Tag Archives ⇒ Friends Seminary

Hitler jokes and Quaker schools

March 26, 2018
· Martin Kelley

The case of a beloved Quak­er Jew­ish teacher being fired from a NYC Friends School for mak­ing a Nazi salute as a joke is bring­ing us some inter­est­ing com­men­tary. Mark Oppen­heimer writes in Tablet:

One might call this whole episode the tri­umph of Waspy good inten­tions over Jew­ish com­mon sense… But of course Quak­er schools — and Quak­er camps, like the one I once attend­ed, and Quak­er meet­ing­hous­es — are, these days, pret­ty Jew­ish places. The Times arti­cle has a bur­lesque feel, with a bunch of Jew­ish stu­dents and alum­ni per­form­ing in Quaker-face.

He also makes inter­est­ing points about the cul­tures of Jew­ish humor (“We Jews sur­vive because of Hitler jokes”) and that of Friends:

The Quak­er prac­tice of silent wor­ship can dis­pos­es its prac­ti­tion­ers against the loud, bawdy, con­tentious dis­course that infus­es Jew­ish cul­ture. I’m not mak­ing claims about indi­vid­ual Quak­ers — I can intro­duce you to per­fect­ly hilar­i­ous Quak­ers, some of whom inter­rupt even more than I do — but at their insti­tu­tions, the val­ues that come to the fore are Gene Sharp not Gene Wilder. In their earnest­ness, Quak­er schools are David Brooks not Mel Brooks. You get the idea.

I’m always a bit unsure how seri­ous­ly to take cul­tur­al Quak­er stereo­types as moti­vat­ing forces in pieces like these. I won­der how many Friends actu­al­ly work or study at a Man­hat­tan Quak­er school. A more gener­ic head­mas­ter fear-of-conflict seems as like­ly a cause as any­thing to do with silent wor­ship. Then too, we don’t know what oth­er issues might be at play below the sur­face of pri­va­cy and con­fi­den­tial­i­ty. But the Friends Sem­i­nary inci­dent seems as good a mark­er as any­thing else of the com­pli­cat­ed dynam­ics with­in Friends schools today.

http://​www​.tablet​mag​.com/​s​c​r​o​l​l​/​2​5​8​3​9​4​/​j​e​w​i​s​h​-​t​e​a​c​h​e​r​-​f​i​r​e​d​-​f​r​o​m​-​q​u​a​k​e​r​-​s​c​h​o​o​l​-​f​o​r​-​m​a​k​i​n​g​-​n​a​z​i​-​j​oke

Carolina Friends School in Durham confronts reports of decades-old sexual abuse

August 28, 2014
· Martin Kelley


A Friends School talks open­ly about past school abuse via Raleigh News & Observer)

The alum­nus said he’s upset the prin­ci­pal [Harold Jerni­gan] has not acknowl­edged the accu­sa­tions. But he said he doesn’t regret send­ing his orig­i­nal mes­sage. ‘If you read Quak­er lit­er­a­ture, they spell ‘Truth’ in the upper­case – the impli­ca­tion of divin­i­ty,’ he said, ‘that it is a holy thing to con­tin­ue that search for truth.’

I’m glad this is get­ting out now, but I did a double-take as the accused prin­ci­ple is still alive and liv­ing a few dozen miles from me. He was a lightning-rod fig­ure as prin­ci­pal of at least two oth­er schools after Car­oli­na. I imag­ine the behav­ior con­tin­ued. Updates below:

  • An peri­od arti­cle on his tenure at a Friends Sem­i­nary, a Man­hat­tan Friends school, talked about the unrest of his two-year tenure there. It sounds like he came in and sum­mar­i­ly fired the heads of the low­er, mid­dle, and upper schools. This is the kind of thing one would do if they want­ed to cur­tail accountability.
  • A mem­oir by Quak­er edu­ca­tor Leonard Ken­wor­thy talks about this peri­od at Friends Sem­i­nary: “He moved much too rapid­ly in bring­ing about changes, ask­ing for the res­ig­na­tions of the heads of the ele­men­tary and mid­dle school, plus sev­er­al oth­er shifts, with­in a very short peri­od, even before he took over as prin­ci­pal. Over and over I urged him not to move too fast but he said there were two ways of han­dling such a sit­u­a­tion. One was to move slow­ly over a peri­od of years. The oth­er was to bring about quick changes and then to begin rapid­ly to ini­ti­ate new pro­grams and new per­son­nel. He was deter­mined to use the lat­ter approach.”
  • A 1986 New York Times pro­file of Friends Sem­i­nary had this to say of its for­mer head: “After a shake-up of the staff that led to the res­ig­na­tion or dis­missal of sev­er­al teach­ers, a teacher’s union was formed, and stu­dents went on strike. Even­tu­al­ly, the prin­ci­pal, Harold Jerni­gan, resigned and the school ”reject­ed mus­cu­lar Quak­erism and returned to its mys­ti­cal faith,” in the words of the offi­cial history.”
  • A com­menter on one news arti­cle writes: “Please also know that Harold Jerni­gan’s behav­ior con­tin­ued on at Atlantic City Friends School, where he was Head­mas­ter. As an Alum of ACFS, I thought that should be made clear.”
  • Car­oli­na Friends School wrote an open let­ter to the com­mu­ni­ty in June.

Update Decem­ber 2014. I have received emails from a for­mer stu­dent who wished to remain anony­mous at this time. I have no way to fact check this but it is con­sis­tent with the his­to­ry and I have no rea­son to think it’s inac­cu­rate. With that caveat, here are some excerpts:

As an Alum­ni of Atlantic City Friends School I am not sur­prised at all to hear about Harold Jerni­gan sex­u­al abuse in the least . Please note this abuse along with more forms of abuse went on at ACFS into the ear­ly 80’s

Sex­u­al abuse was not the only abuse. Abuse of the school sys­tem in gen­er­al includ­ing drugs , abuse of pow­er , mon­ey , teach­ing so bad­ly that curves were used to grade so curved that the high­est grade in a math class Harold Jerni­gan taught was a 42 yet all were passed . Harold Jerni­gan also would lis­ten to class­rooms and lock­er rooms with a speak­er sys­tem in his office even after he promised Teach­ers he would not . Please note if Harold Jerni­gan did not want a stu­dent to pass he would call a meet­ing with all Teach­ers to make sure cer­tain stu­dents would not pass no mat­ter what .

I was a vic­tim of his non sex­u­al abuse but still abuse all the same .

I am only telling you this so some­one puts a stop to this abuse. Back in the late 70’s ear­ly 80’s who would believe a teenag­er . To see this Final­ly come out makes me know there is Karma .

As teenagers in school we would talk amongst our­selves . No one would come for­ward because we knew Harold would hold back our Diplo­mas or not for­ward a let­ter to a college .

You must remem­ber ACFS was attend­ed by either high IQ stu­dents , rich kids that were kick out of their oth­er schools or stu­dents that want­ed to attend a pri­vate school . This made the stu­dent body Easy Prey .

Dur­ing my time at ACFS I made friends with some of the Teach­ers . These Teach­ers are some of my sources ! They knew but need­ed their job