History

Penikese Island School: Beginnings

The Penikese Island School was founded by George Cadwalader, who, while an officer in the Marine Corps in the '60's, occasionally worked with troubled recruits who had accepted military service in exchange for sentencing back home. Discharged to civilian life after being gravely injured in Vietnam, Cadwalader found himself soon drawn back to working with these youth and, with the help of friends, founded Penikese in 1973.

Among the many causes gripping society in the late 60s and early 70s included that of deinstitutionalization, an effort to decrease the country's dependence on institutional care for the chronically mentally ill, the infirm, and youthful offenders. As part of this effort in Massachusetts, the Commissioner of Department of Youth Services, Jerome Miller, sought to close the state's training schools, which were little more than juvenile jails. Soon the community at-large was (relatively) awash with newly released juvenile offenders, and many different local, community-based organizations began to take up the mantle of these youths' rehabilitation. Penikese was one such effort.

Cadwalader envisioned Penikese to be an alternative to juvenile jail and a program based on choice and natural consequences rather than coercion in a family-sized, self-sufficient, and interdependent community. The founding staff and students lived on a coastal freighter moored in Cuttyhunk Harbor while they built the school's original saltbox house by hand. Much of it was constructed from shipwrecked timbers and driftwood scavenged from the shores of Penikese and neighboring islands.

Penikese's rusticity was purposefully chosen to promote Cadwalader's vision. Everyone must pitch in, such as by chopping firewood to heat their house and cook their food, as is done on the turn of the century cook stove in the kitchen. Even today except for in the Woodshop, Penikese has no household electricity and kerosene lanterns provide the light at night. Students work, do chores, and attend school in the one-room schoolhouse six days a week.

In retrospect, many of Cadwalader's observations and descriptions of his students' behavior are stunning for their foresight and acuity in that, without knowing so at the time, Cadwalader was detailing the effects of psychological trauma, learning disability, mood disorder and substance abuse.

Over the years, Penikese has grown and changed to incorporate the fast-growing understandings of these and other contributing factors to adolescent misbehavior, but at its core remains as Cadwalader first envisioned the school: small, one boy at a time, work intensive and interdependent, an authentic community of staff and students living, working, playing and experiencing life together, teaching boys by example how to succeed in community.

Two books have been written about the Penikese island School, both by former staff:

Castaways: The Penikese Island Experiment by George Cadwalader

Crossing the Water: Eighteen Months On an Island Working with Troubled Boys -- A Teacher's Memoir by Daniel Robb