[Author note: this text has suffered from several mutations since its creation on an Epson in the 1980s, so if it seems not fully edited, that's an accurate perception. 10.14.11]
Dear Santa,
if you don't come down the chimney this Christmas, we'll understand. There are others whose needs are greater than oars ‑‑ Senators Bilbo and Wheeler, for example.
We know that your time is limited ‑‑ just a day's time; and there are always a few persons who require special consideration. But if you have a chance, won't you look in on Java, India, China, Greece, Middle Europe, and certain South American so‑called republics.
And if you have a moment to spare, won't you look in on our Cakies, our share‑croppers, our unemployed veterans, oar Jews distasteful to Mr. Coughlin, and our negroes.
He hope you can make it now in December 1945, for, to tell you the truth, a lot of people in this world are losing faith in Santa Claus.
‑‑ Mary Lea Johnson '46, Phebe Brown '46, Jim Barter '48, editors, Symposium, Vol. I, No. 2, December 16, 1945
Woodstock has always looked with disfavor on the multiplication of rules, preferring to rely on the natural good sense and cooperativeness of boys and girls. Most of the procedure herein outlined should be regarded as the smoothest way, in the mature consideration of a number of people who have worked on the matter, to achieve that gracious and cooperative living with which our close‑knit community can be truly happy ....
Loss of privileges, penalties, punishments, etc. Smoking in or about the dormitories, except as it may be permitted by faculty members in their own rooms, constitutes a fire hazard which cannot be tolerated and will make a student liable to expulsion. Breaking the smoking rules in any other way will mean loss of the privilege for a definite time. Having in one's possession or drinking any intoxicating beverage anywhere in Woodstock will make a student subject to expulsion. Both of these misdemeanors are adjudged by the Discipline Committee. These rules regarding tobacco and intoxicants hold whether School is in session or not. Lateness in getting to the dormitory in the evening, lateness to bed or talking after 'taps' will mean no snacks. Lateness to class or other school appointments, or coming to the table with dirty face or hands, will mean making up at a special Saturday afternoon study hell doable the time lost in the tardiness or in washing up for the meal in question. Messiness in the dormitory will lead to an assignment of scrubbing the cellar stairs, the porch floor, or the brickwork of the fireplaces. Coming to the table with unsuitable or untidy dress will mean being sent away to change and the time thus lost wade up in Saturday study hall. Going down town with unsuitable or untidy dress will mean deprivation of the down‑town privilege.
Clothing, books, or other possessions left around the -‑ building will be collected for the pound and redeemable for ten cents an article. Borrowing of others' books, clothing or other possessions without express permission of the owner will be treated as stealing and dealt with by the discipline committee (comprising the co‑directors and two other teachers).
‑‑ Ken Webb, WCS 1946‑47 Handbook, [pp. 14‑15], Summer 1946
I
Ken Webb wrote the first and only WCS Handbook to help new students get to know the school in the fall of 1946, and to remind old students of the rules and customs that had been established during the first year. The moral accountant style of this summary was never the actual style of life in the school. However the moral accountability implicit in the handbook remained part of the school's code for all but the last few years of its existence. The difference in this emphasis derived from the different styles of the co‑directors. As Ken defined their relationship in the handbook: "The school is set up under a system of shared responsibility, David Bailey or Kenneth Webb being responsible for its entire administration except for the financial control, for which Standish Deake [see Chapter 3] as business manager and comptroller is responsible directly to the Board of Trustees .... In general, David Bailey is responsible for students' individual problems, their daily program including sports and studies; Kenneth Webb for the curriculum, including study hours, etc., for the work program, entertainment, lecture and conference program, 'public relations,' and for all publications of the school, including this handbook." [Handbook p.6]
In handling "students' individual problems," David increasingly shaped the school's character, adopting a much more flexible approach to the rules than the Handbook suggests. Certainly smoking in the dorms and drinking were always unacceptable, and students were even expelled for repeated offenses. But infractions like lateness were increasingly dealt with by those who were affected directly (classroom teachers or work crew supervisors, for example); or as they emerged as part of a problem pattern in a student's behavior. Likewise, the contradiction of using study hail as a punishment was dropped, although strictly supervised study halls were used to deal with students who had poor study habits or who tended to disturb others in unsupervised study. In other words, the school was a more relaxed place than the Handbook portrays not because of any great loosening of standards, but because of a loosening of the means of achieving or enforcing those standards. David took the students for who they were, adolescents who were bound to make mistakes. But he believed they needed the freedom to make mistakes if they were to learn from them. And he trusted most of his students would learn enough from their little mistakes to keep from making great ones. But he could, and did, deal harshly with those who pushed the limits too hard (as he eventually expelled Larry flagman for one offense too many). But for most of the students, the school's freedom was more intimidating than enticing, and the system worked ‑‑ or at least taught students, as they matured, that they could misbehave more or less at will so long as they were discreet. (As David's style came to dominate the school, its Bulletin of In‑Formation a few years later had no section devoted to rules, although the rules regarding smoking, automobiles, pets, and firearms appear separately at logical points in the text. There is no mention of study hail or other minor rules.)
