Blind Spots and Baby Steps

See below for a newsletter sent out yesterday from Harpeth Hall (my high school alma mater) explaining the end of an era, some email exchanges between me, my dear friend Katherine and Jess Hill (head of school), and a very compelling article written by a Harpeth Hall student. This has been a profound example to me of the blind spots all around us and the courage it takes to make changes. 

February 1987 (8th Grade at Harpeth Hall) 

June 16, 2020

Dear Harpeth Hall Alumnae,

Harpeth Hall has long been known for its history of tradition and innovation. Those two forces provide the fuel for our continued program of educational excellence for girls. In our constant quest to be better educators for the sake of our girls, we adopt new teaching methods, find new connections in subjects across disciplines, and explore the latest technological tools to enhance learning. 

Sometimes the forces of tradition and innovation are in conflict with one another. For the past several years, the Leadership Team, faculty, and students have questioned in separate discussions the long-standing tradition of the George Washington Celebration at Harpeth Hall - a place where girls are at the center of our story. During this past school year, we held focus group discussions with our Alumnae Board and Head’s Young Alumnae Council to gather their thoughts. As part of our deliberations, we met with faculty and reviewed the historical context for the celebration as well as its evolutions to present day, which I share below. We also conferred with administrators and teachers charged with leading the program over many years. After much thoughtful dialogue, we have decided that the George Washington Celebration held on February 13, 2020 marks our final performance. The decision was presented to the Board of Trustees earlier this month and was met with overwhelming support.

History of the George Washington Celebration

In 1913, young women at Ward-Belmont lived and studied in a protected enclave where young men were not allowed. In an effort to provide a social activity during a winter weekend that year, Ward-Belmont students planned a party where they imagined the lives of our founding fathers, dressed in colonial costumes, and danced the minuet to celebrate George Washington’s birthday. This social occasion was not a part of the educational program and continued for decades, with a multi-year hiatus during World War II when all citizens were called upon to conserve resources and support the war effort.

When Ward-Belmont closed in 1951 and Harpeth Hall began on the Hobbs Road campus, many former Ward-Belmont teachers brought traditions with them to continue the all-girls experience in Souby Hall, our first classroom building. The George Washington Celebration resumed in 1955 and served as an opportunity for beloved and revered Miss Patty Chadwell to teach dance in her Physical Education class. 

The George Washington Celebration experienced many evolutions over the decades, and in 1982 became a 7th grade activity, where girls were assigned to be soldiers, sailors, captains of the guard, or one of the guests at the celebration. Two outstanding students, first in the junior class and later in the 8th grade, were honored each year as George and Martha Washington. 

The Celebration in 2020

As educators, we are always evaluating what serves our girls best in and out of the classroom. We question how best to parse and fill the schedule so that, by the end of the day, quarter, and academic year, students are ready for their next phase of growth. We test the relevance of our curriculum as time passes. Inclusivity, wellness, and balance are also important considerations in how we provide a Harpeth Hall education. In studying the role of the George Washington Celebration in our educational program, we have concluded the following: 

• It is not consistent with or relevant to the way that we teach history today.
• It does not demonstrate the significant role that women, people of color, and other underrepresented groups play in our nation’s history.
• It is not the class-wide bonding experience it once was as roles are assigned based on a 7th grader’s P.E. schedule and practices occur in individual classes.
• While remembered by many alumnae, it is not a universally shared tradition among students who enrolled after their class's performance year. 
• A growing number of students, faculty, staff, and alumnae are expressing their discomfort with this tradition. 

With appreciation for the educators who began Harpeth Hall with a fervent commitment to girls’ education, for the teachers who have upheld this tradition year after year, for the thousands of girls who have performed their roles beautifully, and for the girls chosen by their peers to be George and Martha Washington, we officially announce that the George Washington Celebration will no longer continue at Harpeth Hall.

Our Commitment to the Future

For over 100 years, our school has had a tradition of celebrating the founding of our country and our democracy. Our belief in the ideals of freedom and liberty and justice for all remain steadfast. We will seek new opportunities to celebrate the history of our great nation in ways where our young women can understand their own leadership potential and their importance to our country’s future and in which all young women feel included.

Sincerely,

Jess Hill

Head of School

On Tue, Jun 16, 2020 at 1:59 PM Katherine Carpenter <katherineboydfalk@gmail.com> wrote:

Jess,

I applaud this decisive action. Thank you for your strong leadership on this issue and for taking the time to build consensus in the thoughtful and deliberate way you did in the lead up to this announcement.

