The Putney School

The Putney School is an independent high school in Putney, Vermont. It was founded in 1935 by the Carmelita Hinton. It is a co-educational, college-preparatory boarding school, with a day-student component, located 12 miles (19 km) outside of Brattleboro, Vermont. Emily Jones is the director. The school enrolls approximately 225 students on a 500 acres (2.0 km²)-hilltop campus that houses classrooms, dormitories, and a dairy farm on which all of its students work before graduating.

The school emphasizes academics, the work program, the arts, and physical activity. The school's curriculum is intended to teach the value of labor, art, community, ethics, and scholarship for individual growth.

Most of the buildings on the school's campus were partially or completely built by Putney students and faculty, with the exception of the most recent addition, the Michael S. Currier Center. This Center is a departure from Putney's customary white, colonial-style architecture. It is used for dance, music, movie-making and visual-art presentations.

The Boston Globe wrote: "The school's combination of a New England work ethic and a strong academic program, its pioneering of coeducation and community service and its emphasis on music and the arts have made it a model for other independent schools...Putney remains committed to the total community of work and schooling that goes far beyond the more limited pieces of its tradition adopted by other schools."^[1]

The school is a member of the Independent Curriculum Group and recently had a 10 year accreditation review by the New England Association of Schools and Colleges.

Notable alumni

According to The Putney School 2008 Alumni Directory, students at The Putney School have included:

• David Amram '48 composer^[2]
• Tim Asch '51 anthropologist, filmmaker
• Carlos Buhler '72 mountaineer
• Carlton Cuse '77 television writer/executive- "LOST"
• Tim Daly '74 actor
• Mahdi ElMandjra '50 Moroccan futurist, economist and sociologist
• David Griffiths'60 physicist, teacher
• Lee Hirsch '90 filmmaker
• Jeffrey Hollender '73 CEO Seventh Generation Inc.
• Felicity Huffman '81 actor
• Kathleen Kennedy Townsend '69 Lieutenant Governor, Maryland
• Kerry Kennedy '77 lawyer and human rights activist
• Bill Koch '73 Olympic cross-country skiing medalist
• Tea Leoni '84 actor

Then-Director Brian Morgan addresses the graduating Class of 2004.

• Sally Mann '69 fine-art photographer
• Joanna Miles '58 original cast member on All My Children
• Errol Morris '65 filmmaker
• Nell Newman '78 co-founder/owner, Newman's Own. (Attended Putney from 1975-1977)
• Ken Olin '72 actor, director and TV producer
• Jonathan Rosenbaum '61 film critic
• Wallace Shawn '61 actor, author
• Reid Hoffman '85 web entrepreneur

Notable teacher

• Fernando Gerassi (artist)

Footnotes

1. ^ Cohen, Muriel. "Putney - A Vermont School that Dared and Succeeded." The Boston Globe January 1, 1995: p. A42.
2. ^ The Putney School 2008 Alumni Directory University Publishing Corporation (Bloomington, Indiana) 2008: p.2.

External references

Books

• Cohen, Muriel. "Putney - A Vermont School that Dared and Succeeded." The Boston Globe January 1, 1995: p. A42.
• The Putney School 2008 Alumni Directory University Publishing Corporation (Bloomington, Indiana) 2008: p. 2.
• Lloyd, Susan McIntosh. The Putney School: A Progressive Experiment. Yale University Press, 1987. ISBN 0-300-03742-2.
• "Carmelita Chase Hinton and the Putney School." In Founding Mothers and Others: Women Educational Leaders During the Progressive Era, ed. Alan R. Sadovnik and Susan F. Semel. Palgrave, 2002. ISBN 0-312-29502-2.

External links

An animated GIF panaroma of part of the Putney campus.

• Putney School web site
• Putney School mission statement
• Putney School Admissions Video on SchoolFair.tv
• Independent Curriculum Group web site
• Accreditation report from the New England Association of Schools and Colleges.