Reflections of Havergal: 1994-2019

Students planting the Philosophy class time capsule, 2016.

“One of my first impressions of Havergal College was its fantastic horticulture. To visit the grounds in late May is really something else—the school’s flower beds are robust and buzzing with life, the Lisa Hardie trail itself an incredible Carolinian arboretum that cloaks and inspires. Naturally, one of my first goals as a teacher of philosophy was to somehow transplant the outer wonders of the campus onto the table of our seminars (note this word seminarium, meaning “seed plot”). Once, in a very literal way, students were asked to bring in a floral or vegetative object to our discussion on Epicurean ethics as an homage to that great Hellenistic philosopher who would conduct lessons in the garden nearest to the Eridanus River, just outside of Athens. Soon the table was filled with an abundance of floral and herbaceous bits from gardens across the city; I remembered one student brought in a bowl filled with berries of all sorts—it was joyous. In a figurative Teaching Philosophy at the Harkness Table April 19, 2018

sense, Havergal’s “Harkness” seminars also encourage its participants to actively contribute to a common seedbed of ideas. At each class, students arrive having read and annotated a key text, before slowly and democratically sowing an array of questions, comments, and contextual applications into the daily patch. By the end of the year, what we’re left with is nothing less than a carefully manicured bonsai of study! In 2016, the culmination of these efforts were physically shifted into an actual pod (a stainless steel time capsule) and planted under two pine trees in the southern quad that is to be exhumed on April 17, 2026. In all of this obsessive metaphor-making, it is my hope that good things will grow in time, and that our student- gardeners will be able to share in the rewards that come from the collective toil of thinking and speaking of our truths—that which gives rise to new cultivars of understanding.” —Kyle Fredenburg, Philosophy teacher, Senior School

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