Boys School

73 I n 1977, the year I was to begin first grade, my parents decided to take me out of our local public elementary school, where I had attended kindergarten, and enroll me in an allboys private school across town, in what was back then a fairly downtrodden neighborhood on the Upper West Side of Manhattan . The move, so far as I can remember, came on the heels of a few run-ins I’d had with some older, black kids in the schoolyard toward the end of the previous year (I want to say they took the cookies from my lunch), and so, at least as far as my mother was concerned, my physical safety was a factor in the decision. But my older brother had been moved into a private school two years earlier, when he was in fourth grade, and it’s almost certain that I would have eventually followed suit. Partly it had to do with the fact that the New York City public schools were crumbling under a broken state budget, and my parents, themselves proud products of the public education system, were no longer convinced those schools could provide us with a good education. And partly it had to do with the fact that my parents, who had gone on to graduate from Harvard Law School, understood firsthand the particular pleasures of attending a well-endowed institution. But mostly I think it had to do with the fact that this was what successful professionals in the city like my parents did: enrolled their children in good private schools, so they could get into good colleges and graduate schools and go on to get good, high-paying jobs. Which is to say that, in the end, the decision probably had less to do with who I was than what my parents had become. So while my father sometimes acted as though he resented the decision—as though my mother’s anxiety had somehow forced his hand, that had it been left to him, I (let alone, my brother) would have toughed it out in public school as he had done and been the better for it—I suspect that he, like our mother, took a lot of satisfaction, pride even, in knowing that he had done ANDREW D. COHEN BOYS SCHOOL colorado review 74 his part to set us safely on the path toward prosperity, success, and happiness. The school was not just any private school, but one of the oldest , most competitive schools in the country, dating back some three hundred years to a time when its founders had to petition the London-based Society for the Propagation of the Gospel for funding. Once a church charity school, after the Revolution the school transformed itself into a college preparatory program modeled on the great English schools, like Harrow and Eaton, establishing a private endowment, easing its reliance on the Episcopal Church, adopting a new motto—“Labore et Virtue ”—and, according to the reverend who gave the address at the school’s 150th anniversary celebration, dedicating itself to nothing less than the “rightful training of our rising youth, of our city’s and country’s coming rulers.” Though the four-story building housing the elementary school I would attend dated back a mere seventy-five years, one nonetheless felt as though he were entering an imposing vault of history and expectation. I remember the apprehension with which I first walked through those wrought-iron gates, the heavy wooden doors, the arched entryway, and found myself standing in the Great Hall, with its high ceilings, its marble floors, its giant glass chandelier casting a gloomy yellow light against the dark corners of the windowless room. To the left stood the receptionist’s hulking wooden desk, beside which arose a broad marble staircase; before me, between two shallow staircases descending to the library, was a seating area with aged leather wing chairs and alumni magazines; to the right, past a series of glass display cases containing old trophies, basketballs, and yellowing, black and white photographs of unsmiling boys in knickers, stood two wooden doors that led to the administrative offices, including that of the headmaster with his...