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♪♪

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-Hello and welcome back to Book Lust.

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I am Nancy Pearl, your host.

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My guest today is Anthony DePalma,
and we'll be talking about his new book

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“On this Ground, Hardship and Hope
at the Toughest Prep School in America.”

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Tony, thank you so much for, for joining
me today to talk about your new book.

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I have to say, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

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And, and I have to say,
when I was reading it, I was reading it

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almost as though it were a thriller,
because I kept turning the pages

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because I wanted to find out
what happened to those kids

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that you talk about in the book.

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So I guess my first question is,

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what what was the impetus for
you writing this book?

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I know that, you know, you you're,
you worked at The New York Times.

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You've written a book
about the Cubans and Castro,

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and this is a squarely New Jersey

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centric book that has implications

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of course, for the rest of the country
and education in general.

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So why did you write this book at this
time?

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- It's it's one of those books
that's both a professional opportunity

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and very personal.

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I did not go to this school,
but I was one of that

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huge cohort of baby boomers going through
Catholic schools in the 1960s.

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So they were about 5 million of
us going through the schools.

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Today, that number is

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down to below 2 million, 70% drop.

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Half of the schools have closed,
including both my elementary school

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and my grammar and my secondary school.

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I first was attracted to Saint Benedict's
because it was kind of like the school

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I went to in that
it was all boys and taught by religious.

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In my case, Christian brothers,
in the case of Saint Benedict's,

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Benedictine monks.

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The original thing I found out about them

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was they did this crazy thing
of requiring all their students

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to hike 55 miles

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for a week on the Appalachian Trail

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with everything
they needed on their backs.

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That was astounding to me
that a school would actually require that.

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Not as an option,
but everyone had to do it.

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But the more I found out about the school,
the more I was impressed

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by the resilience that it has shown.

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The resilience of the school,

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the resilience of the monks

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who went through an awful lot
to keep it going, and the resilience,

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actually, of the city of Newark,
where it is located.

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So essentially what what I found was
this is a story about a school

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that refused to die in a city
that nearly did.

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And, it I was convinced that it was,

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a book, not a magazine article, 
but a book.

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And it has, just for various
reason, has taken a long time

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to get it into this form
that you have in front of you on the desk.

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- One of the people,

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or maybe the major person who plays
the role,

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who played a role in
in getting Saint Benedict's

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to open again,

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and you'll tell us that story, I hope, is

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Father Ed, who is that
was the first head of the school

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who was appointed head of the school
when he was in his 20s...

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I'm remembering

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I think. 
-That's correct. 26,

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26 and and continues

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as the headmaster today, 54 years later.

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He is now 80 years old,
and he's there every single day.

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You know, one thing
I found out about the Benedictines,

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that I didn't really have much contact
with beforehand,

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is that in addition to the vows
that many other priests take of poverty,

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chastity, and obedience, he,
the Benedictines, St.

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Father Ed and the others,
take a vow of what they call stability.

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It's a vow that says to the fellow monks,

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I will remain loyal to this community
for the rest of my life.

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That's very different from, archdiocese
and diocesan priests

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who get transferred every few years
and go from place

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to place, and missionaries
who move all around.

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These Benedictines
will stay in the monastery

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for the rest of their lives.

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Most monasteries are up on top of a hill,

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like in Italy or out in the woods.

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They're far from people, from cities.

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These this monastery,

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now called Newark
Abbey, was established in the 1850s

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on the outskirts of what was then
the outskirts of the city of Newark.

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As the city grew,

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the monastery ended up

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now being in the center of the city

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with all of the problems
and all of the changes that that entailed.

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So in 1967, the riots took place
essentially across the street from

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the abbey and the high school,
which is right next to it.

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And after that, the city of Newark
went into a very sharp decline.

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It had been declining,
but then it was accelerated,

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and the school found it was impossible

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for them to continue the way they were.

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Was basically a working man's prep school.

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It was never the kind of very exclusive
prep school you might think the prep

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name signifies, but in this case, it was,

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a stepping stone for immigrant families.

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Originally German Catholic, then
Irish Catholic, then Italian Catholic.

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And, at the point
where we are now in the story

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in the early 1970s, the neighborhood is
changed, has changed completely.

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And even the alumni, the school
has been open by then for over 100 years,

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are reluctant to send their sons
into the city of Newark.

