Education: Big Dick’s Plans

Notable among Midwestern schools for boys is Lake Forest Academy. Unlike its many neighboring institutions it is not a military school. Since 1858 it has seen Lake Forest, Ill. become Chicago’s socialite suburb. As though embarrassed by surrounding opulence, L. F. A.’s old buildings have hidden themselves behind thick trees, gathered ivy about themselves, for L. F. A. is not a Rich School (plant value: $800,000). But no such embarrassment is suffered by big-boned, energetic Headmaster John Wayne Richards, called “Big Dick” by younger faculty members and his 207 boys when out of earshot.Seventeen years ago he left the faculty of Hotchkiss School (Lakeville, Conn.) to succeed William Mather Lewis—now President of Lafayette College—as L. F. A.’sHeadmaster. He brought Hotchkiss ideas about running a successful school; new boys even became known, Hotchkisswise, as “bo-jacks.” A Yaleman, he started sending his boys to Eastern colleges. L. F. A.’s future brightened.

What worried Headmaster Richards, however, was the way the big Eastern preparatory schools pulled the cream of Midwestern youngsters across the Alleghenies to school. He resolved that Lake Forest should equal the Eastern schools in educational facilities and plant. In 1927 he set out to raise $1,000,000 from alumni and wealthy Chicagoans. The money will build dormitories, commons, a science hall, a headmaster’s house, a chapel in memory of onetime (1897-1900) Headmaster Alfred Gardner Welch, who died of exposure after saving a group of students who drifted out on Lake Michigan on an ice floe in dead of winter.

Next task for Headmaster Richards was to improve his teaching system.Announced last week was this unusual plan, test-proved last Spring: 1) Henceforth each academic schedule period will be divided into two 45-min. periods, the first for recitation, the second for supervised preparation of the next day’s lesson. 2) Every fifth appointment period in each course will be devoted to review and research. Boys will prepare written reports on their work. 3) Realizing that there are more and less advantageous periods throughout the day, Headmaster Richards has arranged a daily “staggered, rotating schedule.” For instance, in a given week the boy may have algebra the first period on Monday, the second on Tuesday, the third on Wednesday, the fourth on Thursday and the fifth on Saturday. Not only are all subjects arranged thus “diagonally” across the academic schedule, but the algebra which occurred the first period on Monday of one week will occur the second period the following week and so on.

Of his plan said Headmaster Richards: “I have long wanted to be the head of a school where boys more and more are really vitally interested in education . . . where in every case the Master in a given subject can honestly say that everything within human reason has been done to aid and promote the progress of a boy; where classrooms may be free from the formal ranks of desks fastened to the floor and made more appealing with chairs and tables; where the bright as well as the slower student can advance without the hindrance of a lock-step regimentation. . . . You may call it ‘Progressive Education’ if you wish—I don’t care.”

To build up a school which will keep Midwestern boys near home before they proceed East to acquire the rest of their light and learning, “Big Dick” looks for help from a potent board of trustees. Among them: Robert Julius Thorne, one-time president of Montgomery Ward & Co.; Charles F. Glore of Field, Glore & Co.; Albert Blake Dick Jr. (mimeographs); President DeForest Hulburd of Elgin National Watch Co.; Clayton Mark (steel); Cyrus Hall McCormick (harvesters) ; President Fred Wesley Sargent of Chicago & Northwestern Ry.; Louis Franklin Swift (packer).

Help, too, may come from such Old Boys as: Paul Starrett, Manhattan contractor; John Villiers Farwell, Chicago financier, Yale trustee; Hopewell Lindenberger Rogers, onetime treasurer of the Chicago Daily News; Walter Byron Smith, director of Illinois Tool Works; President Henry Willis Phelps of American Can Co.; Frederick Tudor Haskell, director Continental Illinois Bank & Trust Co.