Like Beavers

The Beaver Country Day School was founded when John Dewey's ideas on progressive education were rearing their bumptious little heads. "Education generally was a pretty stale dish," recalls its headmaster. "Green mold is not limited to penicillin. Many a school has flourished in mold and called it tradition."

Beaver School for girls started in a stable on Boston's proud Beacon Hill, now inhabits a million-dollar home in suburban Brookline. Not quite so "progressive" as it once was, Beaver draws a set of well-heeled bobby-soxers (42 of Boston's current crop of 130 debs are Beaver girls) and succeeds pretty well in making scholars of them. But Beaver only paid off $10,000 of its $262,000 original mortgage. Last month a Boston bank, tired of the green mold forming around Beaver's I.O.U.s, threatened to foreclose. One alumna dumped her four children in the back of the car, made the rounds of friends to solicit funds.

Last week Beaver girls, past & present, gathered to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the school's charter and to learn whether there would be a 26th. There would be. Working like their namesakes, loyal Beavers had saved their school by raising $105,000 in three weeks.

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