"David's way of controlling was different from Ken's,'" recalled Gerry Freund '48, David's friend and admirer for 35 years. "David's way of controlling provided a tent within which you could operate with a lot of freedom. Ken Webb's authoritarianism applied to every single piece of your behavior. But David changed during the course of the years of his headmastership and there was no consistency. There were times when David would tolerate, and then there were times when David would excise students, sometimes in groups, simply deciding that they weren't for this experience. Nevertheless he infected his students. He gave freedom. He was capricious. He was the arbiter of this school. It was a one person school. There was never a possibility of anyone's competing for the center of attention. If they did, they would leave." EG..Freund mt 6.7.84 1‑2/5..113
Perhaps the greatest expression of freedom during the first year of the school was that the students had some say in what the rules would be, and much more of a role in deciding how they would be en‑Forced. Years later, David described the results: "It was James Barter who with us adults helped to organize the first student government arrangement, the student council which we thereafter felt was the most important element in all the years that we ran the school Etill 1967]. Right from the start we set up a student council so that it directly represented their electorate. Each academic grade elected a representative and each dormitory elected one or more representatives, depending on the size of the dorm. This system prevailed for over 20 years. The student government system was not unique with us, but was indicative of the fact that our school was student oriented, that its government was jointly run by the whole school population, with great respect for each individual and that the adults were superior only in academic attainments."
The student council's responsibilities varied over the years, but they generally included such jobs as running the dorms, supervising study halls, and serving as the ODA, the OD's assistant. (Each day a different faculty member was designated as OD, "officer of the day" in charge of running the school, responsible for making sure students came to chapel and meals, attended classes and study hails, and signed out for afternoon and evening activities ‑‑ or accounting those who were missing. Much of this was delegated to the ODA, along with running errands, greeting visitors, and answering the school phone after the secretary went home.) In addition to this sort of helping to paint Tom Sawyer's fence, student council members were also expected to report any students they saw breaking rules, an expectation more honored in the breach than the observance by most students. The council was also called on to sit in judgement on its fellow students, and even its own members, when deciding who should get special privileges. Council meetings almost always included a faculty advisor (usually David), and final judgement on council decisions was reserved to the faculty or co‑directors. The inherent contradiction in this arrangement (the shared illusion of student power without its substance) would begin to undermine it in the early 1960s, when students openly expressed their eternal reluctance "to be policemen." After several re‑organizations aimed at maintaining some sort of student government, the whole idea vanished in the late 1960s, by which time it was the faculty that was openly stating its reluctance "to be policemen."
During the first years of the school, the student council's functions were not yet fully defined, as Ken noted in the Handbook, adding that "it is part of Woodstock's purpose to give students as much practice as possible in setting up and administering their own democratic government, to turn over an increasing proportion of student activities to their control. The Student Council should not become merely a police force, but should continually be creative in its administration of student affairs." The student council was not created to be a legislative body, although it was encouraged to petition the faculty with its proposals. But even the faculty's legislative authority was sometimes ambiguous. Insofar as the school had a democratic decisionmaking process, it included the whole community acting in the forum of the weekly school meetings, of which the student council president was the moderator. While this arrangement provided the students with real power over their lives when the institution was new, no system emerged for perpetuating that power.