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So by 1972, the monks who 
have stuck it out

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until then but are increasingly 
feeling threatened,

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they have break ins to the school;

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one of the monks is is attacked, that

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it's impossible to stay.

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And, they really don't feel that

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they are in a position to teach these kids
because the culture is too different.

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All of the monks are white.

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Most of the kids in the neighborhood
are Black or Puerto Rican.

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And, you know, there Nancy,
there's also an undercurrent.

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And and Father Ed would be the first one
to acknowledge that there was

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an undercurrent of the kind of bigotry
of lower expectations.

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-Right.

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-You might consider it racism,
and in some cases, it and in some ways,

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it was that the Black kids couldn't learn
and they wouldn't be able to keep

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the monks wouldn't
be able to keep the same standards.

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So by 1972,

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they take a vote.

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The majority of the monks,
not all of them, but the majority vote

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to close the school, which they do
at the end of that school year.

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And half of the monks immediately
take off for a suburban monastery,

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that the same monks at the same abbey
in Newark had founded

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50 years earlier.

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The school closed.

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The monks have no way that earn any money,

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and they're basically supposed
to be self-sufficient.

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So they look at each other,
they take jobs.

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It's not really successful.

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They look at each other and say, hey,

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the neighborhood changed,
but the mission didn't.

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We're teachers.

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These kids need us,
so let's figure out a way to do it.

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And that's part of the resilience

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of what they came up with,
which has turned into 50 years later,

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a kind of a national model
for how to do urban education.

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- Yeah, I think that's

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what one of the most interesting
and an interesting

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part of the book
is how that, that vote by the monks,

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is, is really, a like a metaphor,
if you will, for,

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for the questions about race and, and,

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and the that whole 1960s thinking about

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how do we live
as a, as a country or a community

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of different colors,
different ethnicities, all of that.

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And, and I thought the fact that
there were monks who stayed

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and said, “No, this is our mission,”
you know, “this is our community.”

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And part of that is building
that community, built this, this school.

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And then the, you know, following on that,
it wasn't originally called

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a prep school, which is another thing
I think Father Ed would would,

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you know, come well, had a big hand
in, in that.

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So tell us that tell us that story.

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- He did.

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And I think it goes back to that same idea

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of a lower lowered expectations.

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So the school,
they decided to reopen the school.

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It's going to be on a much smaller scale.

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They go from 600 boys to 89

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in the first class.

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Of the 89, 85 are Black and Puerto Rican,

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four are white kids,
including Father Ed's younger brother.

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So they make a deliberate decision
that they don't want it to be all Black.

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They want it to be mixed.

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They want income levels to be mixed
as well.

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Father Ed does an interview 
with The New York Times

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and says, “We're not going to shovel
everybody into college.

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We're going to do what the kids need,
and we're going to call it....

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We're going to call it Saint Benedict's.”

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They leave off the word prep.

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At some point after that
first class is in,

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the school and the parents

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who are making big sacrifices
to have their sons there are involved;

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there's a meeting with the monks
and one of the parents, a Black parent,

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stands up and basically challenges
Father Ed and the other monks.

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And he wants to know why,
when all of the kids were white,

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the school was called
Saint Benedict's Preparatory School.

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But now that most of the kids

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are not white,
but are Black or Puerto Rican,

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the name prep has been dropped.

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Well, it is a real reawakening for Father Ed,

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who realized that maybe he was guilty

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of some of the same kind of bigotry
and racism of the monks

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who decided to leave, and immediately
they make the decision to change it

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to Saint Benedict Preparatory School,
which is what it was and what it is today.

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- Right.

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And and the curriculum

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at that time,
the school did not include girls.

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It was an all boys school,
which so many of the Catholic schools

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at that time were, were same sex

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schools.

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But Father Ed
and the other monks make a decision

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to include girls at Saint Benedict's.

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So tell us that story.

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- They, that only took place at a
in 2020 during Covid.

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So a nearby Benedictine academy
in the city of Elizabeth,

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which had been around for 100 years,
taught by Benedictine nuns.

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But there's really no connection
between the abbey and, the,

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the nuns, monastery
that's also a monastery.

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They're victim of the same process
of declining enrollment, rising costs.

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Kids are not willing to come in. So after,

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Covid comes along,
and it really is the nail in the coffin.

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So the nuns decide to close the school.

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The girls in the school.

