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Coats and Ties Can’t Hide the Nature of Adolescent Boys
In which a bad boy and chaos architect is expelled from an elite school but still gets the last laugh.
I went to an elite private boarding school in Newtown, PA, for my high school education. It was a Quaker school, and for that I’m grateful. The Quakers have the kindest, gentlest sort of religion, which doesn’t impose upon its flock any sort of fire and brimstone. You just sit quietly during Meeting for Worship until someone is moved to speak. You can practice your drooling skills while waiting.
How elite? you might ask. Well, in 2007, George School received the largest single donation to a private high school of all time; it came by way of the daughter of the professor who took Warren Buffet under his wing at Columbia and who later invested in his budding enterprise.
While we’re at it, the institution was named not for founding father Washington, but after John M. George, an early Quaker benefactor whose contributions allowed the school to open in 1893. We boys wore coats and ties to dinner and had to keep our hair no longer than a specified length (and this was in the late 1960s!). The girls had their own dress code.
You can imagine that, given its lofty perch, the school was and is rather protective of…
