Rachel Barany, a Middle School history teacher at Friends, started her fifth grade class in 2014 by asking several boys, who were all wearing hats, to take them off. Barany still remembers their reply: “Well, [aren’t we] allowed to wear our caps because that’s a Quaker thing?” She continues, “I remember thinking, oh my God, that’s pretty cool for a 10-year-old to know that as a Quaker value. And yeah, they’re [challenging me], but at least they’re reflecting something that they learned.” As the school turns 240 years old, teachers and students are wondering how to uphold and value these testimonies as much as in the past. While some are skeptical of Quakerism’s relevance today, others believe it never will go away from Friends.
Friends Seminary was founded in 1786 as a Quaker school, and for decades has drawn on as core beliefs the Quaker testimonies of simplicity, peace, integrity, community, equality and stewardship, acronymized as SPICES. Posters presenting the SPICES are tacked up in classrooms, and are often cited as representing the principles of the school.
Ben Frisch, a practicing Quaker who has taught mathematics for 41 years at Friends, states that the school could still take more opportunities to incorporate Quakerism into its curriculum. Frisch says, “There were times we had Meeting for Worship twice a week. We even tried having Meeting for Worship for a longer period, closer to 40 minutes. Our Meeting for Worship is very short compared to many other [Quaker] schools.” He wondered how Quakerism could be further integrated into the ninth grade trip, and said “teachers need to learn more about what it means to be a Friends School.” Barany shares a similar view, stating that “when the kids come in for Meeting [for Worship], that moment where everybody gets silent, it doesn’t happen as quickly anymore…It was such a given, and I feel like that’s not the case anymore.”
Dominique Thijssen ‘28, a student at Friends for both Middle and Upper School, believes the Quaker testimonies are “like a rule that you need to follow, and teenagers don’t really like following rules.” Avi Mirchandani ‘28 added “One of the most funny things that I think was illustrative of this was when one of the student queries on Fridays in Middle School was ‘What was your favorite one of the SPICES?’ and someone came in late and someone told them what the query was and they stood up and said ‘cinnamon’… but it was because they did not have the knowledge about the SPICES and about what they really were.”
Yet Mirchandani also acknowledges “how the school acts and how it manages the information it disseminates to students and the messaging that it puts out, whether that’s who they invite for assemblies or what presentations they allow, or, how the administration conducts itself and how teachers conduct themselves, that’s something that is done quite well in accordance with the SPICES. That’s really all that I think they can do, and so far they do seem to be doing a good job of that.” He is part of a group at Friends who believe that Quakerism is an essential part of Friends that could never be removed and hasn’t been. Frisch states that “we are undergirded by the spirit of Quaker testimonies,” and that is something that can never go away.