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This is the girls themselves,
the student leaders

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who have been taking

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courses with

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leadership courses
with the counselors from Saint Benedict’s.

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So in the last few years,
there has been a connection.

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So they know what the rule of Saint
Benedict is.

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1500 year old rules, 73 different chapters
that basically says

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you need to be aware
of the needs of the community, right?

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The people around you.

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So the girls themselves,
the senior leaders in the girls school

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who are about to graduate,

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so they're taken care of,
but they're worried about their sisters,

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and they've already learned the lesson
from Saint Benedict's, which is emblazoned

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over the front entrance and says,
“Whatever hurts my brother hurts me.”

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So they go to
the leadership in the boys school.

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They hatch a plan, they drag

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Father Ed in,
and they say, you've got to do something.

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You've got to get us in here.

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Now, by that point,
the school had gone through

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almost 150 years of history as an all
boys school.

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Nobody had ever considered
the possibility of the girls being there.

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Father Ed says there's no money,

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there's no space,
there's there's no way we can do this.

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And the girls insist that you have to.

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So he now refers to it
as the girls breaking in to the school.

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He figures out a way to do it,

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that the the rule of Saint Benedict's
requires it.

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And, they bring in a very small cohort.

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Luckily for them, it was Covid,

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so they didn't need this space
right at the beginning.

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But now they're up to an enrollment
of 200 girls physically on the property.

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It's co institutional, not co-educational.

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So the classes don't mix.

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But they
are involved in this very important thing

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that they do every morning,
which is called convocation.

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All 600 of the the prep school students,

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00:14:37,343 --> 00:14:41,280
including the girls and the middle
division, the little ones come in

239
00:14:41,780 --> 00:14:46,151
and they spend not 5 minutes
or 10 minutes, but 45 minutes,

240
00:14:46,151 --> 00:14:49,388
sometimes up to an hour, just developing

241
00:14:49,388 --> 00:14:52,391
and maintaining this sense of community.

242
00:14:52,958 --> 00:14:56,829
So when they take when they take
attendance, just a very small example,

243
00:14:57,062 --> 00:14:59,198
it's not just who's present,

244
00:14:59,198 --> 00:15:02,301
They have to report
in the leadership structure,

245
00:15:02,301 --> 00:15:04,203
so the students are doing it themselves.

246
00:15:04,203 --> 00:15:07,640
They have to report that of this group

247
00:15:08,207 --> 00:15:11,043
say it, this group of twenty, fifteen are here,

248
00:15:11,043 --> 00:15:14,213
but the five by name are John

249
00:15:14,213 --> 00:15:18,150
who's at the dentist,
and so on, all the way down the line.

250
00:15:18,417 --> 00:15:21,553
And whoever is not there,
someone has to call home

251
00:15:21,553 --> 00:15:24,823
and find out where they are,
when they'll be back,

252
00:15:25,124 --> 00:15:27,726
and make sure that it happens.

253
00:15:27,726 --> 00:15:31,463
So that is a sense that they,
they reinforce every day

254
00:15:31,830 --> 00:15:34,500
that this is a community

255
00:15:34,500 --> 00:15:37,503
that once you earn the right to join it...

256
00:15:37,836 --> 00:15:41,540
And that's where the the hiking the trail
and doing some of the other

257
00:15:41,540 --> 00:15:43,242
physical things that they do,

258
00:15:43,242 --> 00:15:45,244
I mean, get involved.

259
00:15:45,244 --> 00:15:49,248
You have to meet those requirements
in order to become part of the community.

260
00:15:49,515 --> 00:15:51,784
And once you're in, you are in.

261
00:15:51,784 --> 00:15:56,655
So it's in a way, it's
their version of that vow of stability.

262
00:15:57,323 --> 00:16:00,592
And, they follow that through all the way.

263
00:16:00,993 --> 00:16:03,963
That aspect of community
is one of the things I think

264
00:16:03,963 --> 00:16:08,267
is the most important thing that they do
that other schools can also learn from.

265
00:16:09,835 --> 00:16:12,071
Can't do it the way they do it
necessarily,

266
00:16:12,071 --> 00:16:15,341
but they can do things like that
to make the kids understand that

267
00:16:15,341 --> 00:16:19,144
they are part of the community and that
what affects my brother affects me.

268
00:16:20,079 --> 00:16:22,815
- Yeah, that was a very moving part.

