FA06_harkness_10.30.06 10/31/06 9:03 AM Page 24 The Men OF CONGRESS LIBRARY Behind Planthe Edward Harkness ‘On one side a stubborn man with an idea, on So wrote Principal Lewis P the other an eminent philanthropist Edward H schoolman who feels Perry and Phillips Exeter A he may be wrong.’ “radical” new approach to s 24 The Exeter Bulletin fall 2006 FA06_harkness_10.30.06 10/31/06 9:09 AM Page 25 (PERRY AND NOTE):(PERRY PEA ARCHIVES Principal Lewis Perry Their plan revolutionized teaching at Exeter, and s Perry of his close friend, 75 years later continues d Harkness, who challenged to define an Exeter Academy to come up with a education in every way. o secondary school education. Article by Katherine Towler fall 2006 The Exeter Bulletin 25 FA06_harkness_10.30.06 10/31/06 9:15 AM Page 26 PEA ARCHIVES T WAS THE SPRING OF 1930. After months of In the years before the Harkness Exactly who Harkness was research and meetings with faculty,Principal Lewis Perry gift, lives of Exeter students were and why he chose to make traveled to New York to meet with Edward S. Harkness, radically different from those of such a gift is less widely his close friend and one of the country’s leading philan- today. Classes were taught recita- known. It is a remarkable tale thropists. With him, Perry brought an outline of how tion style, with the teacher lectur- involving one of the wealthiest Exeter planned to use a substantial gift Harkness had proposed to people in America in his time, I ing to 25 to 35 students seated make to Phillips Exeter. who gave away his fortune in rows.When students wanted Documents preserved in the Academy Archives make one thing with little fanfare. It is the tale dramatically clear: Harkness was not pleased by Perry’s proposal. to get the teacher’s attention they of a friendship between Hark- “You are thinking of improving an existing institution by building did so not by raising their hands, ness and Perry,two very differ- on what you have got now. I am thinking of something much but by snapping their fingers. ent men. It is the tale, too, of more radical than that,” Harkness told him. Funding small Harkness’ tenacious vision for improvements—an expanded advising system, a guest speaker educational reform, born of his own lackluster career as a stu- series—did not interest Harkness. He wanted to see a proposal dent, a vision that shaped not just Exeter but Harvard and Yale, containing ideas “of a fundamental nature that were so sweeping creating a blueprint for modern-day colleges and boarding and so different from methods prevailing here that one could see at schools. a glance that were they adopted, the whole educational system in Today Harkness is invoked hundreds of times a day at Exeter, our secondary schools would not only be changed, but changed though often without any thought of the man himself, who enormously for the better.” remains one of the Academy’s most significant benefactors. Harkness sent Perry and his committee back to the drawing Harkness has become a philosophy; an approach to teaching and board. Six months later they returned with a plan that Harkness learning; a concept that shapes everything on the Academy cam- agreed to fund.The gift Harkness made to Exeter—the munifi- pus from meetings of dormitory proctors to a scrimmage in bas- cent sum of $5.8 million, the equivalent of $69 million in today’s ketball practice. Harkness tables form the center of just about dollars—seemed to fall from the sky at a time of great need at the every classroom.The classrooms themselves are known as Hark- Academy.Harkness was not a graduate of Exeter and had no for- ness classrooms. Casual conversations and formal debates are mal ties to the school. His unprecedented generosity revolution- termed Harkness discussions. New faculty are introduced to the ized teaching at Exeter and continues to define an Exeter Harkness method of teaching. education in every way 75 years later. This much is commonly Edward Harkness would probably not be happy to discover known to those associated with the Academy. the frequent mentions of his name.A supremely modest man, he 26 The Exeter Bulletin fall 2006 FA06_harkness_10.30.06 10/31/06 9:16 AM Page 27 RICHARD HOWARDS shunned publicity of any sort. But the rest is exactly what he Today, Harkness tables form the Edward’s siblings both intended when he made his gift to the Academy in 1930. He had center of just about every classroom died young, and without in mind nothing less than changing the face of education. at Exeter, and the Harkness philos- heirs. When his mother ophy of collaborative learning shapes died in 