THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, November 1, 1994 TAG: 9411010034
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E01 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DIANE TENNANT, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 223 lines
FIRST, LET'S get a few things straight.
Eain Williams has not been bad. Charles and Andy Coddington are not incorrigible youths.
They are, however, all at boarding school. An all-male, academically rigorous, fitness-pushing, civic-minded, mom's-not-here board-ing school.
Why?
Why would parents send their kids away from home to attend high school? Why would they pay hefty bucks for tuition and board when public school is free?
The answer for these three students is Woodberry Forest School, but it could just as well be any of the nation's more than 250 boarding schools. The kids, by and large, choose boarding school themselves, because they are mature and independent enough to succeed away from home and because they are driven to excel once in college.
``The boys are up there by choice,'' said Dr. Charles Coddington of Chesapeake. ``They're not up there as a punishment or as a banishment. They've chosen to do that, and we are supporting them in their choice.''
Anderson Hall, Room 306, Advanced Placement U.S. History. Thirteen students, pencils scribbling furiously across notebooks. The dreaded history reports, the cause of sweat and anxiety in last night's dorm room, lie on the desk by the teacher, Dr. Charles McArver.
McArver: In the 1790s, we had a problem that affects the United States. What was that, Mr. Earle?
Student: Um, I was writing that down.
McArver: All right. What's the chapter about, for crying out loud? We're discussing what today?
Student: Foreign policy in the Washington administration?
McArver: Who was fighting whom?
Student: British and French.
McArver: Thank you.
Eain Williams and the Coddington boys are students at Woodberry Forest School near Orange, Va. Expensive by some standards, dirt-cheap by others, Woodberry Forest sends all of its graduates to college, many of them with scholarships. With a student-teacher ratio of 11 to 1, faculty that live on campus, six days of class a week and mandatory evening study hall, Woodberry Forest has an academic record that public schools only dream about.
Eain had been accepted at a private school in Hampton when he learned of Woodberry Forest and its offering of college-level classes, required sports participation and its stringent honor code, which means dorm rooms and bicycles are left unlocked and a man's word is binding.
``It's exactly what it says, a college-prep school,'' said 16-year-old Eain, pausing in his school tie and dark sports coat on the walk outside the fine arts building. ``I wanted to be prepared for college. I don't want to be in the situation where I get to college and feel like I can't keep up.''
Ernest Williams said he had never heard of Woodberry Forest when his son approached him about attending. But he was receptive to it, because he had worked hard to send Eain to private elementary and middle schools to save him from the streets that had claimed so many black children in Newport News.
``In the neighborhood we lived in, the kids went to school because the law said they had to be there,'' Ernest Williams explained. ``When they got out of school, they went straight out to play. So I said private school, that's what it's got to be.''
Still, Williams, a widower, wasn't prepared to send his only son away from home. ``I said, I'm gonna be frank with you, son, I'm not so sure I can handle it. And he said, you're a big boy, you can handle it,'' Williams said.
Andy and Charles Coddington followed family tradition to Woodberry Forest. They attended public school through eighth grade, then chose to attend the school where their father, a Norfolk physician, and their grandfather had grad-uated.
Tradition at Woodberry Forest School dates to 1889, when a former Confederate officer built a schoolhouse on his farm to educate his sons. It evolved into one of the nation's leading prep schools.
It lies in the rolling hills near Charlottesville, its academic buildings circling a central wooded lawn headed by The Residence, a house designed by Thomas Jefferson and built in 1792.
Modern athletic facilities, a nine-hole golf course and the leaf-spattered Rapidan River enwrap the academic cluster. A beef cattle farm lies at one end of campus - it once supplied food to the dining hall, now it provides revenue for the school. The dining hall, with its long polished wood tables, is set for family-style dinners, with a faculty member presiding over each table.
Students hurry between classrooms - there is no time lapse between the end of one class and the start of the next - but there is no shoving or pushing, and doors are held open for adults. Dorm rooms are decorated equally with football posters and bikini-clad models. Chapel is mandatory on Sunday nights, but in the daytime, St. Andrews Church provides perfect acoustics for lessons on violin and other instruments.
McArver: Um, who haven't I hit on? Mr. Gillespie. What were the terms of the treaty and why was it so controversial?
Student: Uh, they gave us compensation for the vessels. . . .
McArver: Did they?
Student: Agreed to stop doing it.
McArver: Agreed to stop???!!! Come on, come on. Think, think, think, think.
Students: (dead silence)
McArver: Gotta move, gotta move, gotta move. Come on, come on, think of your British history.
Boarding school gives the Coddington and Williams families much to deal with, including tuition ($16,900 a year), separation and rigorous schedules.
So far, both parents and sons have handled it well. Tuition at Woodberry Forest is on the low side for boarding schools, which can run more than $20,000 a year. Eain receives financial aid through the school, as do 28 percent of the students there.
Distance is what some families fear about boarding schools, said Headmaster John Grinalds, a retired Marine major general who sent all four of his own children to various boarding schools to give them some stability while he traveled from post to post.
