Palfrey School

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

A new school, attempting a radical departure from current educational practices, can benefit from comment and discussion. Your article about Palfrey Street School (a name mispelled by the Crimson eleven times and spelled correctly three times) showed sensitivity to the spirit of the school, some errors of fact, and some errors, I think, of emphasis.

The school has been able to attract students with very successful school records as well as students with relatively weak records. Your article is a demonstration, unfortunately, of the prevalence of categories and of the cost of taking risks: it seems unhappily true that it is significant to write about who comes with an "E average" (we have none, but I wish we could reach that far) and not significant to write about the student who comes with an "A average."

What matters is that we do care about diversity and that we have it. It is costly, risky, and important, bue we are trying to create a school that can demonstrate that teaching and learning require diversity, and that we can create, through our determination, a community out of diverse elements. It's the hardest kind of teaching and learning that there is. Edward Ryerson   Director   Palfrey Street School