1926, Edward A FAMILY OF PHILANTHROPISTS everything from meetings of dormi- became the sole inheritor Edward Stephen Harkness was born on January 22, 1874, in tory proctors to a scrimmage in bas- of what was then one of the Cleveland, OH, the youngest of three children. His father, ketball practice. largest fortunes in America. Stephen Harkness, came to Ohio as a young man and worked as Harkness married, but had a harness-maker before expanding his business interests in live- no children.With his wife, Mary, he devoted his life to a system- stock, grain and distilling, and banking. A few years before the atic dispersal of his wealth, managing his assets with the intention birth of his youngest son, he became a silent partner in the fledg- of giving away everything in his lifetime. From the early 1920s to ling oil refining business established by John D.Rockefeller, later his death in 1940 at the age of 66, Harkness made charitable gifts incorporated as the Standard Oil Company.Along with his other totaling more than $129 million, the equivalent of nearly $2 bil- businesses, this shrewd investment made Stephen Harkness a lion in today’s dollars.Though his giving was not on the scale of multimillionaire by the time of his death in 1888, when Edward Rockefeller and Carnegie (who gave away $550 million and $350 was just 14. million,respectively,over the course of their lives),Harkness ranks Edward’s brother, Charles, who was then 27, took over man- as a major American philanthropist. agement of the family fortune in consultation with their moth- His sister-in-law once reportedly said to Harkness,“You really er. Following his father’s wishes, Charles continued to invest in would prefer to be under the sofa than anywhere else, wouldn’t Standard Oil, even when returns on the stock were low. The you?” She described him as someone with “never a thought of family’s loyalty to Rockefeller and his company paid off with the publicity,or acclaim, truly a Christian.”Harkness did not attach his invention of the automobile, sending profits in oil skyrocketing name to the many gifts he made in the areas of health care, educa- and creating a Harkness fortune worth more than $100 million. tion and the arts, and he often stipulated that there be little or no fall 2006 The Exeter Bulletin 27 FA06_harkness_10.30.06 10/31/06 9:17 AM Page 28 HARKNESS PHOTO: COLUMBIA PRESBYTERIAN MEDICAL CENTER; DOCUMENTS: PEA ARCHIVES public notice made of them. His mother, Anna, gave funds for construction of the Harkness Tower in the Memorial Quadrangle at Yale in memory of her son, Charles, and for the Hark- ness Pavilion at Columbia- Presbyterian Hospital in memory of her husband. The great generosity of Edward Harkness went largely unmarked, a fact that in today’s world is perhaps more notable than the sums he gave away and the many causes he supported. With an initial endow- ment of $10 million, Anna Harkness established one of the family’s major philan- thropic efforts, the Com- monwealth Fund, which continues to support access to health care and improvement of health care systems to this day. Edward served as the president of the fund throughout his life. Together mother and son gave $25 million for the construction of the med- ical center in New York now known as Columbia- recitations in a formal Presbyterian Hospital. recitation room where the teacher is on a platform After his mother’s death, raised above the pupils and there is a class of 20 or more boys Harkness established the Edward Harkness, whose father was who recite lessons. ...I think the bright boys get along all right Pilgrim Trust in Great an early investor in Standard Oil, by that method, but I am thinking of a boy who isn’t a bright Britain, which is still in gave away more than $129 million, boy—not necessarily a dull boy, but diffident, and not being existence, funding conser- much of it to colleges and secondary equal doesn’t speak up in class and admit his difficulties.” vation and historic preser- schools. Committed to reforming Although Harkness made gifts of up to a quarter-million dol- vation projects as well as American education, he pushed lars to Phillips Andover, Lawrenceville, St. Paul’s,Taft, Deerfield prison reform and pro- Exeter to come up with a “real Academy and the Hill School, his gift to Phillips Exeter was his grams for drug and alcohol largest to a secondary school. It was also the gift that most clear- revolution in [its] methods.” treatment. Harkness was a ly reflected his concept of a new approach to education and the major benefactor of the one calculated by Harkness himself to have the greatest impact.