269
00:16:22,815 --> 00:16:27,319
I think, a very meaningful
part of the school's mission,

270
00:16:28,320 --> 00:16:33,459
to, to instill that in the kids.
One of the one of the, young men

271
00:16:33,459 --> 00:16:36,462
that you talk about in the book is Ray,

272
00:16:36,895 --> 00:16:41,166
and he's a leader at the school, and,

273
00:16:42,267 --> 00:16:46,372
is found cheating on an exam.

274
00:16:46,372 --> 00:16:51,744
And the school, Father Ed
and the school has to decide

275
00:16:52,311 --> 00:16:55,314
what what the punishment should be,

276
00:16:56,315 --> 00:16:58,517
which could be as bad as expulsion.

277
00:16:58,517 --> 00:17:01,854
And and I don't think I'm exaggerating
that, Ray

278
00:17:01,854 --> 00:17:04,023
really he leads the convocation.

279
00:17:04,023 --> 00:17:08,994
He's the, you know, the top senior,
I think, at that time. And,

280
00:17:10,029 --> 00:17:11,430
has enormous power

281
00:17:11,430 --> 00:17:14,433
among the students and
and Saint Benedict's,

282
00:17:14,533 --> 00:17:20,172
you explain so you know
so well is a school where deliberately

283
00:17:20,172 --> 00:17:25,444
the students are making
many of the decisions that form

284
00:17:26,045 --> 00:17:30,449
at other schools, and formerly
the administration might have made,

285
00:17:30,783 --> 00:17:34,820
and they're trusted to do that,
which is like, amazing.

286
00:17:35,821 --> 00:17:38,190
So what happened to Ray?

287
00:17:38,190 --> 00:17:40,325
- It reads something like a mystery.

288
00:17:40,325 --> 00:17:44,696
And in fact, from the writing
point of view, I was determined

289
00:17:44,696 --> 00:17:49,835
that this was going to take place
during this, this one year, the 50th year.

290
00:17:50,069 --> 00:17:54,306
So the deal that I made with the monks
was that they would give me access

291
00:17:54,940 --> 00:17:58,410
and I would write whatever happened.

292
00:17:58,811 --> 00:18:02,081
So I was trying to pick my subjects.

293
00:18:02,081 --> 00:18:05,084
I didn't start with any.

294
00:18:05,350 --> 00:18:07,820
Ray, and that's not his real name,

295
00:18:07,820 --> 00:18:10,823
we had this go back and forth about it, but,

296
00:18:11,223 --> 00:18:13,759
I decide he wants his real name in there,

297
00:18:13,759 --> 00:18:16,995
but I decided it
probably is not a good thing for him.

298
00:18:17,196 --> 00:18:17,696
He'll.

299
00:18:17,696 --> 00:18:20,699
He'll recognize that in ten years.

300
00:18:20,732 --> 00:18:21,900
But he stands out.

301
00:18:21,900 --> 00:18:26,105
He's a natural leader,
and he comes from a disadvantaged,

302
00:18:26,105 --> 00:18:29,741
kind of dysfunctional family
that was involved in drugs

303
00:18:29,741 --> 00:18:33,512
and had spent some time in jail
and he wakes up one morning,

304
00:18:33,512 --> 00:18:39,351
Ray wakes up one morning with a Swat team
in his bedroom coming to arrest his dad.

305
00:18:40,385 --> 00:18:44,523
And early on, he starts to show how,

306
00:18:45,090 --> 00:18:48,560
what kind of a leader he's going to be,
and he's going to be a very strong leader.

307
00:18:48,861 --> 00:18:54,800
So they get the students, get involved
in another episode early on in the book

308
00:18:55,200 --> 00:18:58,270
when they're soccer team, which is

309
00:18:59,538 --> 00:19:04,576
it hadn't lost a single match
in 106 games.

310
00:19:05,244 --> 00:19:05,878
Right.

311
00:19:05,878 --> 00:19:08,881
They are the national prep school
champions.

312
00:19:08,914 --> 00:19:12,751
Their number one player is the high school

313
00:19:12,751 --> 00:19:15,721
soccer player of the year
two years in a row.

314
00:19:16,088 --> 00:19:19,424
They haven't lost any game
until I happened to show up

315
00:19:19,791 --> 00:19:22,761
to report on this championship game.

316
00:19:22,761 --> 00:19:25,464
And they lose.

