With Love and Prayers: A Headmaster Speaks to a New Generation

David R. Godine Publisher, January 2003. Paper Back. Very Good. John Eliot, who founded Boston's Roxbury Latin School in 1645, believed his school's purpose should be ''to fit students for public service.'' F. Washington Jarvis, the residing headmaster of the same and (from the foreword) ''an unrepentant Episcopal clergyman with Catholic tendencies,'' clarifies his school's tradition by interpreting it for the twenty-first century:''it is the end towards which a boy uses his intellectual training that is our principal concern. We care, most of all, what kind of person a boy is.'' Collected herein are forty of Dr. Jarvis's talks, reprinted from his school's publications and originally delivered to the boys of Roxbury Latin at the start of every school day morning. Within a culture that seems to regard low self-esteem as its only original sin, Dr. Jarvis's addresses tend toward stronger themes: God, courage, service, faith. While its likely these pages will be read by more teachers and parents than students, Jarvis is speaking to the young, and he gives them credit. His addresses feature such titles as ''Lies Teenagers are Told,'' ''Suspending Disbelief,'' Divine Irresponsibility,'' ''Manners Makyth Man,'' ''The Life of the Mind,'' and the surprising ''In Praise of Martin Buber.'' A storyteller at heart, Jarvis knows the power of good narrative to make the moral unavoidably and memorably clear. Early signs of age-toning to pages. Slight wear to cover edges.