The Roeper School and Thoughts on Educational Theory

This week, an important figure in my family's life passed away. Her name was Annemarie Roeper. She was 92 years old, and she was cofounder of the phenomenal private school that my brother Max attended from 2nd through 12th grade. News of her passing quickly filled up my Facebook news feed (as I have a handful of my brother's school friends on there) and it gave me some pause. I found myself reading up on the Roeper Philosophy and reflecting on the part it played in my upbringing, despite my never having attended the school. I thought I'd take this as an opportunity to share some of my thoughts on child psychology and education, as I am beginning to suspect many of them were more heavily influenced by this remarkable woman than I ever realized.

For your reference, here is her obituary on the Roeper school website, here is a rather lengthy piece detailing the Roeper Philosophy, and here is something Max's friend Dan wrote up in his sociology blog on her passing(Dan also attended Roeper). They're all worthwhile reads, and will inform what I'm about to go on about.

The Roeper experience; the culture, the community, the philosophy and the educational structure all remained something of a mystery to me for several years. I was young at the time, and I only interacted with it in minimal, brief ways. But over time, the holes began to fill in and I started to see why this school played such a central role in my brother's life and upbringing.

There are a lot of noteworthy, fascinating and unique features to the Roeper Philosophy, but there's one in particular that I'd like to focus on. It's something that, in recent years, I've begun to praise my parents for; they have the ability to be simply, plainly honest with a young child. So many parents think that children require sugarcoating, metaphor, and little-white-lies in order to digest what we consider to be "adult" or "difficult" concepts. But, at the end of the day, children can comprehend far more advanced ideas than we tend to give them credit for. When I was young, if I asked a question and the answer was "maybe," then my parents said "maybe." they didn't force a "yes/no" dichotomy into a naturally grey situation. When parents do this, it breaks down trust, as the answer may later turn out to be false, and the child feels lied to. There is a certain confidence that you instill in a child when you give them the full truth, no matter how difficult you may perceive it to be.

This was always a central element in Max's experience at Roeper. Students at that school are given more control over their education than children who attend public school. I don't remember Max ever telling me that an authority figure had given him a "because I said so" or "because those are the rules" answer, even when he asked particularly challenging questions. Some of the pieces fell in place for me when I read Annemarie's obituary and saw that her mother studied with Sigmund Freud. Freud was the first major psychologist to suggest that experiences during childhood have any weight on adult development. It may sound obvious now, but at the time it was a radical and new idea that challenged everything people knew about parenting.

Plain honesty was one of the primary elements that smoothed the transition in my family during my parents' divorce. My parents never lied to me about the situation, and knowing that I could trust my parents to give me the truth gave me a solid grounding; something to hang onto when everything else was scary. Not only did this create a sense of confidence and control in me, but it reinforced my relationship with my parents - something that is desperately necessary during a divorce.

I also think this idea has begun to inform children's fiction, which is an exciting trend. One of the reasons I fell so head-over-heels in love with the Harry Potter series (along with the rest of the planet) was that it never lied to the reader. (spoilers!) Yes, in book 6, Dumbledore dies, but why? Because your parents won't be around to protect you forever. Yes, at times, evil triumphs, but why? Because life is often unfair and you can't control everything. I think that laying out difficult universal truths for children in a safe context like fiction is a healthy way to expose them to harsh ideas without frightening them. It's all part of preparing children for the real world - which, oddly enough, is another central feature of the Roeper Philosophy. A part, I think, born out of Annemarie's experiences in WWII. Terrible things happen. Lying to our children about it won't protect them.

Annemarie Roeper was obviously an extraordinary woman who had a profound effect on not only the community at her school, but on educational philosophy worldwide. I count myself very lucky to have felt the influence of her philosophy in my life. I'm sure I will continue to discover other elements of that culture that have crept their way into my personal thinking, and I will happily carry those lessons into my adulthood and eventual parenting experiences.