Category Archives: psychology

Dear Pedestrian

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Solvitur ambulando: ‘It is solved by walking.’

As a walker, you know this well.

This pithy saying – all the more pithy in Latin – is attributed to St Augustine.  It captures the sense that walking is more than just a physical activity.  Rather, it suggests that walking can be an act of mindfulness; a means of spiritual refreshment; a way of untangling the knots of the mind.  For many, walking and thinking are the closest of travelling companions.

I went through a phase of reading book after book about walking. It was in the aftermath of my father’s death in 2014.  I think, looking back, it was a way of reflecting on his life and its ending.  Big, long walks in the Yorkshire countryside were a way of processing.  I felt drawn to the paths of the East Yorkshire coast; it felt good to be small, yet strangely at home, in the rugged openness of the Moors; the gentle dales and valleys invited me to explore.  Following ancient ways – paths that had been covered by countless pairs of feet – connected me to the unknown folk who have lived and moved across the same land.   

When I wasn’t walking, I was thinking about walking.  I was reading about walking.  I read books by Robert Macfarlane, Roger Deakin, Henry David Thoreau, Frederic Gros, Rebecca Solnit, Geoff Nicholson, Nan Shephard, Patrick Leigh Fermor.  There are shelves of books on walking, natural history, landscape and language, psychogeography – all kept in our little cottage in the North York Moors.

Holloway

My inner teenager would be both baffled and appalled at this strange obsession with the act of walking.  How on earth can walking be interesting?  The Pavlovian response of most teenagers at the prospect of a long country walk is a derisory scoff or a spontaneous list of other more urgent priorities.  For some, walking looks like a waste of time and energy.  Especially the circular walk beloved of ramblers – why on earth would we walk in a big circle that ends up where we started? 

The word pedestrian (as an adjective) has a telling meaning: ‘prosaic, commonplace, dull’. Doesn’t that tell us something about the status of a walk?

Most prosaically, of course, walking is an act of locomotion; of self-propulsion; it is the simplest practice of getting from A to B.  It is a form of exercise and means of staying physically healthy.  More expansively, walking is a way to discover and explore the external world.  At a deeper level, walking can make us happier.     

Like many of the routine capacities that the fit and healthy take for granted, the able-bodied take the daily process of walking unthinkingly in our stride.  For those who find walking easy, we don’t often register that this unconscious process is supremely complex.  The ability to walk was hard-earned, and hard-learned, over months of early childhood development.  We learn to walk and are free.  Viewed this way, walking is a privilege.  More empoweringly conceived, it is an act of self-determination.  And a route to inner discovery.

You can see why slow self-locomotion seems ordinary next to the rapid movement of car, plane and rocket.  As the industrial revolution brought speed, along with so much else, shanks’ pony became equated with backwardness and poverty.

And yet… slow can be good.

View from Caer Caradoc

During lockdown, the daily walk has become disproportionately important.  For most, the local wander was the default leisure activity.  Ask someone what they did at the weekend during lockdown and they will almost certainly reference a walk.  Being pedestrian has been crucial to our wellbeing.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, pedestrianism was a spectator sport; an heroic activity that drew fans and inspired a degree of celebrity.  Walking was a means to epic feats and the focus of wild wagers.  For example, the legendary pedestrian Captain Robert Barclay Allardice’s most impressive achievement was to walk 1 mile every hour for 1000 consecutive hours between 1st and 12th July 1809.  People travelled to see him walk.  Many other men and women became competitive endurance or speed walkers.  Over time, this craze for pedestrianism gradually passed and became obsolete.  However, history shows that being a pedestrian was not always pedestrian.  

Returning to the current day, walking is a means of exercise and relaxation for many.  You come back from a decent walk feeling physically tired and mentally refreshed.  The quick wander with the dog; the late afternoon perambulation – these all help to dislodge the lumps in the mind’s path. 

I think it is one of the many uniquely special things about Shrewsbury School life that we – by which I mean pupils and staff alike – all do a lot of walking in our daily routines.  Our 100 acre site has walking designed into it. 

Shrewsbury School Site – walking to work

We have to walk from house to lessons; from one building to another; to and from meals.  We walk through a shared  place of calm, natural beauty. I think this is a very healthy thing for all of us.

Walking, woven into our daily routines, is good for the mind and the body.  And it can also help with problem-solving.

