Page 8 - school-swis-2013_Neat

Te story goes that the foolish man built a In 1983, Mrs. Fleming was honored by the school on the sands of current educational fashion U.S. Secretary of Education for her “signifcant and popular thinking, and when the winds of eforts and tremendous contributions towards social change blew in and the rains of economic the furtherance of education at the international difculty came down, the school tottered and fell. level.” He especially recognized the TASIS But the wise man, or, in this case, the wise woman, Schools which had “introduced thousands of built a school on the rock of the independent Americans to European culture and civilization” American academic tradition along with a vibrant and many foreign students to “the best that commitment to the timeless values of Western America has to ofer in its education, culture, and civilization and a genuinely global vision, and opportunities.” But Mrs. Fleming’s vision has not when the storms of trouble swept over, the School faded. She oversaw the development of the TASIS stood frm. Foundation, a Swiss non-proft educational foundation designed to perpetuate the values and It was 1956, before the frst Sputnik and the race to the moon, before the Beatles and Flower Power ideals of TASIS well into the 21st century. and urban riots in America, before the oil crisis Her daughter, Lynn Fleming Aeschliman, and religious revolutions in the Middle East, educated at TASIS and Barnard College before the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse (Columbia University), served nearly a decade as of the Soviet Union, before personal computers, Executive Director, and is now Chairman of the the Internet, and Facebook, when Mrs. M. School’s Board of Directors. Crist Fleming founded Te American School in Switzerland as the frst American boarding school in Europe. Mrs. Fleming, educated at Radclife College (Harvard University) and formerly the head of her parents’ school and then her own in Pennsylvania, decided to transplant the American independent school tradition into the culturally and historically rich garden of Europe, and to invite young people from all over the world to share in the harvest. During the subsequent dizzying half century, TASIS has fourished, providing leadership in international education and opening additional schools and summer programs in England, Greece, France, Spain, and Puerto Rico. Trough their TASIS education, well over 25,000 young people from dozens of countries have learned respect for other people, races, and cultures; for past and current endeavors in the arts and sciences; and for themselves as moral and responsible individuals. Mrs. Fleming often said, “Times change, values don’t.” Te values TASIS has always taught and stood for are based on the traditional intellectual virtues of Culture (humanitas), Wisdom (sapientia), Knowledge (scientia), and Truth (veritas). 4