School for Scandal

Gossip Girl by Cecily von Ziegesar is a hot new novel (her first) about the denizens of one of Manhattan's top-drawer, Upper East Side, all-girl schools. In this case it's the fictional Spenford School, which is a nice Joycean portmanteau amalgamation of 91st St.'s Spence School and 92nd's Nightingale-Bamford. Of the two, Spence is perhaps the more notorious. There have been instances of girls in their school uniforms being delivered and picked up in the chauffeur-driven limousines of their sugar-daddy lovers, one of whom was the number-one ranked tennis player in the world, and another the highest-paid sitcom actor on tv. Not included with them are some of the more famous Spence girls of recent vintage such as Gwyneth Paltrow, Jade Jagger and the Mayor's daughter.

Ms. von Ziegesar, 31, is herself a graduate of Nightingale, but now lives in Park Slope, which means her daughter (less than a year old now) will probably go to Brooklyn's St. Ann's or Packer, so she is safe in blowing the whistle on Spence-Bamford.

The brilliant New York Post critic Deborah Schoeneman has written that Gossip Girl is a "feather-light" chronicle of the lives of some snobby girls who "smoke pot in Central park, vomit on monogrammed scarves after a night drinking at the Tribeca Grand Hotel and plot sexual escapades at their parents' plush penthouses." Sort of a Sex and the City for teenagers with too much money.

Reader reactions to the book, which can be found among the "Customer Reviews" at amazon.com, range from "extremely amusing" and "well-written" to "stupid," and "just not anything at all." You will have to read it yourself and form your own opinion if you are interested in the goings-on among the gilded girls of New York.

Gilded or not, private or public, all New York schools seem to be galvanized by one common issue: money. The city's 80,000 public school teachers have not had a raise in pay since 1999, and have been teaching without a contract since November 2000. They are shaping up to go on strike.

Despite $20K yearly tuition, the Spenford (Spendmore?) schools grub relentlessly for voluntary contributions. We have a friend of the old school who is appalled by this. He says that every communication from his daughter's school contains an unabashed plea for funds. Even the Christmas card from "The Head," as the principal continues ribaldly to be titled in this post-Lewinsky age, contains a barely disguised mendicatory appeal. Aside from the special capital drives for plant expansion, which occur about every five years, the most regular plea is for more money for teacher pay. And why? asks our friend. Answer: so that the school can hire teachers with fancy academic credentials, PhDs.

Now, he continues, what sort of PhD would consider teaching a bunch of high school level, snotty, Park Avenue nouveau riche trendoid girls? The kind of PhD who's either a failed academic or, God forbid, one with a "special interest" in teenage girls. Real bona fide scholars, he says, want a position in a university. And the stars of academia want a position at a place like the University of Texas, which promises its leading lights, Nobel Prize winners and such, that they can pursue their research without teaching any students at all.

Ipso facto, a PhD at Spenford is probably a dud. What is needed is able pedagogues with sound knowledge in the fundamentals and a gift for character-building. After all, rocket science is not on the Spenford curriculum. Our friend has a modest proposal in this regard.

But first some historical reflection. When "public" schooling (as opposed to private education at home by tutors) was at its heyday in the middle of the 19th century in England, the most successful, famous and admired headmaster was Dr. Thomas Arnold of Rugby School. He saw his mission as being first to "sophronize" (from the Greek for "moderation') his boys: to imbue them with self-control, sound moral and religious principles and gentlemanly conduct. He considered the encouragement of intellectual ability a secondary mission.

Likewise, the Spenford schools were once finishing schools where girls were taught to become refined young ladies. In fact, in the upper class, certainly in England, and to some extent also in this country, there was a kind of prejudice against the higher education of women. Fathers made such decisions. First, it delayed their daughters' introduction into the marriage bazaar. Second, no man wanted a woman to have any substantial knowledge that might permit her to correct him while he was pontificating, quoting Shakespeare or showing off intellectually. This is all past history, but our friend could not help but unburden himself in a letter to the Head in response to her request for money for higher teacher pay. The body of his letter went as follows:

"May I suggest that you consider entirely eliminating salaries for teachers? In that way you will have nothing but pro-bono Park Avenue matrons instructing the girls, and, in particular, drilling some manners into them. They can teach them enough arithmetic so that they will not be cheated by the butcher, instill in them enough self-confidence so that they can hire and fire servants, and, finally, give them that beautiful private school penmanship that will look so nice on thank-you notes."

Needless to say, answer came there none.