Quiet Miracle / Unique Experience 1: Diverse Community

Our kids, no matter who they are or where they come from, sit in classes and run around in the park with kids with different skin colors, from different backgrounds, and with different financial resources... and they see each other as part of the same community. It's easy to take that for granted, but it's amazingly powerful and deeply important. I'm not saying all the kids get along, and I'm not saying that the differences never come up and can't cause friction, but I'm saying that in a world where a lot of evil comes from dividing into "Us" and "Them", the kids are getting a deep immersion into a larger "Us".

This is going to be attacked outside the school, in both quiet and loud ways. I know this from personal experience as an alum, and from talking with other alumni. The usual confusion is "why are the white kids only sitting with white kids and the black kids with black kids?" At some of the schools that MCS alumni wind up at, another question I’ve heard often is "why are most of the students White and East Asian, and the few other kids are sitting at a table by themselves at lunch?"

It's awful, and it's widespread. We know about it, we complain about it, and we think “things should be different!” And they stay the same. Right now we’ve got a U.S. President who’s trying to set things back even further.

MCS doesn’t have a magic wand to fix everything everywhere, but the kids who go there get a gut-level feeling of “these are all my people.” I can’t say enough about how important that is. And the more years we can expose our children to this, the more they’ll be able to carry it in their hearts, the more they’ll be able to spread light, and the more they’ll be able to reach out to people of any “group”. This means a lot for their own happiness and understanding of the world, and it means a lot for the world.

Quiet Miracle / Unique Experience 2: The Farm

There are so many things that go on at the farm.

The obvious one is that a bunch of city kids are exposed to a completely different way of living. They milk cows. They collect eggs from chickens. They collect sap from trees and watch it boil down to maple syrup. They spin wool and weave. They are surrounded by fields and woods, and take it all in as their own.

But more than this, for a week at a time they live a life that is a community of their very own. Years ago I picked up one of my kids after a farm trip. I think he was probably about 8 or 9. I picked up his duffle bag and we made it halfway down the block when he stopped, looked me in the eye and said, “I don’t want to be here with you right now.” Once I got over my shock (and feeling a bit hurt), but I realized that he’d had such an amazing week with his friends that he didn’t want to leave it. He wanted to still be there with them.

I love my child, and he loves me, but I’m also in awe of an experience that he loved so deeply. This is a good childhood. These are experiences for a child to carry in their heart for the rest of their life.

Things Are Changing. Things Change.

Let’s be blunt. The school is in tremendous danger. It could close.

But it can also stay open.

The first thing we can do, and that my family has done, is sign up for next year. If you haven’t done this yet, you should.

Because this is about the basics: the kids and the things that they can’t get in other places.

I don’t want to use marketing catch-phrases (although the school can probably use them). I really just want to talk about the quiet truths here.

This is a very special place. Our children are going to go on to other educational experiences after 8th grade at the latest. But when they look back later, MCS is going to be the place that made the difference for them. May this be the same for many generations to come.