school’s lobby). “It was just a matter of what people would feel comfortable with,” he said demurely.


In all the media coverage of Stanleygate last spring, the successor was portrayed as the straight man to Mr. Bosworth’s iconoclastic radical. Mr. Weiss was the sensible academic who could guide the school onto a slightly more centrist track. He had experience at several private schools. Normal private schools!


Mr. Weiss’s quirks got lost in the shuffle. While he is indeed a slighter character than Mr. Bosworth, he’s not without offbeat touches that will be at home at Saint Ann’s. At a Chinese restaurant, he ordered for himself and a reporter in Chinese, only to be shot down by a waiter who needed to hear the words “cold sesame noodles” in English. In place of Mr. Bosworth’s hubris and in-your-face brilliance, Mr. Weiss is all warmth and understanding, like a wise little lamb. Mr. Bosworth’s reliance on seven-syllable-words made common conversation entertaining and important-feeling, but his exact meaning was often fuzzy.


It’s the opposite with Mr. Weiss, whose manner is steady and considerate. He speaks softly and slowly and his slightly sad brown eyes look up at you in such a sympathetic way that it’s easy to forget he doesn’t necessarily have all the time in the world.


He says his initial priority at the school is to work with the board of trustees on issues like fund-raising, policy, and long-range planning. He’ll also be overseeing all of the school’s departments, and insists he’s not trying to change Saint Ann’s in any fundamental educational way. He does plan to step up Saint Ann’s involvement in the New York Association of Independent Schools’ seminars and conferences, which he hopes will result in the school being less cut off from the private school community.


Still, he is so wary of stepping on toes that it might take him a little while to implement any changes that the students will feel firsthand. Even though he thinks the school could do with a more comprehensive community service program and a student newspaper that has a bit more focus, he’s going to wait for a groundswell of interest to come from the students before providing the resources. “My job is not to say, ‘We should do this.’ If there are people interested I’m happy to encourage it.”


With Mr. Bosworth gone, some parents are worried that their kids will have a tougher time getting into the fancy colleges that the former headmaster was famous for maintaining close relations with – sometimes piling kids in his car and driving them across state lines for admissions interviews – but Mr. Weiss said they needn’t panic. In his view much of the credit belongs to the college admissions advisers and the students, and not solely Mr. Bosworth. “I think his role in college admissions in the first 20 years was different than his role in later years,” Mr. Weiss said.


The two spent a good deal of time together late last spring, and while Mr. Weiss said they haven’t seen each other over the summer, “I’ve always had a very good relationship with him. I’m happy to meet with him anytime.”


For somebody taking the reins of a school known for its ties to places like Yale and Brown, his attitude to the whole college admissions process is refreshingly gentle and Zen like. “Essentially every graduate of Saint Ann’s is going to get into a good school,” he said, adding that rejection isn’t always the worst thing in the world.


When he talks about the tricky business of taking over for somebody else, he avoids using personal language, preferring to talk about historical examples of succession, citing Margaret Thatcher and George Washington.


Still, doesn’t he find the scandalous nature of Stanley’s departure puts him under extra scrutiny?


“It made it easier for me because he succeeded in upsetting everyone. From a purely instrumental succession point of view, that made it very easy for me. Every time I do something vaguely rational, people look amazed.”


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