I have been troubled by this ever since reading Maggie Sullivan's Logos article. While a student at Harpeth Hall, I had not yet developed the lens through which to think about this tradition critically and in nuanced ways. And honestly, I have not thought much at all about the George Washington celebration since I graduated in 1991. The article deeply resonated with me, especially as a result of my own initial awakening to issues of race and whiteness that began in my college years amidst the Rodney King riots - and the continuous awakenings that have happened ever since.

After reading the article, I had planned to write you to let you know that I - and other alum - would support you in eliminating the tradition, sooner rather than later. Notably in that group is my dearest friend Emily (Haynes) Huff - 1991 Lady of the Hall and a former George herself. She is cc'ed here.

I am encouraged by your courage to do the thing that I imagine some will strongly challenge. We are with you and behind you...there are so many of us who are.

I believe I told you at the Debby Irving talk in January that I am parenting an African-American daughter. While she is only 18 months old and I don't yet know what her academic future holds, I have hoped that Harpeth Hall would at least be an option for us to consider. Many times I have questioned that, given the challenges that a majority-white school will present for her. However, because of the conversations you are leading and decisions such as this, I feel more assured of Harpeth Hall becoming a place that would respect her, include her, "see" her, champion her - and perhaps someday in many ways would mirror her - in all of her beautiful blackness. This is but another step in many to follow, but I wanted to take a moment to send my deepest thanks and support.

With gratitude,

Katherine (Falk) Carpenter

On Tue, Jun 16, 2020 at 9:21 PM Jess Hill <hill@harpethhall.org> wrote:

Dear Katherine,

After a very long day, it is so good to hear from you. It looks like we have 8-9 years to get it right for your daughter, and I am sure we will not be a perfect school by that time, but we will be better than today as I believe today is better than our school yesterday.

Thank you so much for taking the time to write. This was a big decision. To anyone on the outside, it may seem like only ending an assembly. To those of us on the inside, we know it is so much more.

I hope you and your family are staying well. Hope to see you soon.

Jess

Emily Huff <emilyjasonhuff@gmail.com>	10:02 PM
to Jess, Katherine

Dear Jess,

I appreciate your response to Katherine, and I also appreciate that you've sent this email after a really long day (11:21 p.m. your time which is 9:21 p.m. my time here in Seattle where I live).  I recently heard someone compare the workload many of us have had in education in the last few months to the image of burning the candle at both ends with a blowtorch.  

It seems to me that this is a watershed moment in history as racism and injustice are being exposed and as systems of oppression are being challenged.  I am so grateful for so many blind spots that are being revealed and for the courage I am seeing of those who are naming them and making different choices. Thank you for taking this important step at Harpeth Hall. You are modeling so much for the students as they watch you lead with humility and as they see how you honor student voice. 

While I have fond memories of being George Washington as an 8th grader (and my parents even planted a cherry tree in our front yard for the occasion!), I was so compelled by Maggie Sullivan's article and thought to myself, "Why had I never seen that before?"  I am grateful for these students who are helping us see things more clearly through a lens of equity and inclusion.  I am getting better at asking the questions, "Which voices are present?  What messages are sent? Whose perspective am I not hearing?" 

I am on faculty at Seattle Pacific University in the School of Education, and recently, I asked one of the interns I have been supervising to reflect on how he will be a different teacher after the past few weeks.  It was inspiring to hear his reflections about wanting to challenge students to become more critical thinkers so that they can better understand how they may or may not have benefited from- and how they can challenge and disrupt systems of racial inequity.  Your email inspired me as well in this work of disruption. 

Thank you for helping girls commit to this lifelong work of learning to be anti-racist (and for challenging parents and alumni in these efforts as well)! 

Sincerely, 

Emily Huff 

By Maggie Sullivan, Opinions Editor

Edit, May 2020: This article was conceived and written before the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the daily lives of Nashvillians. When Harpeth Hall returns to in-person classes, large assemblies may look very different. Though I stand by my argument, it is currently pertinent and crucial to address the impacts of the pandemic on Harpeth Hall before focusing on re-evaluating this tradition.

If you came to Harpeth Hall in middle school as I did, knowing little about its community and traditions, did you imagine that you’d be hitch-kicking, marching or dancing the minuet alongside your friends playing slaveholders?

GEORGE: 7th graders gather in their historical costumes for the George Washington Celebration in February 2020. Courtesy of Harpeth Hall.

More than any other tradition at this school, the George Washington “Celebration” (henceforth, “George”) is the one that, in the past, has gone unexamined by students. Mentions of possibly adding pants to the uniform or cap and gown at graduation will often cause a rousing conversation in any pod or lobby. But due to the Upper School’s distance from all the time and work that goes into George, the pageant is, to many upper school students, simply another assembly to sit through.

For our seventh graders, it is an opportunity to confront stage fright, wear era-appropriate costumes, and have the whole school appreciate their talents. But beyond the seventh grade, most students spend the pageant singing along to the patriotic hymns or observing whose costumes were theirs, and then leave it complaining about how their year, George was better. 