Any new institution struggles to make its reality live up to its ideals. Woodsiock's struggle shows up in the school's first formal catalogue, written by Ken Webb with remarkable frankness after only one term of Woodsiock life. The 16‑page pamphlet systematically reviewed the school's goals and achievements in "Scholarship," "Athletics," "Religion," "Esthetics," "Democracy," arid "Work." Ken explored each of these under two headings, In Theory and In Fact.
In Theory, Woodstock's ideal of Scholarship put a higher emphasis on intellectual integrity than was encouraged by more traditional schools (or the culture at large, one might add): "The school should stimulate intellectual curiosity, should create an interest in good reading, good discussion, in clear, independent thinking, and a desire to continue self‑education.. It must establish habits of sound scholarship, sure mastery of fundamental skills, and must keep in sight the objective of adequate preparation for college." In Fact, Ken reported, "All the students do not study all the time, and not all assignments are satisfactorily prepared, but the gratifying amount of serious study which is being put into mastery of 'tool subjects' is done with an understanding and a willingness which imply that classes are stimulating. Students have read far beyond the requirements of course (sic). They have responded eagerly to informal talks and discussions by well informed guests on a variety of subjects. The writing in the two issues already out of the quarterly mimeographed 'Symposium' shows a surprising breadth of interest, not only in things of the mind, but in the affairs of the world in general.. If pupils have not all achieved intellectual curiosity in full measure, they have, as a whole, gained a remarkable degree of awareness of the immediate and the wider community of which they are a part." For most of its first 30 years, Woodstock rightly prided itself on its high academic standards, as it consistently sent its best graduates to the best colleges. But when the school ran into difficulty, declining academic rigor and achievement were among the clearest signs of other, deeper problems.
In Theory, Athletics at Woodstock included regular vigorous outdoor exercise, activity that benefits every muscle and helps to develop a sound body, sports and games played for the joy of playing, team play in which one puts forth all he's got with no thought of self, the building of wholesome attitudes which lead one to value health and physical fitness." In Fact, Ken reported, "Just the work of settling in during the fall term has provided much of our regular physical activity. There have been frequent 'pickup' games, no formal athletics." Eventually Woodstock would play other schools in soccer, field hockey, ice hockey, basketball, and tennis, which replaced baseball in the early 1970s. Woodstock teams usually lost, and a .500 season was a rare accomplishment.. There were occasional moments of glory like the 1950 baseball game in which Dave Pope pitched the school's only no‑hitter, but sports never became the focus of the school. With most teams having more positions to fill than good players to fill them, athletics remained a source of cooperation much more than competition.
In Theory, Religion was to be integral to Woodstock life: "Spiritually, the atmosphere of the school should be definite and vigorous enough to lead students to the conviction that the principles of Christianity are vital, that they afford a satisfying way of life, and that religion can be both a source of strength and a transforming force in individual lives and in society." In Fact, Ken noted, "The attitude of students here in worship services, though often impatient of the formalism of traditional ritualistic worship, is not only serious but reverent. Visitors who have attended occasional Sunday vespers or daily chapel, both types of service conducted by the students, have commented on their feeling and sincerity." The brief morning chapel was usually non‑denominational if not non‑religious, led by faculty, students, or visitors who sometimes sang hymns and prayed, and other times played jazz, read poetry, or talked about public issues. Vespers was likely to be more traditionally Protestant, as when Elizabeth Johnson gave her sermon titled "Get Thee Behind Me Satan," but it could also take the form of a Quaker meeting or a discussion of military conscription. However, no religion, not even Ken's Ouakerism, ever became a focus for the school. Like sports, religion remained more an opportunity for communal cooperation than doctrinal competition.
In Theory, with Esthetics, "We would have students gain here a sensitivity to beauty and a realization that everyone has some modicum of ability which can lead to satisfaction in art and music. Everyone should do enough painting and drawing and sculpture to appreciate good art; everyone should know the joy of an hour around the piano singing' In Fact, Ken wrote, "Every student has had the experience of drawing and painting, some of the boys most unwillingly at first, but later with an interest which has broken down barriers of diffidence, self‑consciousness, and belief that such pursuits are 'sissy.'" Art and music, and later Drama, would continue to provide esthetic focus for the school for most of its life.
