Coordinates View on Google Maps Religious affiliation(s) Quaker Head of school Matt Glendinning Area 12 ha Founded 1784 | Type Private Established 1784 Faculty 216 Phone +1 401-831-7350 Mascot Quaker | |
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Address 250 Lloyd Ave, Providence, RI 02906, USA Similar The Wheeler School, La Salle Academy, Wheeler School, Lincoln School, Gordon School Profiles | ||
Moses Brown School is a highly selective Quaker school located in Providence, Rhode Island offering pre-kindergarten through secondary school classes. It was founded in 1784 by Moses Brown, a Quaker abolitionist, and is the 8th oldest preparatory school in the country . The school motto is “For the Honor of Truth” and the school song is "Beneath the Elms," a reference to the large grove of elm trees that still surrounds the school to this day.
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Moses brown school is closed the sequel
Founder
Moses Brown (1738–1836) was a member of the Brown family, a powerful mercantile family of New England, a co-founder of Brown University, and a New England abolitionist and industrialist. He went on to become a pioneering advocate of abolition of slavery in the United States.
History
In 1777 a committee of New England Yearly Meeting which included Brown,took up the idea for a school to educate young Quakers in New England.
The school opened in 1784 at Portsmouth Friends Meeting House in Portsmouth on Aquidneck Island, However in the years after the American Revolution it was there was a shortage of student and teachers. Four years later the Yearly Meeting decided to close the school.
During those years, Moses Brown worked to restart the school, and, as treasurer of the school fund, was able to convince the Yearly Meeting to reopen the school – in part by donating a portion of his farm located in Providence for the school to be built on.
The school reopened in 1819 in Providence. Moses Brown then joined with his son Obadiah and his son-in-law William Almy to pay for the construction of the first building, which still serves as the main building of the school. Obadiah Brown also left $100,000 (equivalent to $1.56 million in 2016) in his will to the school, a sum unheard of at the time for a school endowment or gift. In 1904 the school was renamed "Moses Brown School" to honor its benefactor and advocate. It offered an "upper" and "lower" school for "younger boys".
As the Quakers were early advocates of gender equality, Moses Brown School was a co-educational school. However, in 1926 it became a boys-only school as was the fashion in U.S. society at the time. As attitudes again became more liberal, it again became coed in 1976. Well-known faculty over the years included the twin Quaker educators Alfred and Albert Smiley in the mid-Nineteenth Century and noted children's author Scott Corbett in the 1960s. "Moses Brown School: A History of its Third Half-Century" by Bill Paxton, covers the school's history during the period 1919-1969.
As of 2013 the school was owned by New England Yearly Meeting, with its own Board of Overseers, and operated independently of the yearly meeting. The school was examining the possibility of changing its specific affiliation while still retaining its identity as a Quaker school.
Academics
Ninth and tenth grade students are offered limited flexibility in their courses, aiming to expose them to a varied selection of topics. Upperclassman, however, are much freer to flexibly select electives and other such courses. English is the only subject mandated through four years in the Upper School. Students must complete at least Calculus in order to satisfy their mathematics requirement, study a single language for three years, and lab sciences for two. There is a requirement for a comparative religions class. Students are also required to take a minimum of two semesters of fine art courses. Students are required to participate in varied school activities whether athletic, theater, dance, or community service.