Education: Shedding That Preppy Image

At age 200, Andover reaches out "to youth from every quarter"

In 1778 Samuel Phillips, a 26-year-old gunpowder manufacturer concerned about the "decay of virtue, public and private," began a school with a noble idea: to teach ''the great end and real business of living." The school itself was more humble: 13 students, ages six to 30, enrolled under the tutelage of Calvinist Eliphalet ("Elephant") Pearson in a converted carpenter's shop in Andover, Mass. "On Monday the scholars recite what they can remember of the sermons heard on the Lord's day previous," wrote Pearson...

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