In Theory, Woodstock was a strong proponent of Democracy: "Education to be fully rounded must include training in cooperation and democratic living, in the realization that each individual has responsibilities toward the community as a whole. Students should have the experience of governing themselves in the many areas where this is possible." In Fact, Ken acknowledged, "we see many small failures in cooperation, in democratic procedure, yet necessary work gets done, someone is always ready to help
‑ when help is needed; and students are actually learning what democracy is, how it can be properly used, even what its diseases are, such as indifference, pressure groups, unawareness of the demagogue." Democratic processes and decision‑making, and their implicit power struggles, would be an increasingly important part of the school for most of its history. In Theory, the school saw great value in Work: "Estudents] should have the opportunity to do most of the work necessary to the daily life of the community. To strengthen and broaden this work experience, there should be a farm to teach responsibility, respect for work, and appreciation of the labor involved in the production of so many things we take for granted." In Fact, Ken wrote, "The farm is full of plans, not achievement, at present. We have been able to give students opportunity for realistic work, even in caring for a cow, 3 goats, 4 horses, and a miscellaneous assortment of calves, turkeys, chickens, and pigs. This spring a large garden, mainly of fall crops, will be planted, and by next autumn, with somewhat more stock, we should begin to have a truly productive farm unit." Waodstock's farm operation would never become an integral part of the institution, like the farm at the Putney School. What Woodstock maintained was a perpetual fantasy of farming,
• but a peripheral farm operation, even after the school hired a fulitime farmer in 1958. However the tradition of a student work program, cleaning and feeding the community every day, remained a focus of school life ‑‑ and sometimes a source of friction ‑‑ throughout its history.
The first catalogue concludes with a characteristic Ken Webb passage: "This 1946‑47 catalog of the Woodstock Country School was written at the end of the school's first term. A comparison with the [prospectus], issued before the school had started, will show minor changes in what we had hoped to do. The deviations from the script, however, are mainly the result of extemporization to meet an unforeseen situation and are proof of a desirable flexibility. Parents who wrote us or talked with us during the Christmas vacation were as enthusiastic as the students about a school where they treat you like human beings: you have some freedom, but you work harder than you ever did when everything was forced on you.
Being treated like a human being was at the core of being at Woodstock. The real education, which the catalogue only hinted at, was social, in the broadest sense. The egalitarianism implicit, for example, in calling teachers by their first names was a little unsettling for many students at first. Even in the Syposiaw traditional "Mr." and "Mrs." prevailed for most teachers, but not all. The first name style was always one of the hardest aspects of Woodstock life for outsiders to accept. They usually complained that calling teachers by their first names demonstrated a lack of respect. Given time, they often came to understand that the opposite was true. The ‑Formalism of respect so ritualized in other schools often masked a profound disrespect of teachers and students for each other, behind a hypocritical facade which bred cynicism. Seeking to avoid that, the first name basis at Woodstock, while expecting genuine civility, still left teachers and students alike free to win or lose respect on the basis of the authenticity of their actions and qualities. They were all directly responsible for their own behavior, and so could learn to value others ‑‑ and themselves ‑‑ not for the superficialities of age or rank, but for watever goodness was in them.
Just as fundamental to Woodstock life was coeducation. The word does not appear in the catalogue, which defines the school as "a college preparatory school for boys and girls" on the title page and then says no more about the genders. But there they are in all the pictures, boys and girls together ‑‑ boys and girls very decorously together to be sure, but together in classes, together in meetings, together riding horses, together feeding turkeys, together singing around the piano. Some other "coeducational" schools of the time prohibited boys and girls from holding hands, and even the Putney School kept its students tightly scheduled in an effort to keep their energies appropriately channeled. But at Woostock, coeducation was an expression of sexual equality and integration, as boys and girls were together in every part of the school except the dorms. Yet the catalogue does not discuss the way coeducation suffused daily life at the school. Nor does it discuss the underlying reason: that emotional growth was just as important as intellectual growth, with the implicit corollary that to achieve real emotional growth, young people must be ‑free to have rea emotional relationships.
