Big topic, I know. Can’t cover it all. But here are some random thoughts that may mean something individually or when put together.

As most of you know, I went to public schools through 12th grade in suburban St. Louis. I did very well academically and was admitted to Harvard, the only school to which I had applied (that’s another story). When I got to Harvard, I learned something the first week I was there, even before classes started: I didn’t know anything. It appeared to me that, while there were some freshman as ignorant as I was, we were the minority, not the majority.

Now, I know it was Harvard, and Harvard attracted some exceptionally bright people, but my reaction (and my mind has not changed) was: my high school education was not very good.

I concluded that the Ladue school system was just not very intellectually oriented. Putting Harvard aside, I compared myself to a number of kids I knew who had gone through the University City system, and I concluded that the U. City graduates were much better prepared.

What was the difference? I believe University City had a progressive Board of Education. Ladue clearly did not. The Ladue system was run by a very conservative Board, who hired very conservative administrators. Ivan Nicholas, the superintendent, was not called Tsar Nicholas for nothing. And Richard Stauffer, the Ladue High principal, assured me that, by the time I matured, I would become a responsible supporter of the Republican party.

In successive elections for the Board, my mother and her friend and our neighbor Irv Sobel ran for the Board, and lost. We always felt that the campaign against both of them was influenced by antisemitism. Both were described as Communists (oh, my) and of course my mother was female, and Irv was a professor at Washington University. I remember one part of the campaign against him – he was an “educator” and Ladue already had an “educator” on the Board.

During my first week at Harvard, one of the speakers for the freshman class was journalist I.F. Stone. I never had heard of him – but at least everyone who had gone to high school in New York State had. He was a very progressive, non-Communist journalist. Why hadn’t I heard of him? My guess is that references to people like Stone were not permitted to be discussed in the Ladue curriculum.

Missouri was a Civil War border state – it had been a slave state that stayed in the Union. In the 1950s, I would guess that half of my class would have voted with the Confederates, not the Union. I don’t remember any instruction on racial equality, or even on current race relations. At the time, St. Louis was pretty segregated – and we never gave any thought to it. As to gay students, I never heard anything about that in school – was anyone in my class gay? I can’t even answer that today.

Yes, we lived in a large suburban enclave, and rarely left it. We lived the way people should live, and there was no reason to think that any of us would live any differently. The Ladue system’s goal was to develop “the whole person”. That means no over thinking things, no eccentricities, etc.

I know times have changed over the past 60+ years. Even when my children were in school 30 years ago, things had changed. So, I don’t pretend to have any expertise on how to reform the current educational system.

My conclusions are different:

Did my being educated in a conservative suburban school system affect the way I look at society and politics today? The answer is “no”.

Did the lack of intellectual rigor affect my post high-school life? The answer is “maybe”, not because I didn’t “catch up”, which I think I did, but a more rigorous high school might have led me to a different approach to my college education, which might have led me onto different career paths.

Was the lack of intellectual rigor related to the conservative nature of the school system? I think this answer is “yes”, because it limited one’s ability to become familiar with a wider range of thinking.

Did the conservative nature of the school system have any other effects on my future life? Here, I am not sure, but it is possible that a more activist school system would have encouraged me to become more activist as time went by.

So my overall conclusion is that I really don’t know the answer to any of these questions. A school system’s ideology competes with family, peer pressure from other activities, innate qualities, and the world at large. As for me, I don’t think the Ladue school system had any real effect on how I think, although it may have had an effect on how active I have been in trying to put my thinking into action.

I wonder if there have been any studies on this. On how the political and social biases of one’s education affect one’s later life. Seems to me these studies would be crucial. If someone would study, say, the class of 1960 Ladue High School and the class of 1960 University City High School, what differences would they find, and to what extent could these differences be attributed to differences in the social and political characteristics of the school boards and faculties.