History
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During the 2008-2009 school year, The Bishop’s School celebrated 100 years of history and tradition. Founded as an independent day and boarding school affiliated with the Episcopal Church, the School’s original focus was to prepare young women for education at “the best Eastern colleges.”
Today, it is ranked by the Wall Street Journal as one of the top 40 schools in the country to send its graduates to Harvard, Princeton, MIT, Williams, Pomona, Swarthmore, the University of Chicago, and Johns Hopkins. Its continued success owes much to the vision of its founders and to the support of generations of trustees, faculty, and friends.
The Right Reverend Joseph Horsfall Johnson, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles, established The Bishop’s School in 1909 and the Harvard School in 1912. A graduate of Williams College, he valued higher education and wanted to ensure that students in his diocese had the opportunity to attend the best colleges and universities. He thought that the establishment of good preparatory schools was “the greatest contribution that the Diocese of Los Angeles could make.”
Ellen Browning Scripps shared the Bishop’s belief in the importance of education. She had attended Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, the only one of 10 siblings to receive a college education. After a brief career as a teacher, she worked as a copyeditor and journalist at the Detroit Evening News. She invested in her brothers’ rapidly expanding newspaper empire and donated most of her considerable fortune to charity. Together with her sister Eliza Virginia Scripps, she gave land and money to The Bishop’s School. She told her lawyer, “I feel more than assured that I have embarked in an undertaking that is almost limitless in its scope and power for good.”
The Bishop’s School prepared young women for college at a time when few girls finished high school, much less completed a challenging preparatory program. Students studied English, history, geometry, algebra, laboratory sciences, and music. By the 1920s, graduating seniors were sufficiently well-prepared to pass the rigorous college entrance exams required by Berkeley and Stanford.
Headmistresses with advanced degrees served as role models. Margaret Gilman was the daughter of Arthur and Stella Scott Gilman, pioneers in women’s higher education who founded Harvard’s Radcliffe College in 1879. Marguerite Barton, a Radcliffe alumna, was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. Caroline Cummins, who became headmistress in 1921, graduated magna cum laude from Vassar College and received a Master’s degree in Classics.
The Bishop’s School combined an innovative approach to women’s education with an emphasis on Christian character. A 1919 Article in The Los Angeles Times expressed teachers’ hopes that “the moral and spiritual characteristics of the student should be developed along with purely mental attributes.” To that end, students attended chapel daily and participated in community service activities. They dressed dolls for patients at the Children’s Hospital and packed supplies for the Mesa Grande Reservation. During World War I, they rolled bandages for the Red Cross, raised vegetables, and donated money for military vehicles.
Bishop’s students also applied their education to real world problems. Helen Marston Beardsley, Class of 1912, attended Wellesley College but returned home each summer to work at Neighborhood House where she helped impoverished Mexican families. She later founded a local branch of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. Other graduates also embraced progressive reform. Ellen Browning Scripps wholeheartedly approved of such work, writing in 1920: “It is so good to find women ‘doing things’ instead of spending their time in cooking dainties and embroidering underwear.”
The Scripps sisters ensured that the physical environment of The Bishop’s School reflected modern and progressive ideas. They chose architect Irving Gill to build white concrete buildings that were fireproof, sanitary, and plain. The architect’s concern with health and sanitation reflected the contemporary belief that disease and poor health were caused by dampness, dust, and air pollution. His realization that buildings could solve social problems put him at the forefront of the modernist movement in architecture.
At the end of her life, Ellen Browning Scripps told a friend that “one of the greatest delights of her life had been teaching.” She believed that schools should be “an open door to knowledge” and that educational methods should reflect the “experimental age” in which they lived. For the next 75 years, The Bishop’s School would remain committed to her educational ideals.
The Bishop’s School continues to uphold the high academic principles of the founders. In 1941, it became a charter member of the California Association of Independent Schools, a non-profit organization that seeks to raise and maintain standards in private school education. In 1971, it merged with the San Miguel School for Boys in order to remain academically competitive and financially solvent. It also worked to attract a diverse student body. During the 1970s and 1980s, the composition of the School changed to better reflect the ethnic, economic, and religious diversity of Southern California.
Since 1984, The Bishop’s School has thrived under the leadership of Michael Teitelman, the tenth head of school. He increased the endowment, built the scholarship program, and energized faculty, students, alumni, and members of the Board of Trustees. Changes in the curriculum included the expansion of the Advanced Placement program and the addition of electives in almost every department. Today, students compete for National Merit Scholarships and win admission to the most prestigious colleges and universities in the country. They participate in an award-winning performing arts program and play a wide variety of sports, including tennis, water polo, lacrosse, and football. At the same time, they stay true to the School’s progressive heritage by engaging in community service before graduation.
One hundred years after its founding, The Bishop’s School remains focused on providing the best education possible. It encourages the pursuit of “intellectual, artistic, and the athletic excellence in the context of the Episcopal tradition.” It also seeks to foster “integrity, imagination, moral responsibility, and commitment to serving the larger community.” In doing so, it honors the hopes and ambitions of Bishop Johnson, Ellen Browning Scripps, and Virginia Scripps. It also recognizes the investment made by generations of trustees, faculty, and friends.
Taken from the Preface to The Bishop’s School: 100 Years and Beyond, the story of the School’s first 100 years. Preface written by Molly McClain ’84, Associate Professor of History, University of San Diego.
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