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April 1, 2008
ANDOVER — Television’s perdurable interviewer, Richard D. Heffner, host of Public Broadcasting’s “The Open Mind,” wanted to talk about how schools actually go about teaching goodness and knowledge. His guest was Barbara Landis Chase, head of school of Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass., one of the nation’s oldest and most prestigious independent high schools. The show aired first on Saturday, March 29 at noon of Channel Thirteen in the New York City area and was then made available to other American Public Television stations across the country to air at various times.
Heffner, who founded the program in 1956, is a historian, an author, and a professor of communications and public policy at Rutgers University in New Jersey, and for 20 years headed the ratings board of the Motion Picture Association of America. He is also a master interviewer. He had invited Ms. Chase to become part of enlightening discussions on public television that have featured many great thinkers over the past 50 years, including Martin Luther King Jr., Margaret Mead, Dr. Benjamin Spock ’21, Rev. William Sloane Coffin ’42, Thurgood Marshall, Elie Weisel, Malcolm X, Mario Cuomo, James Conant, and Betty Friedan. This is television as we no longer see it—no flash, no sass. Just a simple, elegant little half-hour of pure, probing, thoughtful conversation.
Teaching goodness and knowledge, Ms. Chase said in answer to his opening question, goes right to the heart of Phillips Academy’s venerable mission. She discussed Andover’s approach to working with the whole child, its Puritan belief in hard work and academic excellence, its long-standing emphasis on service, its deep commitment to multiculturalism, and its goal of producing thoughtful and contributing citizens of the global community. “Certainly they [Andover students] are going to be leaders,” she said, “but we also want them to be servants of the public good.”
Heffner, who has interviewed many well-known educators over the years, was especially interested in Phillips Academy, he said, because his grandson, Alexander Heffner ’08, had been “blessed with four years at this quite extraordinary school.”
CONTACT: Sally Holm
978-749-4677
sholm@andover.edu
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