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Legacy Of
Learning

The Roeper School
celebrates its 75th
anniversary while
building toward
the future.

Robin Schwartz
Contributing Writer

Jerry Zolynsky

T

Top: Head of School David Feldman, communication associate
Carolyn Borman, eighth-grader Sam Kramer and his mom,
Anessa, a Roeper graduate and board member.
Left: Annemarie and George Roeper at the school in 1969.
Right: Head of School David Feldman with Annemarie Roeper.

hey were visionaries, human-
ists and educators who believed
that “all human beings have two
central tasks: to come to understand
themselves and to discover how they
will contribute to the world.”
The late George and Annemarie
Roeper, founders of the Roeper School
in Bloomfield Hills, started something
unique and unprecedented in 1941 when
they held their first classes — where
students have a voice to shape their
education — on Woodward Avenue in
Highland Park. The school moved to
Detroit in 1942, then to Bloomfield Hills in
1946. The couple’s 75-year legacy of learn-
ing continues to this day.
“We are the oldest school for gifted
education in the world, and the only
one that serves students in pre-kinder-
garten through high school,” says David
Feldman, Roeper’s head of school. “This
is a school that evolves every day with
every child. The core values stay the
same; the content of what you teach
changes every second of every day. But
learning how to learn, learning how to
think, those are constants.”
The diverse group of students who
attend Roeper
are among the
top 5 percent
nationally, deter-
mined through
IQ testing and
the admissions
process. The
private school’s
educational phi-
losophy focuses
on nurturing
students’ social
and emotional
development
while emphasiz-
ing equal human
rights and the importance of indepen-
dent thinking. The concept grew out of
George and Annemarie’s personal family
experiences in Nazi Germany

ESCAPING THE HOLOCAUST
“The Bondys [Annemarie’s parents, Max
and Gertrud] saw themselves as cultural
Jews. They were German intellectuals,”
Feldman explains. “At some point, it
became very clear they couldn’t remain
and be safe in Germany. George [not
Jewish] obtained documents and, basi-
cally, got [his fiancee and her parents]
out of Germany and into Switzerland. It
saved them from what was to become
the Holocaust.”
The Bondys, who had founded a pro-
gressive boarding school in Germany
in 1920, went on to open a school in
Vermont. Gertrud, a medical doctor
and psychoanalyst, had trained with
Sigmund Freud. Annemarie studied
with Anna Freud in Vienna before she
was forced to leave Germany. The jar-
ring experience of being ethnically
isolated and discriminated against by
a murderous regime shaped Roeper's
guiding principles.
“I think it’s a credit to my parents
and to the people who’ve carried it on.
I think it’s a credit to their ideas that
they were so enduring and in a way so
deep,” says Peter Roeper, George and
Annemarie’s son, who now lives in
Oakland, Calif.
“Bloomfield Hills in 1946 was very
rural, very conservative,” he continues.
“The attitudes toward Germans were
pretty negative and yet they were able
to start this school in Bloomfield Hills,
which was not very accepting at the
time. I think they were able to succeed
because they didn’t foist their views on
the external world.”
Peter was born on the day the
Roepers purchased the Bloomfield Hills
property. He spent the first four years
of his life living with his family in the
school’s main building; he attended
Roeper until eighth grade. He later stud-
ied at his grandparents’ boarding school
in Vermont and went on to have a suc-
cessful career in public health.

A NEW GENERATION
Today, approximately 580 children
attend the Roeper School. Tuition is
costly (between $20,000 and $28,000
per year), but officials say the school
spends about $2.5 million annually on
need-based financial aid for roughly 40
percent of students.
Classes are structured differently than
public schools and include interactive,
experiential learning. Students take core
classes (math, English, science, etc.),
but also choose from among numerous
electives like computer programming,

continued on page 20

18 September 8 • 2016