317
00:19:25,464 --> 00:19:28,167
And of course, these are high school kids,

318
00:19:28,167 --> 00:19:31,637
tough kids from tough streets,
who've had tough lives.

319
00:19:32,004 --> 00:19:35,607
And they sort of react in the way
you would expect them to react,

320
00:19:35,607 --> 00:19:38,443
which is not great when the team loses.

321
00:19:39,444 --> 00:19:41,847
So they start exchanging emails.

322
00:19:41,847 --> 00:19:44,283
Ray is monitoring them.

323
00:19:44,283 --> 00:19:48,954
It's a little bit of trash talk,
but then it it escalates into some pretty

324
00:19:48,954 --> 00:19:53,458
serious stuff, kind of reflective
of where we are in the country today.

325
00:19:53,926 --> 00:19:57,362
And so,
a couple of the kids on the rowing team

326
00:19:57,663 --> 00:20:03,702
who aren't getting much attention
start to say, well, why did the school

327
00:20:03,702 --> 00:20:08,974
bring in this key soccer player
from Africa and give him a scholarship?

328
00:20:09,241 --> 00:20:12,211
And his buddy on the team
also got a scholarship?

329
00:20:12,611 --> 00:20:14,446
Rowing team
doesn't get that kind of money.

330
00:20:14,446 --> 00:20:17,449
So they are back and forth
and they eventually say

331
00:20:17,749 --> 00:20:20,752
send them back to Africa.

332
00:20:20,852 --> 00:20:23,956
But like a 14 or 15 year old kid doesn't

333
00:20:23,956 --> 00:20:27,359
really understand
maybe, how serious that is.

334
00:20:27,693 --> 00:20:30,696
But Ray did and Father Ed did.

335
00:20:30,796 --> 00:20:33,365
Father Ed gave him one punishment,
but it was just a day.

336
00:20:33,365 --> 00:20:36,468
But Ray stood up and said,
look, that's not enough.

337
00:20:37,002 --> 00:20:39,438
Just to expel,
just to suspend them for a day.

338
00:20:39,438 --> 00:20:44,042
So he takes away their uniform

339
00:20:45,444 --> 00:20:46,411
so they're no longer a

340
00:20:46,411 --> 00:20:50,482
part of the community,
and they have to appear

341
00:20:50,482 --> 00:20:53,485
at morning convocation
and apologize to the whole school.

342
00:20:54,753 --> 00:20:56,755
That's pretty tough stuff.

343
00:20:56,755 --> 00:21:01,960
But he's the one who's insisting on it.
Go a few months

344
00:21:01,960 --> 00:21:06,198
later, and ironically, and I had no idea
this was going to happen.

345
00:21:06,598 --> 00:21:09,601
He was the hero of the book,

346
00:21:10,035 --> 00:21:11,403
the natural leader.

347
00:21:11,403 --> 00:21:14,973
He ends up trying to fudge on a test

348
00:21:14,973 --> 00:21:18,810
to increase his score so he could get into
the college that he wants.

349
00:21:19,111 --> 00:21:21,213
So he cheats.

350
00:21:21,213 --> 00:21:23,582
And ironically, he cheats using his phone.

351
00:21:23,582 --> 00:21:27,419
One of the hard line decisions
he made early on was to,

352
00:21:28,220 --> 00:21:30,656
ban all phones from the school.

353
00:21:30,656 --> 00:21:35,060
But except for the leaders who needed
in order to coordinate leadership.

354
00:21:35,060 --> 00:21:36,395
So he does that.

355
00:21:36,395 --> 00:21:41,199
But what what I think what it says
that so important is the Benedictines

356
00:21:41,199 --> 00:21:45,103
going back 1500 years,
always leave open a path to redemption.

357
00:21:46,004 --> 00:21:48,907
And so, the kids who

358
00:21:48,907 --> 00:21:52,444
who texted had their,
their membership taken away,

359
00:21:52,444 --> 00:21:55,781
but they're given the opportunity
to regain it, which they did.

360
00:21:56,281 --> 00:21:59,318
Ray loses his leadership position.

361
00:21:59,351 --> 00:22:03,455
They don't expel him, but they
he cannot be the leader any longer.

362
00:22:03,855 --> 00:22:07,893
He keeps his uniform, but each uniform
has a crest, the same Benedict's crest.

