More Ethics Remembered, Considered, Reconsidered

2 ECF Reporter
ECF Reporter
Winter 2008
Published three times during the academic year, the ECF
Reporter is designed to maintain ties between the Ethical
Culture Fieldston School and its alumni, as well as between
the school and parents, grandparents, and friends, by sharing
news and issues of importance to the ECF community.
Selected content from the magazine is also posted on the
school website, www.ecfs.org.
ECF Reporter
Ethical Culture Fieldston School
33 Central Park West
New York, NY 10023-6001
(212) 712-6238 phone
(212) 712-6296 fax
reporterletters@ecfs.org
www.ecfs.org
editor
Ginger Curwen
Director of Communications & Marketing
alumni news editor
Toby Himmel
Director of Alumni Relations
design
Nancy Foote/By Design
assistant head of school for
institutional advancement and alumni
James Thompson
© Copyright 2008 by the
Ethical Culture Fieldston School.
Cover: Ethical Culture Holiday Assembly, December 2007
Inside Front Cover: Middle School Chorus Concert,
January 2008
Back Cover: Young Singers, Ethical Culture
Holiday Assembly
Cover photo, inside cover photo, and back cover photo by
Diane Silverman
The ECF Reporter welcomes thoughts and opinions about
articles and issues of interest to the ECF community. Send
them to reporterletters@ecfs.org or Reporter Letters, Ethical
Culture Fieldston School, 33 Central Park West, New York,
NY 10023-6001.
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Letters
More Ethics Remembered,
Considered, Reconsidered
The letter, in the Fall 2007 ECF
Reporter, by Staughton Lynd
(himself an impressive person
and a great credit to ECF) about
ethics reminded me of stopping
at Midtown some 35 years ago
so I could once again sit in the
auditorium, even if alone, and
read the words arching over the
proscenium. The ethical teachings
and examples presented
throughout ECF powerfully influenced
my life. After spending
seven increasingly unhappy years
in the business world, I went into
teaching. I had over 30 highly
satisfying years and students of
whom I continue to boast. Halfway
through that happy career, I
realized that a major motivation
on my part had been to repay my
ECF teachers by passing along
what they had passed to me.
However, there certainly were
entertaining moments associated
with ethics. One involved
my brother, Fred (’37), who was
given the honor of introducing
Eleanor Roosevelt at a dinner
way back when. Our father, an
accomplished dinner speaker,
cautioned my brother to have an
introductory joke ready, and he
did.
Algernon Black introduced my
brother, mentioning that Fred
had been in his ethics class. Dr.
Black explained that in an effort
to introduce students to responsibility,
he asked them to assume
that the earth had passed through
an interstellar gas that killed all
adults, so now the students had
to run the world. “Inevitably,”
said Dr. Black, “the first period
was wasted, from my point of
view, by extended discussions of
what to do with the bodies.”
When the laughter subsided, my
brother took his place at the rostrum.
Discarding his prepared
joke, he said, “Having had the
good fortune to have been in Dr.
Black’s classes, I know what to do
with the bodies.” Louder laughter.
An ethics teacher of mine was
Ormsbee Robinson. (Has anyone
come across that first name
elsewhere?) He made a practice
of telling short tales in which two
Commandments were in opposition,
and asking us how to handle
the situations.
(1) Your parents are starving,
and in the house there is neither
money nor anything to pawn. Do
you steal to feed (honor) them?
(2) You are waiting on a corner to
meet a friend, and see a man run
around the corner and duck into
a small alley. Seconds later, another
man, carrying a large knife,
runs around the corner but does
not see the first one. He turns to
you and asks, “Where did he go?”
Do you save a life by lying?
Once, however, I suddenly was
forced to renege on his ethical
teachings. During a winter weekend
in New Jersey, a group of us
[students] played ice hockey, a
favorite game of mine on ponds,
where my size was no handicap:
5’ 6” and perhaps 110 pounds.
Ormsbee enthusiastically joined
the opposite team, and though
I was one of the better student
players, his 6’3” and about 200
pounds was more than intimidating.
Much as I respected and
liked him, I quickly created an
excuse to leave.
Edwin Rosenberg ’41
Danbury, Connecticut
I had ethics with Eddy Glannon,
Al Black, and Ies Spetter. Much
reinforced by summer at ECSC
& University Settlement Camp,
by contact with other ECF faculty
and alumni, including the
Werthmans, Staughton Lynd,
and others.
John Pitman Weber ’60
Chicago, Illinois

It is a mystery and miracle of
teaching that the same teacher
can change the life of a student
while boring another. This was
painfully clear to me when I read
negative comments about Algernon
D. Black, the best teacher I
ever had, and Dr. Matthew Ies
Spetter, another teacher who had
an enormously positive impact
on me, in “Ethics Remembered,
Considered, Reconsidered” in
the Fall 2007 ECF Reporter.
I regret that a number of comments
in the letters came off
as public teaching evaluations
rather than general assessments
of the value of the ethics program.
For example, one writer
complained, “It was hard to pay
attention while Ies Spetter went
on and on about values, morals,
understanding, humanism, etc.,”
and another found Dr. Black and
Dr. Spetter to be “equally uninspiring.”
In response, I feel compelled
to offer a brief glimpse of a
contrasting experience:
In First Form, the ethics program
came to our class once a week
with a new issue to consider. This
is what happened one day, and it
was typical: We were 13, and my
friend and I would have preferred
to continue drawing Messerschmidts,
Zeros, and MiGs rather
than think of ethics. “Did you
know,” Dr. Black asked without
even greeting us, and before the
door closed behind him, “that in
India cows are sacred?” “That’s
dumb!” my friend whispered.
“And,” Dr. Black continued,
“even the cows’ dung is considered
to be holy.” “Now that’s beyond
stupid!” I whispered back.
I suppose that, for some, that day
amounted, at most, to no more
than vocabulary building. (That
was the day we learned what dung
meant.) But I recall that by the
end of the class, it didn’t feel right
to disrespect the Indians. It didn’t
feel right at all. How did Algernon
D. Black effect that change
in the space of 40 minutes? For
me, it was through the sincerity
and passion of his decency.
Dr. Spetter was a Holocaust survivor.
Here was a person who
survived, arguably, the most
despicable plan in history, and
yet he chose to teach ethics at
the Ethical Culture School whose
primary principle is that the human
race is improvable. If he still
believed that, how could I doubt
it? Attention had to be paid. I
teach Holocaust studies today,
and if I taught it from any other
perspective, it would be an exercise
in cynicism.
The ethics program at Fieldston,
I believe, is what distinguishes
it from other good prep schools
and from the best public schools.
I suspect that even those alumni
who found ethics to be a “questionable
discipline” or “purposeless”
have benefited in less obvious
ways. It taught us critical
thinking as a tool for doing the
right thing. That might have
been a more important lesson
than anything we learned in the
graded courses.
Michael Bobkoff ’61
Chappaqua, New York
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ECF Reporter 3