Christ. If you don’t want a portion of your overall grade to be determined by your ability to discuss ideas, then don’t go to a school which famously uses discussion-based learning for every single subject. It’s really that simple.

Another Exonian here (quite a bit older than you are if 13 is your grad year). I agree with both you and TrumanChipotle about this piece — I found it entirely lacking in substance and, dare-I-say-it, reactionary clickbait. (WHAT were her concerns, exactly? How and in what way did she want them addressed at the policy…

Recent grad here: These issues are often raised at Exeter in our Mid-term Efforts To Improve Class, or METICs, where teachers and students discuss what has been going well and what has not been going well in the class discussions to that point. In some of my classes there was a very clear disparity between speaking…

I see where you could get that impression visiting Exeter, because the teachers will frequently sit back and let the students guide the discussions unless the quality goes down. However, as a recent PEA grad, I can assure you that we are used to being called out for individual biases or to deepen our thinking, most…

Ms. Qamar’s assertion that Exeter is turning a blind eye to an important issue like sexual assault is simply wrong.

Actually, if done well, this is exactly what the Harkness method does. Students are encouraged not just to voice their own opinions but to build on the ideas of what other students have said — so when they get to college, they are often much better at listening to others than students who weren’t trained quite so…

So I read this piece, and I’m a bit confused:

Maybe I should have given a tl;dr (and I say that with a clipped tone): because I went there, and because I know the culture, and because I understand it as an institution. Because I have peers who have attended similar institutions who have freely and candidly given me context.

Yes yes, tying sexual assault to prep school culture is not difficult. What is more difficult is the implementation of effective school policy to curb such incidents. As you have mentioned, certain school policies and strategies simply do not work. Now let’s go beyond the easy task of observing that the prep school…

I know I’m in the minority here, but what is this piece supposed to be?