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“What’s it like?” says astronaut Buzz Aldrin, is the “most obvious, inevitable question” he’s been asked in the 50 years since Apollo 11. He also grumbles that it’s the hardest to answer. “What did it feel like? What were your thoughts and feelings as you walked on the moon?” He seems to resent those questions, as he notes in his book Magnificent Desolation: The Long Journey Home from the Moon, saying that he wasn’t up there to feel feelings and think thoughts, but to fly the ship. Still, that’s what people want to know. In my experience, the same is true of private schooling. Parents and students want to know what it’s like. Not in a general way (“What’s it like to go to private school?”) but in a specific one (“What’s it like to go to Brentwood College?”) As with Buzz Aldrin talking about his experience on the moon, it’s also those kinds of questions that schools are less inclined or able to answer well. Some things are just more authoritatively and convincingly expressed by others. Ultimately, that’s what the feature reviews were designed to do: to give a sense of the personalities, the character, the sights and smells that animate the life of a school. They’re not reviews in the sense of good and bad, but in the sense of detailed profiles, giving a broad outline and, as much as possible, then filling it in. Readers appreciate them—they’re on the site, in the family-facing mailings, and more recently as excerpted within the annual guide—because they offer an important perspective that schools can’t convincingly give about themselves. To the same end, we’ve been developing a series of capsule video reviews, which will grant some legs to the project, enhancing uptake and delivery through social media feeds. The series of feature reviews grows monthly, with 25 currently in print. Meadowridge School is the latest, with Columbia International College and Crestwood Preparatory College publishing soon. If you’d like sample copies, let me know by responding to this email and we’ll be sure to get them to you. In other news Emotion and Cognition in the Age of AI
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