M-T
Video Yearbook Retrospective Class
of '78 (Recorded
on March 17, 1994)
~
Introductory Text by John Sherin ~
PART
ONE
A STUDENT
FROM THE CLASS OF 1976, aware he'd
be unable to attend, wrote a letter. As this evening began, a friend
and former classmate of his read from it aloud to those present.
It was an 18-year odyssey of his life thus far, chronicled on paper, exactly
what others were about to do in person, to share through personal histories
those life lessons garnered through education and experience since departing
Brentwood.
Memories of this one special
place provided a connecting chain linking the group to each other.
While a few reflected on difficult years of self-doubt and floundering,
juggling the universal quest of teens in America to find purpose and discover
identity, others dealt with the weighty matters of sexual identity or pure
physical survival, navigating the maze of social agencies intended to provide
assistance to the most vulnerable of those among us.
PART TWO
The crucial importance of
the performing arts is attested to by those for whom it spelled validation
along unfolding career paths to the present. Many expressed feelings
of appreciation and gratitude to the Community of Brentwood for the opportunities
afforded at M-T to discover higher learning and go to college. "It's
really a shame," said one, "there aren't schools like this out there today."
As a result of the knowledge
acquired, they've also had to endure difficult times. To practice
being your own person is not easy in a country whose culture pays lip service
to individual freedom and extols diversity while simultaneously fearing
or rejecting those who are "different" or "alternative" or "queer."
PART THREE
One person learned firsthand
how difficult is was to teach. She had taught for ten years and confessed
to being burned out, used up, done. No longer wishing to impact the
system, she's opted to trade one career for the role of mother and take
on the challenging, rewarding responsibility of child-rearing. At
this point she has effectively decided to leave the classroom for good.
PART FOUR
Transparency being an M-T
ideal, the school was never without controversy. Abhorring the duplicity
often encountered in large systems, the cover-ups and statistical sleights
of hand that were the earmarks of political power struggles and adversarial
constituencies, this (some say Utopian) education community espoused the
directness of up-front confrontation, thereby becoming an easy target of
critics.
As you watch this revealing
and painfully honest discussion, you'll witness an underlying level of
mutual trust and see an absence of fear made manifest. Understanding
all the better perhaps is how a love of this kind of education persists
among its former students even to this day. The session ends with
their questions: "Is high school the same today as it was when we
were in school, or is it different?" "Whatever happened to M-T?"
"If it was so successful, then why did it close?"
