With Love and Prayers: A Headmaster Speaks to the Next Generation

Front Cover
David R. Godine Publisher, 2010 - 344 pages
HERE, AT LAST is a book of uncommon common sense for young people by someone who has worked with them for thirty-five years. F. Washington Jarvis is one of the nation's most eminent educators, now in his twenty-eight year as headmaster of Boston's Roxbury Latin School, the oldest school in continuous operation in North America. Jarvis's approach is anecdotal. If it is true that a picture is worth a thousand words, it is ten times as true when you are speaking to young teenagers. They are gripped by the story of how real people cope with real situations. They are interested when you share with them the concrete realities of your own life and experience, and they are almost always willing to listen to adults who actually believe in something, who actually stand for something. Jarvis's addresses, reprinted from his school's publications, have enjoyed something of a cult underground circulation among young people - and their parents and grandparents. Now his top hits have been brought together in a single volume for wider circulation. The author never talks down to his audience. he knows that - appearances to the contrary - students are asking the deepest questions, questions about whether life has meaning and purpose. He also knows that teenagers often find themselves caught by surprise in situations where they have to make tough decisions. And he believes that they are willing, even eager, to know how others have coped in similar situations. This is a book of deep and practical wisdom, one of our surprise bestsellers in hardcover, and now available in softcover to serve an even wider audience.

From inside the book

Contents

The Search for Meaning 1 What Am I Doing Here?
3
Lies Teenagers Are Told
10
Attitude
19
StopLookListen
27
More Than Meets the Eye
35
How Can I Be Happy?
42
The Pursuit of Happiness
50
Having Your Cake and Eating It Too
58
Charity
184
Divine Irresponsibility
191
Committees of One
200
Thoughts on Vince Lombardi
208
The Life of the Mind
217
Unless You Become Like a Child
226
Beyond SelfAbsorption
234
Manners Makyth Man
242

Great American Teenage Tragedies
67
In Praise of Martin Buber
76
The Spiritual Dimension
86
Suspending Disbelief
95
David and Goliath
102
Coping with Pressure
111
Standing On Our Own Two Feet
120
Sometimes I Get Discouraged
127
Through the Valley of the Shadow
135
The Journey of the Magi
145
Values to Live By 19 A Memory of My Father
157
Faith
165
Hope
175
Three Phrases to Live By
251
Getting Away With Murder
259
The Fine Art of Rationalization
269
The Road to Hell is Paved With Good Intentions
279
Three Pieces of Bad Advice
288
Friendship
297
Leadership1
305
Leadership2
313
We Live in a Rapidly Changing World
320
Anything Worth Doing Is Worth Doing Badly
330
Tough and Tender
337
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