It often took two weeks for letters to go back and forth. I have noticed that frequently the passage of time took care of the problem. Today communication between boys and their parents, and parents and faculty is sometimes too easy. The perspective that comes with the passage of time is lost with telephone and e-mail communication, and we are poorer for it. Over the past five years we have spent a great deal of money to make Woodberry Forest a model of technological sophistication.
Every dorm room is wired, as is every classroom and office.
Students all have e-mail and voice mail, and while I have resisted telephones in the dorm rooms, computer technology threatens to make that decision irrelevant. There is no question that this technological development has been positive. The academic benefits for research and communication are extraordinary. Using computers in classrooms and labs, students and faculty work on Web pages, research projects, foreign language skills, science experiments, and writing compositions. The use of computers in the arts is one of the hallmarks of the new J. Carter Walker Fine Arts Center.