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A thoughtful academic journal published twice yearly for alumni, parents, and friends of Germantown Friends School.
Why does a non-Friend send her child to a Quaker school, particularly one that is so closely attached to a meeting? Certainly Germantown Friends’ commitment to academic excellence and careful choice of a staff committed to teaching children well are important components in the decision to choose GFS, but neither is the only reason. Equally important in my mind are the values that the school and the meeting stand for and inculcate. They are values that reach beyond formal education and yet rival it in importance.
Many of us are fond of declaring that “Quakerism lives here at GFS in the walls.” While this may be true, it is also true that children were leaving our lower school at the end of fifth grade not being able to list or explain a single Testimony or other Quaker idea. Their whole understanding of Quakerism seemed to hinge on their experiences with a very silent Meeting for Worship on Thursday mornings. Many of us agreed that this silence tended to have an empty quality, rather than a “gathered” quality.
Each academic year we focus on two Quaker testimonies. What is a testimony? According to “Faith and Practice at GFS” (see our website under “About GFS”), testimonies are “tested values (found in many faiths) that inform what we do and how we do it.” It is our hope that consideration of each testimony will encourage us to match our words with our actions, or to “let our lives speak.”
