11. The Buddha on the Second Floor

For a time, a statue of Buddha, displayed at the end of the hall, presided over the dignified hush of the second floor.

“During my Dalton days, a statue of the Buddha presided over the dignified hush of the second floor. The Buddha was at the end of the hall, looming larger in memory than it was perhaps in reality.

Above Headmistress Charlotte Durham’s second floor offices, our classrooms were places of intense intellectual debate and noise-generating activities in the pursuit of learning. Rarely did we visit the august second floor. But whenever the elevator doors opened onto it, we gazed on the serene Buddha, the quiet space at the heart of the school.

The honored placement of the statue signified to me that my school valued different cultures, religions, historical contributions, and ways of knowing. The Buddha wraps itself around my memories of our sixth grade studies of India and China. In our play we re-enacted scenes from the Indian epic the Ramayana. From Elizabeth Seeger’s poetic prose we were guided through The Pageant of Chinese History. We pondered the paradoxes of Lao-Tzu, founder of Taoism, and wrote poetry inspired by Chinese sages.

I did not then know about the founding of Dalton Schools in China or of Ms. Parkhurst’s many trips there. What I did learn as a future educator is that when younger students learn deeply about cultures other than their own, the more profound the impact.”
—Joan Brodsky Schur ’65

“There was the year that Miss Parkhurst spent in China and the following year, after she came back from founding the Shanghai Dalton School, we all went very Chinese and painted the second floor green. A large Buddha was installed at the end, those famous horse drawing galloped down the walls.”
—Fifi Garbat Starr ’37