Whatever ‘it’ is – it may well be solved, or at least eased, by walking.

Keep walking, dear Pedestrian. 

Dear Candidate

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Watch out for the Columbo question!

You have to be pretty old to remember the detective show ‘Columbo’. A legendary police procedural that revolved around a shabby and dishevelled looking detective – Lieutenant Columbo – whose sharpness of mind was in direct inverse proportional relationship to the sharpness of his dress. Columbo used a negative first impression to his advantage, fooling the suspect into writing him off as a bumbling idiot. He would then reel his quarry in as they underestimated him; they grew casual, over-confident, sloppy. His interview technique was crafty – and highly effective.

Columbo’s best trick was to appear to have ended the interview, saying something like, “Well, I’ve taken up plenty enough of your time already”, and turn to leave. And then, just as he is shuffling off, Columbo would turn round and say, “Oh – just one more thing”. This was always the killer question – the one that caught the suspect off guard. So, watch out for the Columbo question…

Oh, congratulations on getting short-listed. Now, the interview. Could I offer a few words of advice for you to take or leave?

First up, it’s worth remembering that every moment is part of the interview – how you enter the building, how you interact with Reception and other staff, how you say goodbye and take your leave, how you communicate before and after the interview. It all feeds in.

Lieutenant Columbo: a master of interview technique?

Whilst I wouldn’t hold Lieutenant Columbo up as an example of how to dress for interview, I would certainly look out for and respect his type on an interview panel. In my experience, the ones who come over as tough, searching, probing, penetrating with very specific and clever questions – they are not the ones to fear. The more specific the question, the more obvious the answer they are seeking. You simply have to make a judgement as to what kind of angle they are on, and play it accordingly.

No, the ones to be very careful with are the open-enders, the ‘can you give me an example of a time when you…’; the smiling, friendly question that will give you the scope to say anything you want. This is where preparation and anticipation come in. You need to have thought of examples that show what you stand for, what makes you different, what shows that you care and are serious about your chosen course or career.

I recently spent a day interviewing candidates for a headship. It was absolutely fascinating. It’s always interesting meeting people at interview. Not just because different people take the same questions in such differing directions. You learn a lot about people even in 45 minutes in the admittedly formal and controlled circumstances of an interview. Some people make a fantastic first impression and then gradually fade away; others make a slow start and really grow into the interview; the best will start strong and keep getting better.

The reality that struck me once again is the old cliché that ‘first impressions matter’. As the saying goes, you never get a second chance to make a first impression. This doesn’t mean that our first assessments of people we meet are spot-on accurate. In fact, we are often wildly off-beam. But the fact remains that the way we present ourselves to others at the first encounter will either help or hinder us. Whether it is in the context of a university or job interview, or – most excruciating of all – meeting a girl or boyfriend’s parents for the first time, first impressions count.

Given that everyone will, at some point sooner or later, be interviewed, I thought I might share a few thoughts on the subject with you. Let’s start with some things not to do:

• Avoid fancy dress – I don’t mean Disney outfits – rather, avoid anything that is likely to trigger a negative value judgement. The interview is not the place for exciting fashion statements. You want people to sense that you care and are a serious person. That’s about it. Your clothes simply need to reinforce your sincerity. Comedy ties are great – but not for interview. Wacky jewellery, humorous socks, political slogan badges. None of these is a good idea. Dark suits, simple single tone ties (not crazy colours). Shoes matter. Unless you are being interviewed by Vivienne Westwood you should aim to look conventionally smart – not wild, wacky or scruffy.
• Avoid being over-familiar or chatty. Two of the six people I interviewed yesterday said “How are you doing?” or “hiya” when meeting the interview panel. It was not the right register to hit. We all need to be able to adjust our tone to the context we are in. That doesn’t mean putting on an act or being a fake. It’s possible to be yourself whilst also being respectful and formal.
• Avoid cliché or platitudes – “I’m a people person”; “I have a passion for…”; find new ways of saying things.
• Avoid being negative about other people, institutions, systems – anything really. Nobody likes to hear negativity.
• Never lie or over-embellish – you’ll most likely get found out or have to embroider more or sound unconvincing. The best interviewees are determinedly themselves. If you feel you have to lie, you will sound inauthentic.