This side of the school, the students' non‑academic life, was David Bailey's main responsibility, by mutual agreement with Ken. David was more relaxed about it all than Ken would have been, so that even as Ken was summing up Woodstock's first term with public optimism in the catalogue, he was already having private misgivings about his working relationship with David, and its effect, good and bad, on the school.
II
Hell, we got our school going, and then began the most grueling three months I've ever spent. Thank God the organization period is over now, and with the three wks at Xmas, I have been able to get rested. arranged with David to handle by myself tI7e promotion and town relations, to keep a voice in matters of major policy, teachers, etc., and am now much happier, more relaxed, and interested again in the school. I've made adjustment to the different attitudes of David, and see how I can work around them, eventually bring the school out to about the position 1 want it to maintain. It gives me really exactly the position I want, for 1 an quite free, quite able to cultivate contacts on the outside without keeping my nose too closely to the grindstone. Then I have the camps in which to exercise complete executive power which is also pleasant. 1 really think that David's casualness is making of the school a more deliteful place for kids than it might have been with me ‑‑ 1 guess not, but a splendid atmosphere has certainly been created.
‑‑ Ken Webb, Diary entry, January 15, 1946
The school was pretty disorganized, I think. I came from a school which was very rigid, very organized, and I remember there were all kinds of problems in deciding what the rules were. I remember one of the big controversies early on was whether or not students would be allowed to smoke, and then where they would be allowed to smoke. The final compromise was to have a smoking area by the flagpole, so all the kids who smoked had to go up to the flagpole. Instead of making a rule that you could or couldn't smoke, whet they did was to make smoking as unpleasant as can be David smoked like a chimney, so he wasn't one who could enforce smoking rules, but Ken didn't smoke and I remember there was a real kind of democratic process that went on, meetings and discussions, and I think that that decision about having a smoking area came out of these meetings. That first year there was a lot of that process, where things would be talked out and 1 have the sense that there was a lot of by‑play between Ken and David about the way things should be run, and I have the sense that there were a lot of times when they weren't together.
‑‑ Jim Barter '48, Interview, February 21, 1985
There was tremendous rivalry between Ken Webb and David.. Not any outright competition, just that they were very different people,.. Ken was kind of a square, he didn't spoke, he was a very different man from David. Ken wasn't at all interested in sports, although yes, he'd be outdoors chopping wood. David used to read the box scores as soon as he'd get the paper, the first thing he'd turn to would be the Red Sox. Host of the kids really liked David and didn't like Ken and it was kind of unfortunate, although David never slandered Ken at all. Never that 1 remember did he ever speak badly of Ken. But they were such different people that they were destined to part. 1 mean Ken Webb would seem so out of place at a cocktail party and David, that was David's natural habitat.
‑‑ Roger Phillips '49, Interview Ep I‑B, 1‑2], May 17, 1984
Of all the differences between Ken and David, none was more important than the way they related to students. Ken worried in his diary about his relationships with students, he fretted about not liking them and their not liking him, but he was never able to resolve the difficulties, least of all to his own satisfaction. While he certainly had some friends among the students and was widely respected as a teacher, he was also the butt of communal jokes. No headmaster, least of all a co‑director with an integral, powerful rival, can easily survive in such an atmosphere (as other heads of the Country School, even without rivals, would learn again in later years.
David, on the other hand, liked adolescent young people. He enjoyed their company, their struggles, their freshness, their difficulties, and all the messy and charming loose ends that go with the age. He revelled in the challenge of getting a troubled child to come out all right, and most of all he believed that the school could do better with most kids than their parents could. Although he played games with the students ‑‑ sports, parlor games, bridge and chess, as well as more complex mind games ‑‑ he was never trying to be one of them.. He always maintained a certain distance as the adult, the authority‑‑Figure, the headmaster, no matter how teasing and silly his behavior might get. For many, perhaps most Country School students, David's character, with all its contradictions, surprises, inconsistencies, was a vital, pleasant, or at worst neutral center for a school experience which was more exciting and varied than most students had even thought possible. People who knew Woodstock in its best periods over 30 years commonly use words like "paradise" or "magic" to describe the experience. (Even Peggy Bailey, David's wife, who sometimes considered David's flexibility in his dealings with the children too lenient, nevertheless acknowledged that "with all his faults ‑‑ God knows we all have faults ‑‑ David had this kind of magic touch with the young," which eluded her description and remained essentially mystical.) [Peggy interview 6/16] (David Bailey's style is explored more fully in Chapter 3.)
