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}} Girard College is an independent, co-ed, college prep, 5-day boarding school located on an extensive 43-acre campus in the City of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the eastern United States. Girard College enrolls academically capable students, grades one through twelve, and awards a full scholarship with a yearly value of approximately $44,000 to every child admitted. The scholarship covers most of the costs of attending Girard, including tuition, room and board, books and school uniforms. The scholarship may be renewed yearly until the student's high school graduation. Applicants must be at least six years old (by the first day of first grade), demonstrate good social skills and the potential for scholastic achievement, and come from a single-parent, low-income (determined by HUD guidelines) family. Girard accepts students on the basis of previous school records, admissions testing, a visit and interviews. The process is conducted without preference for race, gender, religion or national origin. Girard's mission is to prepare students for advanced education and life as informed, ethical, and productive citizens through a rigorous educational program that promotes intellectual, social, and emotional growth. ==Stephen Girard's legacy== Born in the Atlantic merchant and naval seaport city of Bordeaux, in the Kingdom of France, Stephen Girard 1750-1831), was the eldest of nine children.〔http://www.ushistory.org/people/girard.htm Stephen Girard, Accessed January 27, 2012.〕 His mother died when he was aged 11, and he left home at the age of 14 to spend the next 12 years sailing the seas and learning the international mercantile and shipping business. Girard arrived in the Delaware Bay and River port city of Philadelphia in June 1776, during the momentous summer of American Revolutionary War events at the nearby old "Pennsylvania State House" (now "Independence Hall") and remained there for the rest of his life. During his 55 years in the "City of Brotherly Love", he became one of the richest Americans of his time. Girard was later married at age 27, to Mary Lum from 1777 until her death in 1815. They had no children. His initial success in business and source of his first fortune was in international shipping and merchant activities. He sent his cargo sailing ships, crews, and captains around the world and deposited his growing wealth in the "First" Bank of the United States, a semi-private/public financial institution, chartered by Congress, with deposits and an official relationship with the United States Department of the Treasury and its domineering first Secretary of the Treasury, the newly appointed Alexander Hamilton, under the administration of the first President George Washington. The new BofUS had just recently established on behalf of private financiers, businessmen and the new central U.S. Government in the temporary national capital of Philadelphia. When the first Bank of the U.S. later lost its charter two decades later in 1811, he bought the Bank's landmark Greek Revial-styled building, left his deposited money and accounts there, and reopened a new financial institution there as the "Bank of Stephen Girard". This made him America’s first private banker. He then made his second fortune in banking and helped raise the $16 million required for the U.S. Government to undertake to continue to fight the War of 1812 against the Kingdom of Great Britain, after war was declared by the Congress at the request of fourth President James Madison in June. Folklore has it incorrectly that he saved the government from bankruptcy, when it approached financial insolvency and possible failure to make payments on its loans' interest or even the principal sums, after the disasters with the later national capital and the Burning of Washington in August 1814. By the time of his death, his fortune totaled approximately $7.5 million. One of the most interesting chapters of Girard’s life was his role in fighting Philadelphia’s devastating "yellow-fever" epidemic in the summer of 1793. He was instrumental in running the City’s hospital at William Hamilton's home, “Bush Hill,” using his business skills to better organize the primitive hospital’s health care and record-keeping and becoming personally involved in the nursing of patients and medical care. With the assistance of noted attorney William J. Duane, (1780-1865), in the 1820s, he wrote a long will and testament, outlining every detail of how his fortune would be used. He delighted in keeping the document secret, knowing that everyone wondered what would happen to his fortune. Immediately after his death, the provisions of his will were made public. In addition to extensive personal and institutional bequests, he left the bulk of his fortune to the City of Philadelphia to build and operate a residential school for impoverished orphans. This innovative social vision was considered extremely unusual both then and now: to use the Girard fortune not to endow another so-called "Ivy League" college or university but to assist children in need. In 1831, the bequest was the largest single act of philanthropy up to that time in American history. Girard’s will eventually became famous for his restriction that students must be “poor, white, male, orphans.” The school remained for needy "white" boys for over a century. From May 1954, with the U. S. Supreme Court decision in Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, there was increasing interest in integrating Girard College by race, as the city's public schools had long been. After a long, bitter 14-year civil-rights struggle (including the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King's speaking at Girard’s front gates in August 1965), the first four black boys entered the School in September 1968. Sixteen years later, the policy of an all-male student body was also changed, and the first girls, both black and white, were admitted in 1984. Current enrollment of the Girard College in the 21st Century is about evenly divided between boys and girls and about 80% African-American. The Girard Estate remains open in perpetuity. Its endowment and financial resources are held in trust by the courts of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, which provides much of the school's operating budget. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Girard College」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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