Culture
The Beacon School offers many extracurricular activities such as after school theater and studio stage crew, book club, a biking club, a rock climbing club, a dance club, a Live Poets Society, art club, music performance, a photo club, a Senior Committee (populated by seniors who are responsible for helping with plans for graduation and the annual senior trip), and a Model United Nations club that has won awards at every conference it attended over the past few years, including several at the UNA-USA Conference, hosting students from around the world. The Beacon School has a very strong debate team. In the past two years, Beacon has consistently won multiple levels of the state tournament. On March 2010, Beacon gained its first bid to the Tournament of Champions and won the Lexington Winter Invitational. Another prominent club within the school is SMAC (Student Movement Against Cancer) where students unite in an effort to find a cure for cancer by raising funds for research. There is currently no student government or council, and SOS and other activists club have largely been disbanded.
In 2007 the school made front page news after David Andreatta confirmed that the school took illegal trips to the communist island of Cuba. At the end of the school year the teacher involved, Nathan Turner, resigned. In 2005, then Lt. Governor Paterson sent his daughter on one such trip. Alumni reaction to the trips and the political nature is mixed, with some alumni continuing to be involved in liberal activism, while others have expressed frustration with the liberal leanings of their teachers and peers.
Educational travel has become, in more recent years, an important part of the educational culture. Class trip destinations include India, Cuba, Spain, England, Ireland, Venezuela, France, Sweden, Costa Rica, Mexico, Mozambique, South Africa, and New Orleans. However, the school no longer sanctions trips to New Orleans for undisclosed reasons.
Read more about this topic: The Beacon School
Famous quotes containing the word culture:
“All objects, all phases of culture are alive. They have voices. They speak of their history and interrelatedness. And they are all talking at once!”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)
“The genius of American culture and its integrity comes from fidelity to the light. Plain as day, we say. Happy as the day is long. Early to bed, early to rise. American virtues are daylight virtues: honesty, integrity, plain speech. We say yes when we mean yes and no when we mean no, and all else comes from the evil one. America presumes innocence and even the right to happiness.”
—Richard Rodriguez (b. 1944)
“The fact remains that the human being in early childhood learns to consider one or the other aspect of bodily function as evil, shameful, or unsafe. There is not a culture which does not use a combination of these devils to develop, by way of counterpoint, its own style of faith, pride, certainty, and initiative.”
—Erik H. Erikson (1904–1994)