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WEEK of September 17, 2007
@BFS! archives

Photos: basketball team of 1917 and the graduating class of 1927

Brooklyn Friends Celebrates a Centennial and Looks Back on 140 Years of Intellect, Energy, and Heart

by Joan Martin

In 1907 the world was at peace. The Hoover vacuum cleaner was invented and Maria Montessori opened her first Children’s House in Italy. Hershey Park, Seattle’s Pike Place Market, and Union Station in Washington, D.C. opened. It also was the time when Friends School at Brooklyn, founded in 1867 by the Religious Society of Friends, established a high school division to provide a comprehensive K-12 program and to prepare students for college.

In 2007 the Brooklyn Friends School community will celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Upper School and, at the same time, look back on 140 years of the intellect, energy, and heart that have characterized the school. “Our school has a remarkable history and an exceptionally strong commitment to the borough of Brooklyn,” said Head of School Michael Nill on the school’s opening day, September 6. “Throughout the year, we’ll be looking back on the amazing people and noteworthy programs from the past that have informed, nourished, and contributed to our community of teaching and learning today.”

A visit to the school archives illustrates notable similarities between the Brooklyn Friends School of 1907 and 2007. A century ago, the school’s mission was “to develop the whole child, each according to his individual capabilities.” Friends was coeducational in all divisions, unusual at the time when so many schools (even public schools) were single-sex. This feature sprang from Quaker society’s longstanding commitment to gender equality. Then, as now, there were small classes, personal attention, excellent faculty, and a first-rate education not only in academics but in the visual and performing arts, physical education and athletics, and service to others.

In 1907 as in 2007, Brooklyn Friends School holds Meeting for Worship and students are encouraged to incorporate the Quaker principles of simplicity, peace, integrity, compassion, and equality into their daily lives. Another similar feature from both 1907 and 2007 is that the school provides scholarships or financial assistance to students—while commonplace today, this was rare in independent education 100 years ago.

Also unique for the time were elective academic studies and a commitment “to assist, encourage and allow students to develop responsibility and self-government.” Discipline was (and still is) “firm, but never harsh, and is founded upon a faith in the child's ability to know and prefer the right.” In terms of educational philosophy, the Friends School of 1907 provided “a flexible course of study so that students are not held back in subjects in which they excel nor are they pushed harshly in subjects in which they are weaker.”

As for the differences, Brooklyn Friends School is over four times the size it was in 1907-1908. The high school had 21 students in 1907-1908; today there are 160. The location changed as well but only by a few city blocks. The school began in the Meeting House on Schermerhorn Street (photo, left, as it looks today), gradually expanded to 112-116 Schermerhorn Street, moved to 375 Pearl Street in 1973 and added a new space at 55 Willoughby Street for the high school in 2005. The Quaker population in Brooklyn was much larger in 1907 than it is today, and proportionally, there were more Quaker students at that time than there are in 2007. Over the past hundred years, however, the racial, religious and socio-economic diversity of the student body and the faculty has grown to such an extent that Brooklyn Friends is known as one of the most diverse independent schools in the country.

“Having a centenary celebration gives us a wonderful opportunity to deepen our appreciation of the past, strengthen our commitment to our mission, and strategically look forward to the future and the next 100 years of Brooklyn Friends,” said Dr. Nill. “I feel so fortunate to be leading a school with such an extraordinary history and deep commitment to the children of our borough and great city.”