It’s also important to look closely at what the interviewer is doing; how they are dressed; the tone of question and the way they are responding to what you are saying. Read them as they read you. Fundamentally, it is about making a connection.

This brings me to things you should try to do:

• Hold eye contact – but not in a fixed or challenging way
• Smile – but in a way that is relevant and not loony or fake
• If there’s more than one person interviewing, scan and keep people involved – sweep the room but not like an automated lighthouse
• Sit still – plant yourself but not too rigidily; don’t sniff (bring a hanky), scratch, rummage, jangle, fidget, twiddle or otherwise distract them; convey a sense of calmness and stillness – be a swan rather than meerkat
• Be concise – don’t ramble – but do elaborate when asked; let there be silence – don’t try to fill it
• Answer the questions – don’t be a politician but do steer them to areas of strength and enthusiasm
• Give examples – ideally, think of them in advance – how have you shown initiative, leadership; learned from mistakes; helped change things etc – and make sure they are both true and positive
• Take your time when the curve ball or surprise question comes – and keep your answer to that brief

Right, my dear Candidate. I think I’ve taken enough of your time. Thank you. No, no – please, I’ll show myself out….

Oh – and just one more thing: don’t use The Apprentice as your guide for interviews. That’s entertainment, not real life. True, some interviewers seem more interested in proving their own brilliance than establishing yours, and some can be combative or spiky, but most interviews are open-ended, polite, undramatic and probably wouldn’t make great TV.

A good interview will aim to put you on a stage and allow you to perform. And in order to perform you need to prepare, to practise, to think about what you want to convey to your audience, and to work out how to be true to the best version of yourself. Because, when it comes down to it, it is you who will have to do the course or the job or impress those parents or whatever this interview is all about. You don’t want the interviewer or interview panel to choose some phoney, invented you. Just the best you.

Good luck. Sock it to ’em.

Plain Gobbledegook

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Plain Gobbledegook

Not so long ago, I was sitting on a train back from Manchester in a half full (or, if you’re that kind of person, half empty) train carriage. Coach B of the Arriva Trains Wales Express: a two-carriage number that grinds its way from Manchester all the way down to Carmarthen.

As is the way in this country, there was an instant (and literally unspoken) agreement amongst all the travellers in Coach B of the Arriva Trains Wales express – that there would be no talking. Accordingly, after the train guard has done his announcements, the carriage fell into silence and we were together alone in our moving metal carapace.

‘Travel silence’ is something that we do very well in this country. If you sit on a train in Spain, Italy, India or the US, for example, it’s a-buzz with chat and noise. In England, there is a strict and unspoken traveller’s code: only mad people, drunks and foreigners speak on English trains.

So it was that a culturally-binding silence settled over Carriage B. At each stop this hush was briefly perforated by the incomprehensible, tinny announcements from our train guard; white noise that barely roused us from our private inner worlds.

Then: a phone rang. A few of us scrabbled about to check if it was our phone. (Everyone over the age of 40 seems to have the same ring tone these days). Anyway, the silence was then broken for several minutes as the recipient of the call conducted a lengthy business conversation.

Well, you all listen in, don’t you? It’s impossible not to. Unless you’re plugged in, you can’t help but overhear. We all tend to speak-shout into our phones when we’re on a train and it’s a small carriage.

It was, in all honesty, not a very interesting conversation. A business call. In fact, it was such a dull conversation that it somehow travelled through the spectrum of dull and came out the other side, transformed into something genuinely engrossing.  It seemed that things were at a critical point in the negotiations to land a big contract.

The phone call was punctuated by a mesmerising range of professional jargon, management and business speak. A multitude of technical expressions and organisational clichés reverberated around the carriage, soaking the captive travelling audience in a sound-world of industry chat.

The high – or was it low – point phone call was the closing sentence.

“Going forward, I think what we need to think outside the box. Let’s touch base later”.

And with that the call was over.

Now, I find that sentence had quite hard to live with.  A recent survey by the Institute of Leadership & Management, revealed that management speak is used in almost two thirds (64%) of offices, with nearly a quarter of people surveyed considering it to be a pointless irritation. The top three most annoying and over-used bits of business jargon were: “touch base” (39%); “going forward” (55%); and top of the pops was: “thinking outside the box” (57%). My carriage-mate had managed to squeeze all three into the same sentence!

