St. George's Welcomes Students, Honors Late Headmaster

A total of 366 new and returning students from across the United States and around the world were welcomed to St. George's School Monday morning for the official start of the boarding school's 2010-2011 academic year.

In welcoming the school's 123 new students and nine new faculty members, Head of School Eric F. Peterson set the tone for the year by including academic recognition, commendations and Cum Laude inductions in the annual back-to-school Convocation ceremony held in the school chapel under its towering spires.

The St. George's School has 366 students registered for the 2010-2011 academic school year, including 294 boarding students, 43 day students from primarily Aquidneck Island and nearby communities, and 29 students who are children of faculty, according to Suzanne McGrady, spokesperson for St. George's School. The student body hails from 26 states nationwide, as well as 21 countries including Guana, Italy, Germany, Bermuda, China and others.

Beyond academics, Peterson assured students that the 70 members of the faculty would be there to also guide the students in learning to make complex choices and engage in critical thinking that would serve them throughout life, which he described as the "the essence of education."

"We want to help you learn to live well-chosen lives," Peterson said in his Convocation address.

Peterson, the Head of School since 2005, opened his remarks with a confession of sorts, that as a student, he considered himself as being more comfortable and capable with words than numbers, until he began to see mathematics as a new way to view the world. 

In today's technology-dependent world, built on a binary number system of "yes-no" absolutes that encourage predictable outcomes, he urged students in this "complex world" to use caution and not approach everything in life with such absolutes as intolerance, for example, to think for themselves and to "weigh the nuance of each question carefully."

Whether passing or failing a test or finding oneself facing the Honor Board, such occasions happen as either a "series of successful choices" or as a "layered series of misjudgments" that eventually lead to a conclusion, he cautioned students. He noted such well-known examples as "the Titanic, the Gulf Oil Spill, and Bernie Madoff," and again observed the role of moment-to-moment decision-making. "Things tend to fall apart one bit at a time."

Practice mindfulness, know the world around you, and strive to "know thyself" as ancient philosophers wrote, he urged the student body. "The choices we make define our lives," he said in conclusion. "We can choose to be honest, kind or brave..."

Also at Monday's Convocation Ceremony, faculty and students held a special Memorial Stone Dedication Ceremony to honor the late Charles A. Hamblet, who served as Headmaster at St. George's from 1989 to 2004 and lost his battle to cancer in 2010.