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         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
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