Now, let’s remind ourselves that I’m being a Nosey-Parker, eavesdropping on one side of a private conversation. You might also say that if you make a call in a train carriage, you deserve what’s coming to you.

All this enforced overhearing prompted me to think about two things. Firstly, about the value of plain speaking – that is, speaking clearly and free of unnecessary jargon. Secondly, about the value of speaking as a person, an individual; rather than sounding like a manual.

You can tell when someone is saying things in her or his own individual voice. The person comes through the language. The danger of management-speak, jargon, slogans, cliché is that they diminish and muffle our original voice; these over-used expressions standardise us.

Words can be beautiful, powerful things: a means of conveying such a range of sense and feeling; such diverse ideas and observations. We can use them to create fresh possibilities; we can use them to numb; we can use them to agitate; we can use them to soothe.

Most human activities – such as sports, the arts, careers – have their special languages. Think of sport, for example. These are sometimes called ‘language games’. In these games, esoteric terms and expressions resonate with the initiated; by those who understand and are part of the club.

And so it is with education. We bat around all kinds of special language; educational acronyms and shorthand abound. Schools are wonderful generators of idiosyncratic terms. The idea that we should meet in Grot and then do our Top Schools after having tea in KH only makes sense in our small part of the world.

I’m not objecting to specialised language. I’m objecting to dull and lazy language.

What became the Campaign For Plain English was started by the redoubtable Chrissie Maher OBE in 1979. She fixed her aim on various uses of language which she felt were deliberately obscure. It was a campaign against gobbledygook, jargon and misleading public information.

On the hit list were longwinded official writing; management-speak; professional jargon; tired and overused expressions; silly job titles that see ticket inspectors become “Revenue Protection Officers”, supermarket shelf-stackers go by the title of “Ambient replenishment controllers”, and teachers are “Knowledge Facilitators”. I mean, seriously?

The Campaign for Plain English (or Plain English Campaign as it now seems to be known – you can see what they did there) aims to remove these word-soups from institutional life. They want to get professionals, in particular, to speak more simply. For example, a recent educational document (not ours I hasten to add) deployed the following sentence: “High quality learning environments are a necessary precondition for facilitation and enhancement of the ongoing learning process”. What this actually means is: “Children need good schools if they are to learn properly”.

The issue here is that bureaucratic language excludes meaning – often, it would seem, deliberately. It’s important we don’t get infected by this linguistic virus. We need to find our own, distinctive voices – and delight in them.

Personal statements, for example, should be personal. Essays should be in (pretty much) our own words. We should avoid cliché and jargon but rather make the effort to use interesting and original language. This does need to be carefully done. All of us, not least Headmasters, succumb to over-embellishment and can sound pretentious, and our text (including this one) over-written. Everyone needs a good editor.

Scaling up from our day-to-day context, it is so important that all of us, especially the young, use the power of their words, opinions and voice. Salopians are polite and gentle souls but sometimes you have speak truth to power – even if your voice shakes.

It is mission-critical (is that a cliché?) that Salopians think and speak for themselves. This is a theme that we will repeat and repeat as a school. The world is full of versions of the truth; we all need to be mindful enough to de-code and challenge these versions in the post-truth era. We need Salopians young and old to challenge and to initiate change.

I have said a lot about speaking. As somebody very wise once said: “God gave us one mouth and two ears: we should use them proportionately”. It is critically important that, in the noise of populism, YouTubing and democratic broadcasting, we retain the ability to listen actively.

Active listening is not just waiting for the other person to stop speaking so we can make our much more interesting point. Only by deep and active listening do we fully acknowledge the rights and the values of the person we are speaking with. Even if we despise the views of another, we need to listen deeply to understand them.

Of course, the trick in all this, is that human beings learn by imitation. We observe, we copy. That’s how babies start talking. It’s only natural that we mimic the language of others. This is language with stabilisers. The journey our children are on (in fact we are all on), is to find their own authentic voice; to get rid of those linguistic stabilisers.

For pupils, my simple message is to speak in their own voice. I want them to be confident enough to stand outside the verbal uniform of teenage jargon. I want them to dress their language differently.

Meanwhile, back in Carriage B of the Arriva Trains Wales Express from Manchester to Carmarthen, we’re nearing Shrewsbury station. In silence. After my (albeit unspoken) righteous indignation at my carriage-mate’s choice of language, I’m feeling an uncomfortable guilt at my linguistic snobbery.

