A look inside the box

by Allen Johnson '64

Graduating from Andover almost 35 years ago, we were told a version of what almost every high school class is told. I heard it again at my own college graduation, and then again when my children graduated from high school and then college. It goes something like this: You are the hope of the future. The world is yours now, and we're depending on you to solve the problems we haven't been able to solve.

I have to say it seemed a bit premature to me for the older generation to be so eager to pass off responsibility to a bunch of 18-year-olds. We sat there and felt as though the adults were handing us something, passing it on, but it wasn't at all clear just what it was. It was like a box you couldn't see inside. It felt like a cloud had passed over the celebration carrying a big message that said, "Oh, by the way, the world has had a great deal of trouble, and now it's your turn to fix it. Tag! You're it!"

I think the adults spoke from an important truth, and that truth comes in two parts. The first part is that the world shapes who we are. That's something we are very aware of as we are growing up. But the second part is that we, in turn, as we participate in the world, make it happen as it does. The problem was in the vagueness.

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Resisting harmful stereotypes

by Judith Jordan '61

In my opinion, there is nothing about gender that is marginal or unimportant. Gender matters. It is at the core of our psychological organization, and it is at the core of our political organization. It is central to our identity, to our ways of organizing knowledge and power, to our ways of relating, to our ways of being in the world. Race, class, ethnicity, sexual orientation are sources of pain and discrimination in a racist, sexist, heterosexist and classist culture, which, by the way, we live in. Clearly, all these systems of unearned advantage and privilege need to be challenged, but today we are here to talk about gender. I truly believe that if we can shed the gender straightjacket which we are all pushed into, and if we can allow for the development of a full range of human abilities in both women and men, we could be well on our way to major, positive social change which we badly need. We could also lessen the personal suffering that these gender stereotypes create for many, if not most, people. So it is good that Andover, as an educational beacon, has by opening the Brace Center taken a step that says, "We need to understand gender."

My own field has been the study of gender, but, more specifically, the study of women and relationships. Many of you may be aware of the American Association

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Copyright, Phillips Academy, 1999