Commentary

 

How Pennell Should Be Preserved
By Ted MacDonald

In 1962 I was a member of the last high school class to graduate from Pennell Institute. I spent five school years there altogether, including the eighth grade, so you may appreciate my interest in the debate about what to do with the old building.

I suppose it's really too early to sound any alarms, since there are no reliable reports that say anyone is advocating tearing down the building just yet. Rather, the current debate centers around who is the rightful inheritor of the building. And that worries some people, because it is believed that should it end up in the wrong hands, the building could eventually be demolished and, God forbid, be replaced with something more likely to turn a profit.

First of all, let me say that I think the old building has a pleasing look to it, but if good architecture is supposed to be a sort of music in space, then the wings that were added in the 50's make a very queer harmony indeed…wings that were paid for by the Town of Gray incidentally, if Audrey Burns tells me correctly. So I would hope that any future move to demolish the building is not based on the need to rid us of that sorrowful lack of harmony. Removing those contrary wings would set the old building's form aright once again I believe.

But to get to my point, everyone is aware that Henry Pennell's purpose in bequeathing the building to the people of Gray was to help see that our children might learn whatever knowledge we think is important, which can be interpreted to mean that the building was built to help impose on our youngsters our thinking as to what needs to be known.

But unfortunately, and all too often, our kids have suffered more pain than gain with this imposition, and sadly, since they have often been compelled against their better judgment to take what we have offered, too many of them have resigned early on to "get along by going along". Granted, we have made a fair effort to impart the basics, like the 3R's. But beyond that, a whole world of information is being imposed as though lives depended on it. And so we have created a monstrous unreality in our well-meaning attempts, where our kids face an absurdly overwhelming onslaught of information in our efforts to enlighten them.

The power and influence of the school system is becoming more pervasive and the cost more burdensome all the time. A child full of wonder and curiosity often succumbs early on, as the impulses of his more private and intimate interests surrender to the insistent demands of school. Individual initiative and self esteem get derailed.

So is it any wonder that too many leave school ill equipped to deal with practical issues, unable to fathom the consequences of everyday choices? And is it surprising that in spite of the tremendous freedoms promised, way too many fail to find work that fulfills them and into which they can throw their creative energies and imagination?

All of us who spent time at Pennell during my generation know how little we found there that proved pertinent later in life. Most of what we know of importance we learned for ourselves outside of that. But enormous and growing emphasis continues to be placed on public education, enough to make one think it is the be-all and end-all of existence. Education has become both a sacred cow and a colossal industry that has taken on a life of its own, irrelevant and beyond any call for what is needed for kids to have the skills and information and values needed in life.

So I think it's time we dispensed with the misleading palaver of well meaning educational bureaucrats. Can't we commit ourselves to simplify public schools and make them more real, even though this may be a task that has up to now largely escaped the best intentions of Henry Pennell and all the others? To help with this wouldn't if be useful to hang onto an embattled old reminder like the Pennell building to contrast with and point toward a simpler and more effective approach? Perhaps in doing so we will come to terms with the limitations of collective efforts to grapple with education, which is in the end a very individual and private matter.

To paraphrase an old Yankee commentator, we need to recognize that since we can't do everything, it is not necessary that what we do we should do wrong. By doing less in our attempts to educate we stand to accomplish a whole lot more. Besides the 3R's, let's focus on only a few other essentials, the important things that permit us to more fully realize the benefits of living in a free society, simple yet profound things such as responsibility and tolerance and appreciation of the natural world. Let's see that our schools nurture the natural human delight in discovering how things work.

We can make use of the old Pennell building as a town office or to house the Historical Society, or for some other practical purpose, but let's preserve it primarily as a monument to our exaggerated sense of what public school has amounted to, a symbol of the chasm between our long history of flawed attempts to educate and the compelling need for a practical reassessment and rebirth in attitude toward our public schools if we are to achieve a return on par with the investment and sacrifice poured into them.

If the old Pennell building stands persuasively toward that end, and we are reminded whenever we hear the chime of its bell that progress is possible only when we learn from our mistakes, it will truly be the most important building ever constructed in the Town of Gray.

Ted MacDonald is a Gray resident and a 1962 graduate of Pennell Institute