Brooklyn Eagle: Unconventional and flamboyant — his controversial comments were mixed in with expositions in ancient Greek and in later years could be absolute doozies — Stanley Bosworth created Saint Ann’s as a dream school: a place where talented students would learn for the sake of the learning, without the pressure of grades. Saint Ann’s became famous for its educational richness and developed a reputation as a hotbed of artistic expression and individualism.

According to Saint Ann’s official history, Bosworth insisted from the beginning that the curriculum range over all the major “symbolic languages of the culture,” instead of just words and numbers. Actors, painters and musicians were hired, helping Saint Ann’s to gain its reputation as an “art school” and a “theater school.” Bosworth established an “extraordinary social atmosphere in which so many seemingly antagonistic sets of values coexist.”

New York Times: Saint Ann’s School, the prestigious and progressive Brooklyn Heights school, has selected Vincent Tompkins, the deputy provost of Brown University, to be its new headmaster.

Mr. Tompkins, 48, who takes over on July 1, said he was drawn to the school by the students’ “remarkable sense of confidence and joy about learning.”

The founder of St. Ann’s, Stanley Bosworth, served as headmaster from the School’s opening in 1965 until 2004. He was succeeded by Lawrence Weiss, previously head of the Horace Mann Upper School in the Bronx, who, according to the Times article, “signed on for five years but stayed an extra year at the board’s request.” Tompkins holds a PhD. in history from Harvard, and taught history there before becoming an administrator. He later was made Deputy Provost at his undergraduate alma mater, Brown.