For all his real or imagined inconsistencies and contradictions, David's values were universally perceived as different from those of Ken Webb, whether for better or worse. Their fundamental difference was that Ken believed students should be taught and therefore discipline should be imposed by others, whereas David believed students would learn and therefore self‑discipline should be encouraged, even at the risk of self‑indulgence. In practice, their differences rarely seemed so stark, but were expressed in more subtle gestures of nuance and emphasis, of personal style.
But it was David's style, his "casualness" that made Woodstock a "delite‑ful place... (with a) splendid atmosphere," as Ken observed at the end of the very first term (see above). Even then Ken was giving ground to David's "different attitudes" rather than challenging them, though he still hoped to work around them to make the school conform more to his own vision somehow, some day. While it would be another two and a half years before he was fully separated from Woodstock, Ken would never again seriously challenge David's authority in the school. What is strange about their relationship is not that they should contend for control of the institution, but that the contest should be so covert between them and, at the same time, so keenly ‑Felt in the school community.
As Ken remembered it years later, real communication between him and David diminished to a minimal level within a few weeks after Woodstock opened. He did not write in his diary at all during that first term, but by the winter he was clearly detaching himself from too close involvement in the school. Only a few months before, his optimistic five year plan for the school had been followed by a second five year plan. By January 1946, he was thinking of five years as his maximum commitment to the Country School: "This five years will be very pleasant, I am sure, for David and I have found out how to work together. Then when the five years are up, I'll have a following to call on for help with the cooperative school [which Ken planned for years at Camp Timberlake, but which never came into being]." [Webb diary 1.25.46] For all his repeated optimism about learning to work with David, Ken seemed more engaged in psychological cheerleading to keep his spirits up than in making an accurate assessment of day to day reality, in which most of the school looked to David for the final decision in disputes. Insofar as Ken believed his own optimism, he was effectively denying his workday reality. By the end of that first term, the struggle for control of the school, which would seem to others to take years, was effectively over ‑and David had won. Woodstock was becoming David's school.
There is no evidence that Ken and David ever seriously tried to resolve their differences. Nor is there any evidence that Elizabeth Johnson, Owen Moon, or anyone else with influence with either man ever sought to bring them closer together. There was no explosion, no confrontation, no effort to clear the air, not just in 1945, but for the rest of both of their lives. As Ken put it, "We never had a fight, never came to blows, never had anything of that sort. We were just not on the same wavelength." So like good, stoic New Englanders, they colluded in unspoken denial and carried on as if there were no differences between them, or as if those differences would somehow resolve themselves, or as if those differences didn't really matter. They acted as if no one could see the diferences between them, when of course anyone who looked could see them plainly. While they might persuade themselves that they were keeping their conflicts hidden, it was an illusion to think they could hide that reality from 35 bright adolescents, many of whom had long since learned to sense much subtler signs of trouble in their natural families. While denying their differences allowed the co‑directors to believe they presented the appearance of unity, in practice there was no way to hide their conflict as the community struggled to decide what kind of school it was. Among the issues which clearly put Ken and David on different sides were smoking and editorial freedom for Symposium.
Given his own way, Ken would have prohibited smoking altogether. But because David and other staff members smoked heavily, as did many students, and even more because Ken believed in the democratic process for the school, it was an issue he could not win. Nevertheless he kept trying, recording in his diary on February 2, 1946, "The school meeting decided to shelve the constitution for two months at any rate, which gives us the best setting for the few but important changes which I feel should be made next year. One will be restriction of smoking to recess and a half hour after supper, and only an the porch [of Greenhithe]..." As it turned out, that constitution never came off the shelf, and smoking was never so restricted.
