Does Athenian’s Leadership Pillar Deserve its Place?
Photo Credit: The Athenian School
By: Zoey Patterson
International and Multicultural Understanding, Education for Democracy, Environmental Stewardship, Outdoor Adventure, Leadership, and Service. One of these things is not like the others.
The original Round Square pillars did not include Leadership. It was added later per the suggestion of King Constantine II of Greece, who had long been involved with Round Square, and the Athenian upper school did not accept it as one of the school pillars until 2018. I can only assume the reason for this is that adding it as a pillar simply doesn’t make sense.
In my freshman year, I took the “Dyke Brown’s Mandala” March term class, taught by Gabe Del Real and Sarah Freedman, in which we dove into the history and philosophy of Athenian and, by association, Round Square. This culminated in the creation of a pictorial representation of the Mandala and the Pillars which featured stick-figure icons that represented each section and pillar as simply as possible. While creating all of these icons required a lot of thought, one of the biggest challenges we faced was making a Leadership icon that wasn’t exactly the same as the one for Service. In its purest form, what more is there to leadership?
One way of looking at the issue is that all the other pillars are specific guidelines for how to be what the Round Square website calls a global citizen. Essentially, they represent concrete actions that students ought to take in one way or another. In the context of Dyke Brown’s mandala, they are the way a whole student can use their capabilities and understandings to do not only what is good, but what is just. We should adventure outdoors, or serve our communities, or learn how best to participate in democracy. Leadership, however, is more vague. It’s not a specific type of action so much as a recommendation for how to partake in these actions.
In taking a leadership role, we choose not only to engage in an activity ourselves, but to help others do the same. We guide a group of people to achieving a common goal, perhaps helping them decide how and what. We work to unite them, with the greater purpose of satisfying a unanimous desire. This is service, and it is why a leader must be selfless. And most importantly, the common goal could be anything, like international and multicultural understanding, or education for democracy, or environmental stewardship, or outdoor adventure, or community service.
When I’ve mentioned to others that I think Leadership doesn’t make sense as a Round Square pillar, I’ve been met mostly with confusion. I have no doubts that this is because most members of the Athenian community don’t really think about the Round Square pillars—why they exist, what they mean or why they matter. Most students can’t remember them all, even with a handy acronym. They’re just nice things that we should work towards. They’re fancy words we use to show off how progressive our school is. We don’t see them as guidelines for how to apply the potential we develop as we become our whole selves, even though they’re fundamental to Athenian’s mission. It would be next to impossible to actually change the Round Square pillars, but the least we can do is think inquisitively and critically about them. Understanding that leadership doesn’t quite belong, and why, means truly understanding the Round Square pillars and taking them as guidelines for specific action, rather than as values we already uphold in how we run the school that are easy to talk about. It means understanding Athenian’s true mission and how it relates to the Round Square pillars, which I think makes being an Athenian student all the more meaningful.