A recent change divided seventh-grade students into soldiers, sailors and speakers based on their P.E. classes instead of having them choose. This decision has minimized the problem of class time being overtaken by rehearsal, but has also made many students focus on the details or the quality of George, rather than on its overall message.

Because of its presentation as a pageant, representing history but not commenting on it, it is rare that students apply their critical thinking skills to what George means. I will gladly admit that until last fall, I wasn’t applying all the analysis I’d learned in eight years of history classes to this unusual tradition. The irony of this is astounding, considering that seventh graders take American history in the same year that they perform in an ahistorically trivialized pageant.

Other changes to George have attempted to update it, most notably the monologue given to Martha Washington, who remains the only female character to speak in an hour long show. However, pedantic alterations cannot change the implicit message of the pageant: that the white, male Founding Fathers are the figures that truly matter in retrospect. This message is clearly inconsistent with Harpeth Hall as it envisions itself today: a transformative, diverse institution seeking to empower women of the 21st century.

The time has come to focus on how we can replace George.

It is impossible to improve George without introducing metacommentary. Many of the men portrayed gladly participated in America’s cruelest institution and destroyed Native American communities to “nobly” establish this country. Their wives were rarely more than dance partners who had little voice in public spaces. Though notable exceptions exist to these generalizations, no such nuance could be conveyed without an introduction separate from the pageant’s setting, one that would undo the “positive spirit” of the occasion. It would no longer be its palatable self.

This is not analogous to the statues of Confederate leaders that pollute Southern parks, which can be given more context in a museum rather than being unequivocally glorified in a public place.  Because George is a pageant, not a historical account, it necessarily involves simplification and removal of nuance; this is unacceptable when it causes the pageant to only present the white male view of history.

While I hold these views strongly, I also have fond memories of everything George was to me as a seventh-grader. As a history student, I was eager to portray someone whose ideas we’d contemplated in class that year. As a white person, it was easy for me to enjoy the pageant’s portrayal of history without thought. As an actress, I memorized my speech quickly and enjoyed the honor of giving a portrait to Martha Washington.

I don’t want to deprive future seventh graders of that opportunity. My suggestion is to honor a different piece of American history – one to which Harpeth Hall has a much clearer connection: the vote to ratify the 19th amendment.

AWAITING RESULTS: Suffragists at the Capitol, as seen in the Tennessean‘s issue from the morning after the 19th Amendment vote. Courtesy of the TN State Archives

The 2020 Distinguished Alumna in Memoriam Anne Dallas Dudley, graduate of our predecessor school Ward Seminary, was an integral part of passing the amendment that granted women suffrage nationally. She was the president of the Tennessee Equal Suffrage Association; leading up to the crucial vote in 1920, she and thousands of other women across the country lobbied for equal citizenship rights regardless of gender.

The vote itself was a nail-biter, with 35 states on the side of women’s suffrage – one below the majority needed to pass a Constitutional amendment. It was down to Tennessee, specifically the House of Representatives right here in Nashville. A young representative crucially changed his vote (taking the advice of his mother) to support the amendment, breaking a tie. This dramatic event and its meaning for women would resonate at an all-girls school much more soundly than the nationalism of George.

AN EAGER WITNESS: Governor A.H. Roberts, in the presence of Charl Williams (a suffragist from Memphis), signs papers that certify Tennessee’s passing of the 19th Amendment. Williams was the Vice Chairman of the Democratic Executive Committee. Courtesy of the TN State Archives.

It is also crucial to recognize, as George does not, the role of black people, especially black women, in the women’s suffrage movement. It cannot be denied that voter suppression was a cruel reality for people of color, especially black people, and barred them from the ballot box. Many black women were excluded from participation in the movement by its white leaders, notably the accomplished journalist Ida B. Wells. Highlighting them emphasizes their part in a movement to increase freedom and justice, not their unnamed presence enslaved by the men who speak during George.

Whatever replaces George, it cannot present the unified white perspective that George does. Acknowledging race is necessary. It’s no secret that our school is majority-white, and many of the donors who support George’s existence are white as well. In a society where people of color are still systemically held back in so many ways, it is the responsibility of those with racial privilege to confront it; this responsibility does not just fall to those who feel the negative effects of their ignorance.

George is built to be palatable. Any change in the right direction will undoubtedly make people uncomfortable, but this is a discomfort that must be confronted if we want our school to represent forward progress. We can replace the nationalistic, unwavering “patriotism” of George with an understanding of America in all its faults, which questions the systems of oppression that benefited and were codified by our nation’s founders. There’s nothing more patriotic than that.