Fools Friday

Fools Friday is the story of one man’s life as an educator, of the unique independent school he founded and led for twenty-six years, and of the hundreds of young adults who touched his life. In episodes ranging from senior pranks, counterfeiting rings, and the New Lunar Society to trauma and tragedy, Tom Pike explores the two qualities he found equally present in his teenaged students: the carnival spirit of Fools Friday and the essential Quaker belief that each of us has the sacred within us. In teenagers, he shows, both qualities are close to the surface and can burst forth at any moment. The goal of education, he argues, is to find a way to let this happen while initiating young adults into a world that forbids both. Fools Friday recounts moments when this worked and moments when it did not, learning as much from negotiating failure as from celebrating success. In episodes drawn from forty years as a teacher and administrator working with young people, Tom Pike explores the crucial years when teenagers are figuring out who they are and what that might mean in an adult world. Fools Friday: An Educator’s Journey shows how the often baffling, sometimes tragic, and always heartfelt choices made by teenagers come from this emerging sense of engagement with the world, and the different roles educators, parents, and peers can play in this process.

Tom Pike was raised in Louisville, Kentucky, where he graduated from Eastern High School. He studied engineering and philosophy at Stanford University and as a graduate student at Princeton, trained as a teacher and educator, and returned in 1967 as Assistant Headmaster of St. Francis School. In 1977, he became founding Headmaster of St. Francis High School. He retired in 2003 and continues to reside in Louisville.