NMH Magazine : Fall 2005

Parting Words

David Thompson, NMH college counselor from 1971 to 2005, offers his opinion on the school’s obligation to educate students from all walks of life and every part of the globe.

I hope NMH will never be content to be just another New England prep school, even one of the best. Our history and our students demand something more.

NMH has always championed those who otherwise lacked the opportunity for our particular quality of education, starting with the poor farm girls that Dwight L. Moody encountered on his buggy rides. We have prided ourselves on offering the NMH experience to students of color trapped in the inner city, to Native Americans tentatively leaving the reservations, and to kids from working-class families. Opportunity has been the reason for our existence and our mission from the beginning. Strengthening our identity as an opportunity school will preserve our heritage and make the most compelling case to prospective students.

NMH must determine who we want to serve with the NMH opportunity. It’s easy to identify some: the young people that A Better Chance has been finding for decades, international students eager to expand their horizons, underrepresented minorities, the first generation bound for college. But our opportunity students are also the wealthy boy from Atlanta who was beaten severely for being gay and came to NMH seeking refuge, the hockey player from Maine who’d never had a black friend, the international student who’d never washed a pot or swept a floor. I suggest they may also be students with special needs, such as physical limitations, or those who’ve never considered leaving home to broaden their perspectives. We need more students of color; more from the Midwest and the Middle East. We need international kids not so disproportionately from the Pacific Rim. To find them, recruit them, and serve them well will require an enormous commitment of money and other resources, but I believe it is the only way to have a future as distinguished and noble as our past.

By providing opportunity, we became an unusually diverse school—and that diversity provides the core of the NMH experience. Ironically, our sister schools, such as Andover and Exeter, began to follow our example of valuing diversity in the ’70s and ’80s; some have surpassed us because their endowments make it easier for them to attract those students who most deserve the name “Moody’s boys and girls.”

Having two campuses helped us sustain our ability to embrace the full spectrum of humanity. We offered two very different environments, providing more options for students and teachers to find a niche. That luxury no longer exists. The Northfield campus is gone, but the choice is not between Northfield and Mount Hermon; rather, the challenge is to nurture the best of both and become an even more radically inclusive school.

For NMH to honor its legacy, to make Mr. Moody proud, and to attract enough students to remain viable, we must be clear about who we are: we want to be the school where almost every person can feel at home and also be stretched to extend his or her appreciation of different types of people, unfamiliar cultures, and new ideas. The NMH environment should nurture students of all kinds: rich, poor, athletes, artists, white, black, brown, evangelical and agnostic, from Down East and the Far East, J. Crew and Goth.

Opportunity is not just a noble ideal for NMH, but perhaps the key to preserving our civilization from increasing polarization in the world. The clash of conflicting, fundamentalist ideologies is one of the great threats of our time. But NMH graduates could make a difference in the world if their experience here has made them well-informed critical thinkers who are passionately committed citizens of the world. This commitment is precisely what Mr. Moody stood for in his evangelism. Conservative as he was theologically, he nonetheless stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the most liberal Christians of his day.

Let us become the opportunity school we have always aspired to be. Unless we embrace this vision more boldly, we will no longer be the leader we have been, and we will fail not only Mr. Moody, but future generations. In every plan we devise, every student we admit, every teacher we hire, and every decision we make, let us always remember that our heart and soul depend on being the school that serves many who otherwise would not have this chance. v

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