Coming back to school one afternoon, a young Manhattan teacher named Frank Hackett nearly stumbled over a teenager, dead drunk in the doorway. Then & there Hackett determined to start a school of his own out in the country—far enough from the city's temptations, and near enough to what he considered its treasures. Last week, as his Riverdale Country School turned 40, 69-year-old Headmaster Hackett was busy raising $5.000,000 for a new "world school" right next door.
Hackett will build the new school on a wooded Riverdale plateau overlooking New York's Hudson River. He plans to have 600 teen-age students: 200 from New York City, 200 from the rest of the U.S., 200 from Europe, Latin America, Asia. In ten polyglot residences he will mix them well, hopes to transform them into citizens of the world. Says he: "This won't be an international school. 'International' has bad connotations these days. We want to transcend nations."
On the curriculum: history taught from a worldwide (not a national) view; current events focused on the nearby U.N.; science and art, stressing the way both spread across borders; a course in U.S. "institutions, ideals and culture"; modern languages (including Russian, Chinese). Foreign students, who will be coached in English, will help teach their tongues,
Hackett, who knows that "a good school is a band of devoted, capable teachers," is offering prospective teachers a bonus: homes for their families in a new faculty apartment house on the school site. Architects' plans call for an ultramodern, glass-&-concrete schoolhouse, gym, auditorium and chapel. Right now the World School consists of one flagpole.