Groton School has announced its new headmaster, its eighth since the Massachusetts private school was founded in 1884: Temba Maqubela. From the announcement: "Mr. Maqubela received a master's in chemistry and did doctoral work at the University of Kentucky; he received a bachelor's of science with honors from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria. Though he is a fourth generation educator, Mr. Maqubela does not hold a high school diploma because he went into exile from apartheid-era South Africa, his native country, before graduating."
I'm not a big Groton fan ("Rotten Groton," was how the students at my high school used to refer to the place when we played against them in sports). But it's hard not to find something inspiring in the way that immigrant achievement and upward mobility, dynamism, the American dream, have a way of triumphing even at the New England prep schools that have reputations as exclusive bastions of the old-money elite. How can you not root for a guy with a story like that?