363
00:22:08,393 --> 00:22:10,529
His is taken off.

364
00:22:10,529 --> 00:22:14,066
So everybody knows that
he's the one who did this.

365
00:22:14,733 --> 00:22:16,034
But he doesn't shrink

366
00:22:17,002 --> 00:22:17,736
away.

367
00:22:17,736 --> 00:22:19,104
He doesn't hide in the corner.

368
00:22:19,104 --> 00:22:23,342
He doesn't get angry and say,
I've only got five months left in school...

369
00:22:23,342 --> 00:22:26,745
I'm not even going to show up
because of the way they treated me.

370
00:22:27,379 --> 00:22:28,580
He stays there.

371
00:22:28,580 --> 00:22:31,583
He continues to lead wherever he can.

372
00:22:31,583 --> 00:22:33,985
In the end, when they have senior night,

373
00:22:33,985 --> 00:22:37,689
he has to sit there
and watch his replacement,

374
00:22:38,457 --> 00:22:42,361
somebody they grab from a
a lower level of leadership

375
00:22:42,661 --> 00:22:47,032
when the, the presidential medal,

376
00:22:47,833 --> 00:22:52,170
that by rights, ought to have been his had
he not made this mistake.

377
00:22:52,704 --> 00:22:56,608
And, he sits there with his head
up and congratulates his friend

378
00:22:56,942 --> 00:22:58,043
and remains there.

379
00:22:58,043 --> 00:23:01,747
And I think, I think that's
that is the message.

380
00:23:01,747 --> 00:23:03,548
Not that he cheated.

381
00:23:03,548 --> 00:23:04,950
Unfortunate that he did.

382
00:23:04,950 --> 00:23:08,854
I think he learned the lesson,
but that having made a mistake,

383
00:23:09,755 --> 00:23:14,092
he came back and insisted
that that mistake is not me.

384
00:23:14,626 --> 00:23:17,362
And that's part of what what Father Ed

385
00:23:17,362 --> 00:23:20,966
has been teaching these kids
for the last 54 years.

386
00:23:21,166 --> 00:23:23,568
Yes. It's important
that you learn the calculus

387
00:23:23,568 --> 00:23:27,205
and the algebra
and the history, of course, but,

388
00:23:28,840 --> 00:23:31,443
father, his
point of view is that you really evaluate

389
00:23:31,443 --> 00:23:35,113
the success of an education,
not by necessarily

390
00:23:35,113 --> 00:23:38,817
what they learn in the classroom,
but by the people they become.

391
00:23:39,317 --> 00:23:42,754
And so it was important for me
having spent two years

392
00:23:42,754 --> 00:23:45,824
with these young kids,
to also spend time with

393
00:23:45,824 --> 00:23:49,895
some of the alumni
who may have gone through the school

394
00:23:49,895 --> 00:23:53,432
50 years ago
and what they have turned out to be.

395
00:23:53,432 --> 00:23:56,902
And, time after time after time,
I found that

396
00:23:56,902 --> 00:23:59,905
some of those lessons
have stuck with them forever.

397
00:24:00,105 --> 00:24:04,910
Maybe the calculus didn't,
but the idea of protecting my brother

398
00:24:05,143 --> 00:24:09,948
and being part of the community,
that lesson did stay with them.

399
00:24:10,348 --> 00:24:12,851
- Yeah, well, thank you.

400
00:24:12,851 --> 00:24:15,120
Thank you again for being on the show.

401
00:24:15,120 --> 00:24:17,189
And thank you for writing this book.

402
00:24:17,189 --> 00:24:21,026
I think it's filled with lessons that,

403
00:24:21,693 --> 00:24:24,796
the larger community can take.

404
00:24:25,397 --> 00:24:26,164
Thank you.

405
00:24:26,164 --> 00:24:31,803
- Especially at this time, learning about
and being around selfless people makes it

406
00:24:31,803 --> 00:24:36,675
easier to sort of deal with the chaos
and some of the darkness that we have.

407
00:24:36,875 --> 00:24:39,177
So thank you for giving me
the opportunity.

408
00:24:39,177 --> 00:24:42,514
And, and,
I hope everybody has a good read.

409
00:24:43,381 --> 00:24:43,849
- Thank you.

410
00:24:45,083 --> 00:25:00,832
♪♪

411
00:25:03,635 --> 00:25:08,707
♪♪