What it reminded me, though, is that language can be used to numb and neutralise. And, equally, that it can be used to ignite and enliven the mind. Each mode has its generative powers; each has its dangers.

Words have a power to reveal or to conceal. Political discourse is replete with spin and double-talk, linguistic sleights of hand and verbal finessing. The delight in language is a wonderful thing. Selective and careful deployment of what the teachers at primary school might call ‘juicy words’. It’s good to make interesting sentences and fill our self-expression with colour.

Language can be used to mislead, to obscure, to obfuscate, to redirect, to exclude. So, as in all things, there is a time for floral language, a time for using technical vocabulary and a time for plain speaking. A time to rage against cliché. A time to speak up, in our individual voices, here in Salopia and in the wider world.

Something tells me that the world needs its teenagers and young adults to speak up – and keep speaking up.

And let’s try not to use clichés. After all, it’s not rocket science….

Hope as a call to action

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The turn of the year can precipitate a curious compound of hope and despair.  We look back at the year gone by and review the events of our own lives, as well as those of our family and friends, and the wider world.  We might ask ourselves whether it has been a good year – for us, for our friends and family.  We might ask whether the world got a little bit better during 2017.  We might wonder whether it got a little bit worse.  Are there reasonable grounds for hope that we are always moving to a better, fairer, kinder global human community?  Or, is there more persuasive evidence that human-kind is becoming a more confused, desperate and disparate family.  

How would we measure out a response to such a question?  It might be that it comes down to our own individual temperament and outlook:  how we choose to see the world.  As one thinker remarked:  “There is no such thing as a view from nowhere”.  In other words, we all view the facts and events of our lives, the happenings in the world, though our own individual lenses.  It may be that those who see reasonable grounds for hope are, temperamentally, more hopeful, more optimistic people.  And those who see reasonable grounds for despair are inclined to see the world from a gloomier, pessimistic – they might say realistic – perspective. The old half-full, half-empty binary.

Hope, allegedly, springs eternal.  (As an Arsenal Fan I can testify to this).  This observation may say something about human beings; it may provide an answer to the question of whether it is better to live life in hope and feel oft-let-down; or whether a shrewder tactic is to reconcile oneself to disappointment and then be pleasantly surprised when things turn out well. 

To my mind, it is not just desirable, but actually our duty, to live in hope.  Hope is not a matter of outlook – a kind of wistful, fingers-crossed, ignore-the-bad-bits dreamland.  Hope faces the hard realities of life and tries to address them.  Hope is not wishful-thinking: it is a call to action.

But, how would a hopeful person answer this question: is the world a better place at the end of 2017 than it was at the start?  We might start by citing all the many very real horrors, tragedies, brutalities, disappointments, disasters and apparently chaotic turns of events.  We would soon find that we have stacked up a powerful body of evidence to suggest that 2017 was a bad year, maybe even a mad year.  And all this evidence might justifiably lend weight to the view that human civilisation is going in the wrong direction. 

I can see that.  I would not try for one second to downplay the depth and breadth of suffering – some of it born of random chance, much of it carried out through human agency.  However, perhaps because I am a hopeful soul, I find myself looking back to the many good things that occurred in the last 12 months.  I find myself thinking of the countless kind and noble acts carried out by human beings; acts of compassion, generosity, friendship.  The daily good news stories that don’t often dominate, or even penetrate, the news media.  These acts were born of the same human free will that also proved capable of wickedness and depravity.

But, is my optimistic view justified?  What evidence is there that the world got a bit better last year?  Well, my mum, who is also an optimist, shared with me a list, published by Future Crunch, of 99 global reasons to celebrate progress in 2017.

They include the following:

–          In 2017, the hole in the ozone layer shrunk to its smallest size since 1988

–          The World Health Organisation unveiled a new vaccine that’s cheap and effective enough to end cholera, one of humanity’s greatest ever killers.

–          In 2017, the United Kingdom, France and Finland all agreed to ban the sale of any new petrol and diesel cars and vans by 2040

–          In the United States’, the official poverty rate reached 12.7%, the lowest level since the end of the global financial crisis.

–          On International Women’s Day 2017, Iceland became the first country in the world to make equal pay compulsory by law.

