Choosing Science
- Dr. Lloyd
- 1 hour ago
- 6 min read
I was minding my own business, principally concerned with basketball and girls, when my parents told me there was a letter addressed to me at our home in the north Bronx. I was 13, making this letter an anomaly. Tearing it open, I read, “Congratulations {to me}, you {me} have been accepted into the Bronx High School of Science beginning this coming Fall.”
I had heard of that school, because of parents who boasted that their child was at “Science”. When I asked my Junior High School Home Room teacher what “Science” was, she said, it was like going to Harvard College, except it was a high school, in New York City (not Cambridge Massachusetts), and it was free, because it was a public school, not a private school. She went on to say, “There are two academic exam schools in NYC, Science and Stuyvesant. Each one thinks it's better but if you live in the Bronx, it’s easy to decide because Stuyvesant was in Manhattan.” She also said that she was proud of me and had endorsed my acceptance.
How was I accepted if I didn’t apply?
But that seemed unimportant at that time since I had it in my mind that I would go to Evander Childs High School, where my friends were headed. And which was far closer to where I lived.
Getting to Science meant taking two old, generally ill-kempt NYC buses traveling on pot-holed streets, the second bus making its way under the elevated subway, its iron wheels screaming like a wounded dinosaur.
These were part of the cacophony that most tourists to the City cannot endure, no less embrace. For native New Yorkers, like me, the screeches blended with the hum of a City on fire. Its sidewalks energized by the pace of its pedestrians, who seemed to regard them as a freeway, with no speed limit.
At dinner that night I told my parents I was going to say no Science. To my surprise they said nothing. Smart, I know now. They didn’t want to start a fight I could win by doing what they did not want to happen.
Left to my own uncertain mind, I said, a couple days later, I wanted to go to Science. Maybe I had come around to being a good Jewish son, abiding with the dominant values of my tribe, and eschewing the day-to-day grief an adolescent boy is given to dish out?
For a youth like me, parts of the Bronx could be menacing if you were smart, wore glasses, or toted a lot of books. Especially when I had to walk past the big, tough boys leaning on the chain metal fence outside the next-door to Science, Dewitt Clinton High School. They should have been good reason to question going to Bronx Science.
But that seemed unimportant since I had it in my mind that I would go to Evander Childs High School, where my friends were headed. And which was far closer to where I lived. While Science meant two old, generally ill-kempt NYC buses traveling on pot-holed streets, the second bus making its way under the elevated subway, its iron wheels screaming like a wounded dinosaur.
The screeching was part of the cacophony that tourists to the City cannot endure, no less embrace. For we natives, the screeches came to blend with the hum of a City on fire, energized by its locals, who were easily irritated by the out of towners slowing walking on the sidewalks that City folk regarded as a pedestrian freeway, with no speed limit.
At dinner that night I told my parents I was going to say no Science. To my surprise they said nothing. Smart, I know now. They didn’t want to start a fight I could win by doing what they did not want to happen.
I changed my mind and said, a couple days later, I wanted to go to Science. I cannot divine what turned around my adolescent head. Maybe I was being a good Jewish son, abiding with the dominant values of my tribe, different from the day-to-day grief my adolescence was given to dish out to my parents.
Some time ago, I attended my 50th (!) Science reunion. Badges showed our photos from our graduation yearbook since these were the images that had formed the emotional basis for knowing each other. Some 200 alum, spouses, and friends crowded into a Chelsea restaurant for an evening of dining on memories and realities. Drink in hand I braved walking into the crowd. Start a conversation with someone, anyone, my wife said, so I did. There were only a handful of people I knew, but those there all were my people, my classmates, my vintage, New Yorkers everyone no matter where they lived that day.
Reunions select out two groups: those who have died and those who did not want to or could not attend. Take me, for example, since I had only attended one other reunion (the 25th).
At the 50th, seventy-one ‘Class of ’62’ graduates were listed as “In Memoriam” in the evening’s program. There were only a few I knew personally but the sheer number of those who had died and the homage paid to them by friends who commented during the program, was a reminder of how thin is the thread of life as we know it. One fellow I knew well had died over a decade ago. We were in the same junior high school class before we both went to Science: he was my first startling experience with true genius, with his capacity to rapidly solve complex calculus problems that, try as I might, took me forever. He left Science with one year to go - early admission, to an Ivy League college, which he soon quit to develop his own (over time, successful) business. But he was now dead, but by some grace of God, I was not.
There was a show of hands when the MC asked how many had artificial joints? Stents? How many had taken LSD? Not that many, in answer to all three questions, though more positive responses to the first two questions.
An on-line survey of the class taken before the reunion had 232 respondents and revealed that 83% were currently married (many more than once) and 81% had children; over 80% had graduate degrees (master’s and doctorates); and over 40% had career changes. Over 40% were now retired, many said they never planned to retire, and one said he would retire ten years after he died. An overwhelming number of alums felt very positive about the school, endorsing that it made a “consequential difference” in their lives. As I listened to this information and looked around, I saw the ingredients of successful aging: being smart and well educated, from families that valued assimilation, and fortunate to have lived in a culture of meritocracy. We became the winners of the precious commodities of dignity, prosperity, and community.
Bronx Science’s graduating class of ’62, in 25 years, had gone from being substantially Jewish to Asian. The changing demographics of New York City and its ever-revitalizing immigrant communities had been at work. Whoever goes to Bronx Science today, or tomorrow, will discover that it is safe to be smart. More so, they will realize that learning, mastering knowledge, and valuing thinking are gifts that keeps on giving.
By choosing Science, I discovered that hard, deliberate, and persistent mental work was fundamental to building my mind so it worked well – and - in fact, I would miss it if I let my brain lay dormant.
Imagine if my experience at Science was one that could happen in any school in New York City, or other community in this vast country? Imagine if there were many more places where it’s safe to be smart and come to need to work hard. Not only for privileged students with the most intact and engaged of families but for all the students at those schools. Now, that would be something to be proud of.
Dr. Sederer’s book for families who have a member with a mental illness, The Family Guide to Mental Health Care, was published by WW Norton in the spring of 2013.