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mmanuel Kant said that one must “act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in
your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means, but always at the same
time as an end.” David Beare, Dean of Faculty, lives by this categorical imperative. The teachers of
Keystone are not just teachers. They are not just a means to achieving Keystone’s objectives, but they
are at its core. And David is their guardian. He will be their mentor and ensure their professional
development.
For shouldering such a huge responsibility, David is unassuming and a man with no ego, as his wife
Rachael Beare (Dean of Admission) describes him. His best quality is that he is a respectful listener
– an essential characteristic of any good teacher. Also, perhaps, one of the traits that makes him
an avid cello player. So if you are searching for David on the Keystone campus, the state-of-the-art
music room may be the best place to start.
In this conversation, David tells us about the recruitment of teachers, what qualities the Keystone
teachers will have and how they will develop because “Keystone is a place where people will want
to come and stay because they are fulfilled professionally.” David Beare says this is one of the
fundamentals of a world school, which means the ambition is “to learn from the world” and “to
learn for the world”.
Q:
For most of your career you have worked for
elite U.S. schools such as Philips Exeter,
Lakeside and The Hotchkiss School. What made you
decide to come to Beijing to join the Keystone team?
A:
Those schools are excellent schools. However, in many
ways they are inward looking. There comes a point where
you want to do something really extraordinary, and I think that
what Keystone is up to is really extraordinary. I have not seen
another school that is looking to make international education
live in the way that Keystone is attempting; bringing together
the Chinese, the American boarding school and international
elements. It was also attractive to me to continue to work with
Malcolm McKenzie, who I worked with at Hotchkiss. I also
thought about what type of education Rachael and I could offer
our own children – the idea of bringing them to China and having
them understand something about a country that is a major force
politically, economically, socially and culturally in the world in the
21st Century – was important. We thought about where the world
is going, where education is going and saw an opportunity to do
something unusual and extraordinary.
I traveled to China with a Hotchkiss group three years ago and was
very impressed with the dynamism and depth of Chinese society.
I began to consider how to enter into something new and expand
my own experience as a teacher and educator. For me, looking
beyond the borders of the U.S. and boarding schools expanded my
understanding of education in a truly radical way. So China, where
there is such a long tradition of learning and active pedagogy, was a
draw. I had been teaching about China in world history courses and
studying about China - in particular religion - in graduate school.
But actually coming here made me remember, in an immediate
way, that there is a world beyond the United States that I need to
understand and make myself a part of.
I was also attracted by the challenge of working with high
functioning, high power individuals to build this enterprise.
Everyone we are working with here is so very skilled and successful
in the traditions they are coming from. Not surprisingly, the
conversations among all of us have been full with lots of creative
tension, but we understand that disagreements can be profitable
and help us move forward into something that is greater than
the sum of its parts. So the opportunity to work in a creative,
energetic place to move education forward drew me to Keystone,
and away from the American boarding school world where ther B