As the faculty advisor for Symposium, Ken warned the students not to publish a mocking account of local Halloween festivities, for fear of offending local sensibilities. From the start Ken had been more worried about town‑gown relations than David, and Ken wanted the school to play an active role in the community (though quite how the school could do that was never clearly spelled out).. The student editors appealed to David, who told them he saw no harm in it and had no objection to seeing it in print. Years later this contradiction still rankled Ken, even as he acknowledged that he and David had never discussed the issue: "I never brought it up to him. It was done, there was no point in pursuing it. I didn't want to have an open fight with him. I wanted to get along as best we could. So I guess a number of times I gave in when maybe I shouldn't have. But it seemed best in the long run to do that.. I didn't want to see the school go under when I left it." When Ken and David did work jointly on a problem, there could be an odd tentativeness to their approach, as • when they realized that they both realized that they did not wish to re‑hire social studies teacher Bert Sarason. Although Bert was bright and able enough (he went on to a position as an assistant professor of English at New Haven State Teacher's College), the co‑directors perceived him as 21 having a hostile spirt, a chip on his shoulder all the time ‑no doubt having heard about his classroom digressions.
When the issue first came up in January 1946, Ken and David merely talked to Bert, about whether or not he should return to the school the following fall. A few days later, they talked to Elizabeth Johnson about the problem.. Ken wrote in his diary that "she said definitely that we should make a change now without any doubt. So we will... It is a great relief to me, for I had that we should, but was uncertain whether to force the issue." Even so, they hesitated. Five days later, Ken recorded that he and David "decided definitely to refuse Bert a contract for another year. Feel better now that we have, tho also regretful." But it was still not finally done for another eleven days, having taken three weeks.
Another area of fundamental difference between David and Ken was religion, though it remained diffuse. The Webbs were devoted Quakers, and Ken surrendered the idea of having a Quaker school only slowly, as his efforts at friendly persuasion proved fruitless. David was neither an antireligious man, nor an overtly religious one. As long as he ran the school, there was chapel every morning, vespers every Sunday, and the usually mild, pro forma religious flavor common to baccalaureate, commencement, and similar occasions. But there was never any question that Woodstock would be anything but nominally Christian in a nominally Christian society. For David that meant a lack of ritual or. dogma and a broad tolerance of diversity, a spirit of confident acceptance rare enough in secular life and often cause for bloody persecution by religious authorities.
This same tolerance on David's part caused constant friction with Ken when it came to enforcing rules as well. The issue almost came to a head in November of the school's second year, when Ken caught a trusted senior hunting deer at his camps in Plymouth.. The student was Bob Green, the Navy veteran, who who had taken on extra responsibilities helping to run the boys dorm. Ken wanted him dealt with harshly. David ‑Felt otherwise and his more lenient view prevailed. (The following February, the faculty would vote 7‑2 to expel another student, and David would still keep him, albeit on strict probation.) EWebb diary 11.18.46, 2.20/24.47] Some weeks after the Green episode, Ken wrote glancingly about it, and about the effort he was making to improve his relationships with students, concluding: "I like the kids better, like the chance to talk with them, and I think that gradually I am going to see a definite change (as I see indications now) of a change in attitude toward me. In fact, tho Susan and I were disgusted with the handling of the Green case and ready to quit the end of the year, this afternoon's faculty meeting with its struggle over the question of smoking rather restored our faith that all lesser problems can be worked out on as rational a basis. What I should like to do is stay with the school in present capacity one more year. Not only will I learn much more about the problems of a school, but it will be so good for me to work out my own problems of personal adjustment, and that problem has got to be worked out before we begin our school. I can have a radiant, gay, and loving personality if only I can let the best in me keep ascendericy all the time." That was as close as the Webbs came to precipitate action. Their leavetaking from the school was long and gradual, so gradual in fact that Peggy Bailey couldn't remember "whether it was at the end of the second year or the third year that Ken Webb withdrew from the school." (Peggy mt 'i, p 14] Even Ken's daughter Sukie, a Woodstock student for the first four years, had no sharp memory of his departure. She said his leaving caused no significant shift in the school, that to her Woodstock seemed the same during all her time there. [Suki Webb Hammond int] Others also have trouble recalling the chronology of Ken's leaving, and with good reason ‑‑ since Ken detached himself slowly, by degrees, as he gave over the day to day running of the school David, while focussing his own energies increasingly on program organization, public relations, and fund raising (and he found even his work of choice becoming harder and harder during the second year). At the same time he was increasingly distracted by the demands of his growing camps (there would be six in all). (Webb diary 11.5.46]
