Can one truly separate the private person from the public sphere?

This seems a heady question for a high school senior to attempt to answer, but Beth Peck of Montezuma-Cortez High School has done just that. In fact, she has done it so skillfully that the University of Colorado at Boulder’s University Writing Program has named Peck the first place winner in its 2000 High School Essay Contest.

The top prize is a $1,000 scholarship to CU Boulder, good for one academic year. Any Colorado high school student who has applied to CU is eligible to enter, although each student must be sponsored by a faculty member.

This stipulation proved good news for David Feela, MCHS Advanced Placement English and Speech teacher, who sponsored Peck. In conjunction with Peck’s achievement, Feela was awarded the Benjamin and Jeanette Levitt Teaching Award, a cash prize of $250.

Entrants are asked to submit both an analytical essay, and a personal writing sample. Peck chose to enter her paper, "Biblical Allusions in Robert Bolt’s A Man For All Seasons." She linked it to her personal essay in which she illustrated how her father, Paul Peck, exhibited many of the characteristics that eventually made Thomas More, the play’s subject, a saint.

Peck summarized her paper: "(One’s) private life carries into the public life...the two are not indivisible. To More, his religion was not just a private thing." Bolt’s character of More, she argued in her essay, used religion for edification, while other characters used it, on one level or another, for gratification. In doing so, they missed the point of religion, and also, were unable to understand why More would risk his life once his convictions ran afoul of Henry VIII’s policies.

This subtext of A Man for All Seasons, as Peck had presented it, has modern relevance, as many people today make similar mistakes concerning spirituality’s place in the public realm. Peck cited examples of her father’s quiet dignity in his workplace that were roughly equative of More’s strong morality and loyalty to that morality.

It was "this sense of moral development, belief and character in the paper that impressed the judges," Feela said. Peck herself was struck by the "absolute integrity of Thomas More," and poured this inspiration into her writing.

Feela summed up Peck’s achievement by commenting that, although MCHS has had three finalist in the contest, "we’ve had only one winner." Peck was judged, by a panel committee, to be among the top entrants. Her essays were then passed on to readers Elissa Guralnick and Paul Levitt, who made the final choice.