–          Women now occupy 23% of parliamentary seats around the world, up from 12% in 1997.

There 93 other reasons to be cheerful in this list.  The 99 positive facts suggest progress – or at least the gradual putting right of wrongs.  Many are, of course, the flip side of deep and long-running negatives – they show progress towards – rather than arrival at – a worthy and ideal destination.  A destination at which each living being, and indeed the planet itself, is treated with respect and given the opportunity to thrive.  Behind these facts, and alongside the reality of the very many negative events of the past 12 months, there is the hard truth to face: that the world remains an intensely divided, brutal, imbalanced and unfair place.   

We can face this fact with despair; we can ignore this fact and immerse ourselves in comfortable self-interest; or we can pledge to do our bit, in hope.

There are, I believe, (and hoping not to sound trite), reasons to be cheerful.  Easy to say, perhaps, in our comfy corner of the world.  However, I would still like to believe that the turn of the year is a moment of profound hope and opportunity.  And, a time at which we can remind ourselves of a daily call to action.  That is, a call to action, born of hope, that we can, in our individual lives and in our daily actions, make the world a better place. 

Handedness and points of difference

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Studies suggest that 90% of the global human population is right-handed and 10% left-handed. This means there are about 60 left-handers in this room.  A minority group. If you are left-handed you are – well – a bit different.

It turns out that men are more likely to express a strongly dominant left hand than women. If you are a Muppet, however, it’s almost certain that you’ll be left-handed.  This is because a right-handed puppeteer (and we can assume that about 90% of puppeteers are right-handed) – they will use their right hand to articulate the puppet’s head, and the left to move the arm-rod.  So, in the world of Muppets, and other hand-puppets, it is the right-handed Muppet that is the minority animal.

Simpsons fans will have noticed that Bart Simpson– and indeed Ned Flanders – are both lefties. This may be a function of the fact that the creator of the Simpsons is left-handed – as was Jim Henson, who invented the Muppets.

Yet, despite the common terminology of “left-handed” or “right-handed”, the distinction is less than absolute. Some of us are more ‘handed’ than others.  We are in effect dotted along a continuum between strong left and strong right.  In between these extremes lie various degrees of mixed-handedness and ambidexterity.  Some of us will prefer the left for certain tasks but not others – we might write with our left hand but play tennis with our right, for example.

Interactive sports such as table tennis, badminton, cricket, and tennis have an over-representation of left-handedness. In cricket, for example, around 1 in 5 on the all-time list of international male cricketers bat left handed.

The smaller the physical distance between participants, the greater the number of lefties. In fencing, for example, it seems that about half the participants are left-handed.  Plenty of boxers are ‘southpaws’. Meanwhile, in non-interactive sports, such as swimming, we see no over-representation of left-handers.  It’s not a relevant factor.

Handedness is something of an evolutionary mystery. One of the earliest theories proposed that handedness in humans was originally evenly distributed, but hand-to-hand battle in the ancient world killed off the lefties because they held the sword with their left hand and the shield in their right, thus leaving the heart much less protected than for righties, who held the shield on the left. As the lefties perished on the battlefield, so did their genes.

A later theory proposed pretty much the opposite — that left-handedness gave warriors a competitive advantage “for much the same reason left-handed tennis players, boxers, or fencers have an advantage.”

In a book called ‘Right Shift Theory [1985], Marian Annett observes that animals have roughly 50-50 split between righties and lefties. Your domestic dog, cat, rat or rabbit has a pretty much even chance of being left or right pawed.  But, for humanity the distribution of preference and performance is dramatically shifted to the right.  Why?  This human bias was triggered, says Annett, by a shift to the left hemisphere of the brain for certain cognitive functions, most likely speech. . . .   The development of complex speech has led to right-hand dominance.

It was once hypothesized that the cultural link between left-handedness and negativity arose due to the left hand’s use for hygiene purposes in non-industrialized countries – that is, wiping your bottom. However, the association has much deeper roots, including the very etymology of the word “left”, which derives from the Anglo-Saxon lyft which means ‘weak’ or ‘broken’.