``You actually don't lose your children,'' he said. ``We started off feeling we would never see our babies.
``It's rare that a parent goes four weeks without seeing their child.''
While on campus, the boys go to class six days a week, participate in three fitness-related activities per year (from football to rappelling to Ultimate Frisbee), go to study hall every weekday night, perform community service work and live with, play with and learn from faculty members, who live on campus.
``The way that system is set up, there's no reason for a student to flunk out of Woodberry Forest,'' Ernest Williams said. ``They've got all the mechanisms in place. The faculty live on the campus, the students live on the campus, they see each other in a classroom role, in a leisure role, in a study hall role. Woodberry is a city right there in itself. They've got it all.''
Anderson Hall, Room 106, English 400 Honors. Teacher John Reimers passes out copies of a poem to six students, including Andy Coddington.
Reimers: ``I bedewed it with my tears.'' Immediately you know that this poetry is what?
Student: I think it's good.
Reimers: Wretched poetry. Wretched poetry because it's what?
Different student: Overwritten.
Reimers: Overly sentimental, please . . . wretchedly bad poem. This should be framed and hung right underneath what?
Students: (dead silence)
Reimers: The chenille towel with Elvis on it.
Because faculty members coach sports and arts activities, supervise the dorms and attend chapel with the students, they come to know the boys as people, not just as students, Coddington explained. That makes for long-term friendships, and a personal interest in each student's success, he said.
French language teacher Johanna Smethurst agreed. ``The boarding school environment is so intense. You really do live in each others' pockets,'' she said
Smethurst called one struggling student to a 6:30 a.m. tutoring session one day. Students can also attend 5:20 p.m. study halls, and they must study from 7:45 to 10 p.m. every weekday.
Those who earn demerits for offenses such as sloppy rooms (the list of offenders is posted each day on the bulletin board), must give up their one free night on Saturday to attend an additional study hall.
More serious offenses are not tolerated. Possession or use of drugs or alcohol, even off-campus, means immediate expulsion. Lying, cheating and stealing are violations of the honor code and also can mean expulsion. Last year, Woodberry expelled nine of its 365 students - two for alcohol, two for unacceptable behavior and five for honor code violations.
``Living in an environment where people take you at your word is so satisfying,'' the headmaster said. ``The honor system has been extremely important.''
The classes resemble college sessions, with lively discussion between teacher and students. Boys are required to dress neatly and be prepared for class. Forgetting a book is grounds for an extra study hall. The standard student response when a teacher answers a question or levies a study hall is ``thank you.''
English 400 Honors, discussion of the Herman Melville novel ``Redburn.''
Reimers: Ninety-seven please. What did you underline on page 97? Sit up so your father doesn't have to repair your back.
Students: (silence, except for the flipping of book pages)
Reimers: It's the smugness that is so appalling. Mr. Wilson, you should have bracketed all this as you went through it. That's Melville mocking standardized religion through Wellingboro and Redburn. Am I going too fast for anybody?
Obviously, boarding school is not for everyone.
``I'd say maturity and independence are big parts of it, and willingness to accept responsibility is a big part of it,'' said Brendan O'Shea, admissions director. ``I mean, their mother isn't here to get them out of bed and say breakfast is ready.''
Woodberry accepts 47 percent of applicants each year, based on a standardized test, grades, recommendations and a personal interview. A big factor is the student's desire to come to the school.
``Boys who come here are purposeful,'' said Grinalds, the headmaster. ``They're not wandering. They know what they want.''
Eain, who participates in football and cycling, reads for the campus literary magazine and hopes to become a doctor, agreed. ``It's hard, very hard,'' he said, `but this teaches you a lot about living on your own. It definitely teaches you money management skills.''
In the eyes of Eain's father, boarding school emphasizes excellence in a way that public schools do not. And that, he believes, is the ticket to success for his son.
``I know from my experiences the more you learn, the more you earn. Simple,'' he said. ``Although we're far from being rich - I wouldn't even consider us well off - we have very expensive tastes. And in order to support that type of taste, you've got to work. It's like dying. We all know we're gonna die, so we may as well go to heaven. So if you've got to work, you may as well get as much education as you can.'' ILLUSTRATION: Staff color photos by MOTOYA NAKAMURA
Dinner at Woodberry Forest School, near Charlottesville, is formal.
From left are students Mike Orlando, Andy Coddington, Thornwell
Simons and Sumit Bothra.
John Reimers, left, leads a discussion of poetry in his honors
English class.
Charles coddington, left, of Chesapeake discusses a paper with
classmate Mason Paul in his dorm room.
Graphic
STUDENTS & TEACHERS HAVE A CLOSE RELATIONSHIP
[Dialog between student and teacher.]
For copy of graphic, see microfilm
Staff photo by MOTOYA NAKAMURA
Music teacher Anne Kish teaches German exchange student Mark
Stemmler at the Woodberry Forest School chapel.
KEYWORDS: BOARDING SCHOOL
by CNB