BRUNSWICK SCHOOL
Academic Update
WINTER 2026
As Brunswick strives for the fullest intellectual development of every young man, our academic programs seek to challenge each boy to fulfill his unique potential, to foster critical-thinking skills, to instill in each student a desire to learn, and to develop the creative and independent qualities of mind necessary to reach intellectual maturity and increased self-confidence. Brunsw ick School and Greenw ich Aca demy
This e-newsletter, published twice yearly, offers parents a top-line view of the latest happenings and curricular initiatives in selected academic departments. For greater detail, please refer to the Course Catalogue. Course Cata
logue 2025 – 2026
English Department P H I LO S O P H Y & G O A L S
To challenge students on several levels of perception and understanding; upon graduation, a student will not only have made significant strides toward developing reading and writing skills, but will also have gained the less quantifiable yet arguably equally essential ability to enjoy literature’s power to reveal both the wider cultural landscape and the nuanced interior of his own self.
▶ A NEW ELECTIVE TAUGHT BY PETE ADAMS has
senior boys reading some of the titans of Western literature, with the goal of developing the kind of “strength of intellect” championed by great writers.
Leviathans features a collection of complex, inspiring, and extraordinary stories, from which boys are invited to discover “what holds us back” and also to “find glory in the everyday.” Texts to be studied include Moby Dick, Hamlet, East of Eden, as well as William Blake’s illustrated version of The Book of Job, and others. “Leviathans has been really fun,” Adams said. “Right now, we’re doing a deep dive into Melville’s Moby Dick, using it as the main thread for tying together stories of selfawareness and personal transformation from across
cultures: J.D. Salinger, Zen koans, transcendentalists, Islamic Renaissance poetry, Shakespeare.”
▶ THE 2025 EDITION OF ORACLE has been published, this time around the theme Struggles — Mental and Physical. Faculty Advisor Brian Freeman, Ph.D., said much of the writing in the latest edition comes from student work in his A.P. English Literature course, which was structured around the Joycean model of “epiphany” and its utility in “situations of paralysis.” The 2025 latest edition even includes a poem written by Dr. Freeman himself; Freeman wrote DIE FLEDERMAUS after being woken by a bat in his bedroom in his farmhouse near the Connecticut River in Massachusetts. An enthusiastic group of students, meanwhile, is busy getting the 2026 edition of Oracle ready.
▶ UPPER SCHOOL ENGLISH TEACHER JAKE SCOTT
earned his Master’s Degree last summer from the
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