Even modern dictionaries include such meanings for left as “awkward,” “clumsy,” “inept,” and “maladroit,” the latter one borrowed from French, translated literally as “bad right.” Most definitions of left reduce to an image of doubtful sincerity and clumsiness, and the Latin word for left, sinister, is a well-known negative connotation.  There are many references to God’s right hand – not so many – in fact none that I could find – to God’s left hand.

This tells us a little about the cultural bias that has existed around handedness.  It is not all that long ago in this part of the world that, if a child showed left-hand preference, she was educated (that is, forced) to use the right hand.  I can remember a boy in my class at school called Stuart.  He had terrible hand-writing – a tiny, spidery drawl across the page that often meant his teachers got frustrated at marking his work.  The reason?  He preferred to write with his left hand but his mother was very superstitious, associating left-handedness with negative forces.  It was she who insisted that Stuart learned to write with his non-dominant right hand.  Don’t worry, he’s now a very successful businessman.  And a good touch-typist.

Why talk about left-handedness? Well, it’s a point of difference.  And, I’d like to suggest, that difference is good.  We should not only tolerate and respect difference – we should celebrate it – loudly!  What a tedious and sterile world it would be if we were all right-handed; all good at the same things; all interested in the same things; held the same views; wore the same clothes.

I’m not saying it’s cool to be left-handed, any more than it’s cool to be right-handed. In fact, often we don’t even notice.  A person is a collection of features which, when all added up, amount to something unique.  What’s cool is authenticity – being who you are and letting others be who they are.

So here’s to lefties. Here’s to the leftie in all of us – even us common old righties.  Here’s to all our many points of difference.

Children’s Mental Health and Wellbeing – Prof Tanya Byron inspires and encourages St Peter’s York staff

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“Kids should understand their brains; they should understand their whole bodies”.

So said Professor Tanya Byron, consultant clinical psychologist, as she gave an interactive presentation to the teaching and support staff at St Peter’s School, 3-18, the week before the pupils returned for the new academic year.

Professor Byron is a well-known broadcaster and columnist specialising in children’s mental health.   It turns out that she has a soft spot for York, having studied as an undergraduate at York University. So, despite her crammed diary, we were lucky in tempting her up to St Peter’s for an afternoon to talk to our teaching and support staff.

Tanya combines expert knowledge with unstuffy directness and a winning ability to take the stigma out of some very complex mental health issues. Despite the serious nature of her subject, her explanations are gloriously free from clinical pomposity; she connects brilliantly with people and she is not afraid to make jokes – particularly at her own expense. A published author, whose expert opinion is sought on myriad facets of parenting, Professor Byron told her audience that her children have promised her they will write a book on her. The working title? “Great with other people’s kids; sh*t with her own”.

Yes, she’s a straight-talking Professor. Disarmingly honest, likely to call a spade a spade (this goes down well in Yorkshire), Professor Byron encouraged colleagues working across the age range, from Nursery to Sixth Form, to talk openly about mental health concerns. Her talk addressed the psychology behind a wide range of issues and she went on to share various ideas on how to begin to address anxiety, depression, self-harm and eating disorders.

In her talk, Professor Byron described the children of 21st century Britain as “the most emotionally articulate generation of all” who are “better at asking for help” than any before. This is the good news – because the mental health issues they are facing are greater than ever before. “We need to understand the psychology of anxiety”, said Professor Byron, explaining that 75% of individual mental health issues will manifest when a person is between the ages of 14 and 23. She described the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) as being “in absolute crisis” and urged schools – particularly those with strong pastoral care such as independent boarding schools – to lead the way in preventing and managing mental health issues in the young.

In a balanced message, Professor Byron also warned against the “ridiculous over-protectiveness of our children” of which some parents are guilty, citing the effect that a risk-averse society has on children who “don’t know how to fail” and “lack emotional resilience”. She urged schools to encourage risk-taking (within sensible limits). “What child in their right mind is going to want to climb a tree that has been deemed safe?”, she quipped, and went on to celebrate the value of boredom – “It grows your imagination” – and the perils of over-praising children.

In just short of 90 minutes, Professor Byron gave us a “decatastrophised” but urgent message that the mental wellbeing of our children should be high up every school and every parent’s list of things to talk about – and that we need to get busy doing something about it.

Professor Tanya Byron spoke to 200 staff at St Peter's 3-18 on children's mental health

Professor Tanya Byron spoke to 200 staff at St Peter’s 3-18 on children’s mental health