NAIS President Encourages "Serious Scholarship" as Found at MKA

In a recent blog post entitled  “On Serious Secondary School Scholarship” National Association of Independent Schools President Patrick Bassett makes a compelling case for independent schools to focus on the depth of learning required by projects such as MKA's Junior History Thesis.

A hallmark of the MKA Upper School experience, the rigorous Junior History Thesis is an independent, in-depth research paper that requires every junior to write a 4,300-word minimum paper that uses both primary and secondary sources. Designed to counter faculty concerns that students were skimming through a modern American history syllabus with little time to either reflect or engage in serious research, the Junior History Thesis is seen by students as a rite of passage – one of those challenges that they only fully appreciate when facing the demands of writing substantive college essays.

Each year, the strongest papers are submitted for publication consideration to The Concord Review – a prestigious and highly selective publication that recognizes exemplary history essays by high school students in the English-speaking world. Given that the magazine’s editor Will Fitzhugh has said “The Concord Review is more “selective” than Princeton: one out of 20 submissions to the Review published vs. one out of 19 applicants to Princeton admitted,” MKA has a remarkable track record. Four students have been published in the past four years - Rose Koven and Julie Reiter from the Class of 2010, Lucy Randall from the Class of 2011 and most recently, senior Jeff Smith. And the subjects of their papers give some indication of the depth and range of the scholarship required – “The ARPANET’s Hidden Purpose: Mass Communications through Computers", "The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment: Breaching the Wall of Separation Between Church and State", “Theodore Roosevelt’s Tenure as New York Police Commissioner” and "The Eternal Federalist: How John Marshall's Steadfast Political Philosophy Shaped the Federal Judiciary".

In the blog, Bassett considers the expectations of an independent school education in an ever-changing world. While concluding that: “character first is the defining quality that makes independent schools strong,” he proposes that: “for college-prep schools, a second maxim should be “academics second,” meaning what one might call “serious scholarship.” Bassett goes on to explain his belief that: “While the means of conducting serious scholarship (video oral histories, crowd-sourcing, data mining via the Internet, etc.,) are indeed changing, I like the case made by Will Fitzhugh, editor of The Concord Review, that serious scholarship in the form of a substantial publication-worthy research paper is the entry ticket for future academic success.”

Bassett’s conclusion is a rousing endorsement of MKA’s commitment to “serious scholarship”: “I recommend that all teachers read (and perhaps weep about) any student essay from past Concord Review papers ... to find out what serious scholarship at the secondary school level looks, and sounds, like. (In fact, from what my college president colleagues tell me, much college student writing today wouldn’t have a chance of publication in The Concord Review.)”