In January 1947 Ken decided to leave the school, in April he formally resigned as co‑director and vice president of the Trustees. The board accepted his resignation and created the one‑year position of field director for him for 1947‑48, meaning that he spent most of his final year with the Country School off campus, away from David and the students. Thirty‑five years later ‑‑ after David's emphysema had forced his own early retirement, after the school had closed, after David had died, and after the Webbs had retired from their successful camps which are now run by the Farm and Wilderness Foundation ‑‑ Susan Webb thought the most difficult difference between Ken and David had been their views of "discipline." She explained that "Ken's feeling was that if somebody was caught smoking, you might give them one chance to improve, but you didn't give them two. They went out. And we weren't afraid to. Ken felt strongly that if a person agreed not to smoke at the school but continually did it, that he was simply thrown out of the school. Just as we send a boy home from the camp here, because he knows he's agreed not to smoke when he comes and we find that he's doing it. He undoubtedly has other problems, too. But David wouldn't do that. David would not clamp down. And I think also that David was very popular with the students because he wasn't firm enough. When it came to that, he wasn't firm enough with himself, if you don't mind my putting it that way. And Ken is a very disciplined person." (Webb int. hA, p 1. Below: Webb mt IB, p 3‑5, IIB, p 6‑93
Ken Webb: "There were many ways in which we shared common ideals. But I did believe in discipline. I did believe in structure. And he didn't believe in discipline of any sort, apparently. Of course that's what finally did the school in. He believed in this structure‑less education with everybody doing what everybody wanted to do. I believed in structure. Not a repressive structure, but enough to keep things going along the right road."
Susan Webb: "I've always ‑Felt that if I had been able to change anything, it would have been to put in a stronger feeling of Quaker leadership. Because I think then we would have had the strength of Quaker meetings behind us, and the Yearly Meeting, and we would have had certain standards that had to be met. And I think that would have been a good thing for that school."
Ken Webb: "I would have changed the relationship between David and me. Instead of trying to be co‑directors, which is impossible, we would have had it out as to which would be head of it. And I think that since, really, it was my idea and my reputation that got the school going, I would have insisted on being head, and having David as second in command, assistant.. I think that would have entirely changed the character of the school."
Susan Webb: "And I think we would have given more. You know, I always say that there are some things that you simply, you answer 'No' to, and you have to have the courage to do it."
Ken Webb: "I think we had determined to leave because the camps were growing so, there were six camps, and we just couldn't manage all that and be proud of the school, too. So I thought it was foolish to bring this all to a head, since we had to leave anyway ‑‑ and I'd never change David."
Susan Webb: "Yes, we had to choose. But I think, really, Ken was unwilling to open up all the disagreements, all the difficulties between him and David. It would have torn the school apart, not only the school but the town, we felt, because of loyalties to the Baileys and the whole situation there. And it would have been so difficult that it was easier for us ‑‑ perhaps it wasn't the best decision, but it was the quietest and most sensible way as we could see it at that time. But I know it's worked out better for us in the long run."
Ken Webb: "Well, of course I believe in calling a spade a spade, if you've got to go into that. But with us, we didn't see that we would gain anything by it, and it would probably destroy the school, because nobody wants to go into a school or put kids into a school where there's a row going on. And that was the reason I never went around to people who helped start the school to explain why I was leaving. And I've always felt guilty that I never cleared that with them. And yet I couldn't do it without seeming to be talking about a split in the school, and it wasn't that either."
Susan Webb: "We didn't tell them all this kind of thing. But we never felt we lost by that."
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