I am not a particularly experienced world traveler, but thanks to some limited travel and also to a well-developed education I have come to learn that almost all great global cities are built on waterways: rivers, lakes, bays, estuaries or coastlines. Certainly this is true of our home city of Boston. I marvel not just at the physical beauty provided by our abundant water features, but also at the ingenious feats of engineering that allow us to get from one place to another. For the purpose of this blog entry I will refer to such endeavors as bridging and tunneling.

Although I have now come to regard bridging and tunneling as one of humankind’s great achievements, I confess that I once held a somewhat more narrow view.  To be specific, when I lived many years ago in New York City, I confess that I and many fellow Manhattanites held a rather biased view of the bridge and tunnel crowd, that is, the folks who lived in surrounding communities and were reliant on a vast system of bridges and tunnels simply to gain access onto the great island of Manhattan.  And while this bias appears to extend to many major metropolitan areas, Boston and its surrounding towns seem to have forged a more friendly relationship.

Proponents of the Big Dig may be tempted to conclude that Boston’s friendlier attitude toward its suburban neighbors is a result of successful bridging and tunneling.  I agree, but my claim is that the most enduring hallmark of Boston’s unique stature as a leading international center is far more complex than that of mechanical engineering alone.  Blessed by a proud history of education and research, the culture of Boston has long benefitted from an altogether different version of bridging and tunneling.  Schools like CHS are direct beneficiaries of this important tradition.  Drawing inspiration from Boston’s many intellectual leaders, our teachers are constantly creating pathways from one place to another.

According to Wikipedia, “Engineering is the discipline, art, skill and profession of acquiring and applying scientific, mathematical, economic, social, and practical knowledge, in order to design and build structures, machines, devices, systems, materials and processes that safely realize improvements to the lives of people.”  We do not often think of our teachers as engineers, but the educational bridging and tunneling that allows young people to get from one place to another is nonetheless a feat of remarkable engineering.  I am confident that our students are receiving highly relevant instruction in matters of scientific, mathematical, social, and practical importance.  I can only hope that they will choose to translate their growing knowledge into systems and processes that will bring about improvements to the lives of others.

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