1. Purpose of St. Matthew’s Academy: According to the school administrators, as explained by the president on the first day of school, the purpose of the high school is to prepare students for later achievement in prestigious colleges and careers. Students will learn academics and discipline, the honor code, and join other graduates in their dedication to service and tradition. The teachers, including Mr. Cleary, the housemaster and French teacher, demanded order and placed value on memorization. The school was to be a challenging environment for boys to be worked hard, and as the history teacher demonstrated by having the boys come to their own assessment of the cheating situation, learn lessons not only pertaining to the classroom. The students saw the prep school as one step in a long road to greatness, the step after St. Matthew’s being an Ivy League education. With good grades came the right colleges and the right connections; students forced themselves to excel and continue legacies. For parents, the school was a way to continue the family legacies, and the football games were a pleasant diversion in athletic competition. The alumni also took pride in the football games.

Similarities and differences: All of these points of view contribute to a view of schools as transmitters of society. Tradition played a large role in every type of person’s life at the university, from legacies to football games to good grades. Excellence and being the best were also common purposes for people at St. Matthew’s. As transmitters of society, though, people involved with the school did not only transmit good values; the anti-Semitism of society was also reflected to varying degrees at the school, either by ignoring David’s religion or by openly harassing him. An important difference between the students and their parents and school administrators was the way they each dealt with issues that challenged tradition. The older generation was more inclined to leave issues undiscussed and sweep things under the rug. The students, once they became aware of an issue, were more open to working through them, and, if not coming to a good conclusion, at least presenting and airing arguments and concerns.

2.The main change in the school’s actual mission, were David allowed to express his religion, would have been superficial. Religion seemed to play very little of a substantial role in the boys’ lives. While they attended church services and sang hymns, their lives outside of these routines seemed largely unaffected by their faith. Since prejudice existed very strongly in many of the boys, David would have had a much harder time fitting in with the other students if they knew from the outset that he was Jewish. Even if the school had made allowances for his religion, David would have been a tradition breaker and probably would have been seen negatively because of it.

3.Students generally hide things that they think will make them not fit in. Some kids will try to hide their economic class by dressing nicely if they do not have much money or by letting their appearance be sloppy if they are well off. Bright students will hide their intelligence so as not to appear nerdy, and less academically talented students may cover their shortcomings with humor. Gay and bisexual students or those who are unsure of their sexuality may repress their instincts and act in a stereotypically “straight” fashion, in order not to be singled out for their sexual preference.

4.By narrowing the pool of applicants, a school indicates that its criteria of separation are great and important. For example, by selecting sex as a criterion for admission, a school is saying that there are differences between the sexes important enough to warrant one sex’s discrimination. If academic achievement is a factor, the school implies that the differences between students at different levels of achievement are great enough to justify the inclusion of some and the exclusion of others. In the case of St. Matthew’s Academy, the criteria used were sex, family legacy, academic excellence, and Christianity. However, these rules could be bent in the case of a student who fulfilled two out of four (sex and academic excellence), in favor of sports prowess. This implies that maleness and academic excellence, when combined with the importance of being an excellent quarterback, were more important than and could override the other factors that were lacking (as long as these other factors were not discussed openly).

5. In School Ties, the students had the ultimate authority in determining the school’s purpose. The decision of who to blame for cheating rested with them, and the head prefect eventually owned up to this responsibility. By choosing to accept David’s religion, they could have changed the school’s purpose from transmitting society to changing society. It is hard to say who should have final authority in determining a school’s purpose. If school administrators are given the final and only say, the risk is looking to the past or backward rather than forward for the school’s mission. However, if ultimate authority rests with students, there is a risk of ideas being too thoughtlessly progressive, or new for the sake of newness. Ideally, the school administration would determine if the school is going to transmit or reconstruct society, with thoughtful input from students and others with different points of view.