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Chauffeur at Groton. Until recently, pace was not the pride of many famed New England boys' boarding schools, which for years had the pretense but not the product of Eton and Harrow. Now they have changed dramatically. By snubbing Social Register dullards and by combing the country for bright recruits of all races, religions and incomes, they are fast becoming more democratic than homogeneous suburban public schools. "The idea that private schools are for snobs is absolute nonsense," says Owen B. Kiernan, Massachusetts' commissioner of education. A few Junes ago, one proper Bostonian summed up: "Today my daughter graduates from Foxcroft. Tomorrow my chauffeur's son graduates from Groton."
All this portends something new: "the national public school." Such is the goal of John Mason Kemper, 50, headmaster of Phillips Academy, which is more popularly known, from the name of its home town, as Andover. The definition comes close to fitting both Andover, the nation's oldest (1780) incorporated school, and its younger (1781) brother: Phillips Exeter Academy, 25 miles away in Exeter. N.H. More than any other U.S. prep schools, they fulfill the dream with which they began: to be "ever equally open to youth of requisite qualifications from every quarter."
Andover (841 boys) and Exeter (760) are the biggest nonmilitary boarding schools in the U.S. They are already national: Andover has boys from 44 states. Exeter from 42. They try to be public by breaking down the barriers of tuition, by striving to find poor boys with rich minds. Yet because they retain high standards and cannot open their doors to everyone, they remain elite schools for gifted boys of a sturdy, stable kind.
Lucky Me? These ideals and necessary compromises are the day-to-day concern of John Kemper, who entered the prep school world not as an Old Boy but as a West Pointer and professional soldier. Those were strikes against him in 1947, when the trustees plucked him out of the Army at 35 to become Andover's eleventh headmaster. As it turned out, Kemper's gifts for hard analysis and easy leadership galvanized Andover. Today, Harvard College's Dean John Monro calls Kemper "one of the really great headmasters."
Like Exeter's Principal William Gurdon Saltonstall, whom he calls "a fast friend and a mortal competitor," Kemper is the first to ask whether his school is using its wealth wisely. The last thing he wants Andover to be is a shoehorn to slip grade-getters into prestige colleges. He worries about the lucky-me attitude that afflicts many Andover boys. He wonders how to teach them a sense of humanity and public service. He wants the school to serve. "We should be identified with public schools," he says. "Our job is to be available to anyone who wants to use us. We must be of service."