Today, could you imagine school without computers and calculators? Or in debate, searching for evidence in a library and writing it down by hand on cards? What about education closer to our day? But, in a different city, or even, country? Travel to France with Upper School French teacher Aimeric Lajuzan or locally to Stillwater Area High School with Upper and Middle School English teacher Andy Hueller. The grim reaper, literature, gym classes, battle of the bands, streetcars, songs for every occasion, disappearing voices, real evidence cards, and an abundance of stories populate the high school memories of our faculty and administration. In this series listen to them tell their stories through video, print, and podcasts. Our first installation brings us outside of the country to Canada with Head of School Bryn Roberts:

“I grew up in Niagara Falls, Ontario, just outside of Niagara Falls and Ontario on the Canadian side,” Roberts said, beginning his story of his high school years in Canada. “It was a pretty good high school…” Roberts said “…but it was a pretty sterile, predictable education.”

The school had very little to no technology, having some movies occasionally. “We didn’t have any technology whatsoever; calculators had literally not even come in at that point. We occasionally had movies in class. There was no technology per se and we didn’t have trips overseas – anything like that,” Roberts said.

“What’s very different from today was that it was one size fits all,” he said, going on to talk about how it did not accommodate for other learning styles or disabilities: “If you didn’t learn a certain way – if you weren’t a good writer, if you couldn’t listen to long lectures, if you weren’t a good test taker – then you were doomed,” he said, “It was in a fact a very, very rigid system.”

“We also had no diversity whatsoever – everybody in my school was white,” Roberts said. In the small community of his hometown, Roberts “didn’t know family where both parents worked.” He described where he lived as an “island of remarkable stability.”

“And that was the world I grew up in,” he said.

“Growing up in Canada, we didn’t have the social uproar of the 1960’s,” he said, referring to the Vietnam War, urban rioting, the Kennedy assassinations, the Civil Rights Act, and many other events. “We were right across from New York,” he said, pointing out landmarks like Niagara Falls and Lake Ontario.

“In Canada we didn’t have any of this and to me it was fascinating to be watching this country [the United States] that seemed to be so prosperous and have so many things going for it and to simultaneously to be in such extraordinary trouble,” Roberts said. This fascination soon led him to become an American historian, “and I wanted to know how it was, as a historian, how could you make sense of this country that looked many ways so much like Canada that had such a profoundly different experience?” Roberts said. “The United States was this extraordinarily complicated exciting country that made Canada in comparison look remarkably dull.” Roberts eventually left Canada and studied at the University of Michigan. Coming to the end of his high school story he concluded with one last comment,

“Canada was an island of tranquility.”