Ethical Culture School

In 1923 I started school at P.S. 10, a few blocks East of Morningside Avenue at about 118th Street. My parents in the meantime were worried about the school s quality, and one of their American friends told them that Johnny was so smart he should go to the best. He recommended the Ethical Culture School, run by the Ethical Culture Society, which was founded by Felix Adler in the late 19th century. Its guiding principle was that each person has some unique attribute that should be nurtured. Classes were small and the teachers were excellent. (There were 77 in my senior class. Of the 36 boys 10 were accepted at Harvard.) But the school was expensive, way out of our reach. My father must have written one of his persuasive letters because they gave me a full scholarship, which I maintained over the whole 11 years I was there. 

A few years later three big changes happened in our lives. My father got a job in the movies at Vitaphone Corporation, a Warner Brothers subsidiary, we moved from Morningside Avenue to Riverside Drive, and I graduated from the Ethical Culture lower school of 6 grades to the upper school called Fieldston. 

Tom Bprsen M.Sc. in Chemistry and Philosophy from University of Copenhagen, and Ph.D. in University Science Education from The Danish University for Pharmaceutical Sciences. He is an Associate Professor at the Department of Learning and Philosophy, Aalborg University Copenhagen, and former Chairman of the Study Board for Techno-Anthropology under the School of Engineering and Science, Aalborg University. His research is focused on academic, ethical and social responsibilities of experts and in expert cultures as well as on inter- and trans-disciphnary university education. 

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