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Dear Wanderer

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When he was little, my brother had a habit of wandering off.  One time, he was playing cricket aged about 10.  The captain of his team had put him in the outfield – fine leg or somewhere similarly remote – right next to the boundary rope.  Adjacent to this particular cricket pitch was a copse.  And in the copse was a stream.  It was favourite place for children at the school to make dams.  My brother was one of the keenest dam builders.  And a less keen cricketer.  In an act of apparently insouciant disobedience, at the change of an over, he simply wandered off.  It was a telling comment on his contribution to the team that his absence was not noticed for some time.  However, when his escape was finally discovered, my brother was tracked down by the fearsome Mr Evans – and roundly reprimanded.  Not so much for his lack of team spirit – though this was of course the case – but for his disobedience.  Fancy wandering off like that?

In 1895, Annie Londonderry became the first woman to ride a bicycle around the world.  Back then, bikes were pretty uncomfortable.  What makes her story even more remarkable is that she’d hardly ever ridden a bike before she set off on a journey that took her across North America, Europe and Asia. She left behind her husband and three children to spend 15 months on the road in order to settle a wager between two rich Boston businessmen. Quite specifically, they wagered that no woman could cycle around the world in 15 months and earn $5,000 while doing so. Annie Londonderry proved them wrong.   She made money through advertising, attaching posters and banners to her bicycle.  Not only was she made of strong stuff physically, Annie Londonderry was an entrepreneurial, defiant, norm-breaker.  An icon of independence.  Fancy wandering off like that?

How to wander

Of course, I am not saying that children should be disobedient, wilful or disrespectful.  As a parent of three teenage children, there are moments when polite obedience seems a very attractive idea.  And as a school, we expect gentleness, courtesy and respect for others.  Equally, we don’t want our children to be meek, sheepish, cautious.  We want them to have some of the spirit and adventure of Annie Londonderry.  We want them to have confidence, purpose, energy.  Of course they can build dams – but not at the expense of the cricket team. 

We want them to develop resilience and resourcefulness.  These qualities also need to be tempered by softer values – kindness, appreciation of difference, playfulness, spirit. As I have always said, school should be serious fun. The past 18 months of restrictions to our freedom of movement have heightened – in many –  a wanderlust.  A desire to travel.  To wander off.  And we could all do with plenty of fun.

One of the great icons of serious fun is Albert Einstein.  A playful genius with a deep sense of humanity. He famously said:

“Life is like a bicycle. To keep your balance, you have to keep moving.” 

Across society, individuals, households, schools and organisations have had to show remarkable resilience and resourcefulness in dealing with the imbalances of recent times.  “You have to keep moving”. Resilience is when you have to ride your bike through a pot-hole or a puddle. Resourcefulness is when you find a way to swerve around the pot-hole. Both skills – and many others besides –  are needed in the journey of life.

The process of growing up is about developing ones sense of individual self and aligning this with a range of obligations and responsibilities to the world around us.   Each individual draws from, and contributes to, the community of which they are a valued part.  This school, in particular, champions the individual; we encourage originality and initiative; we want to see creativity and critical thinking.  Equally, we value community and participation, belonging and service to others.

We want them to be properly ready for life when they wander off from Senior School.

The wondering wandering of a parent

Turn now, dear wanderer, to one my favourite poems about parenthood.  It is a beautiful, short piece of verse by Robin Robertson.

Robin Robertson in ‘Swithering’

All parents know the feelings that come with checking on your sleeping child.  Particularly when they are babies.  You creep in and listen to their breathing.  In the silence, you imagine the private worlds of their dreaming.  Safe in their beds.  Protected from all the possibilities that lie ahead of them. 

Robertson’s poem is unashamedly sentimental – it tells us the gradual necessity of our children’s independence. They are meant to grow away from us.  This is not an act of disobedience, of course – it is an act of self-possession.  And the result of a job well done.

This slow and gentle unhinging of the parental heart is, of course, the whole point, indeed the aim of parenthood – and the endpoint of childhood. In the end, we want them to wander off like that.   But not too soon; not too quickly; and not before they’re ready.

Love – in all its many worded forms – is what powers parenting; and it is love that powers schools too. We act in loco parentis.  It is our job to help fill your children with confidence; to fire them up with love of learning, with the skills and aptitudes to lead happy and successful lives.  As Yeats so memorably put it: “Education is not the filling of buckets but the lighting of fires”.

Fancy racing off like that?

Take a look, dear wanderer, at this aerial shot of the start of the Third Form Race at the end of their first week at Shrewsbury.  I find it rather moving:

Third Form Race 2021

We can see a burst of colour; an explosion of forward-moving energy as they all set off together.  Fancy racing off like that?

You might be able to spot a figure in red lumbering along on the left hand side.  What a privilege it is to run alongside children for the five years of senior school; to be outrun by them – to see them find their stride.  

This photo is not just a record; it is a metaphor.  The sense of a journey begun.  Yes, it’s a race, but most importantly it was something we all did together.  Each child ran for themselves; but also for their house. 

You can glimpse the crowd support on the side-lines.  That’s the grown-ups – parents, family and staff.  There will be challenging moments along the way.  We work in partnership to help them; to find their balance when they wobble; to keep them moving.

The race is not ultimately about placings; it is about personal bests.  It is a race with oneself.  

And it is a wander, dear wanderer. 

It is a wander.

Adapted from an address to Third Form parents and pupils, Shrewsbury School Chapel, September 2021

Leo Winkley: Letters From Shrewsbury

Photo by Taryn Elliott on Pexels.com

Dear Emma

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It seems that the whole world wants a tiny slice of your time and your head must be spinning. Yet, as with everything else apparently, you have it all under control.

18 years old, Grand Slam champion, instant global icon. Seeing how you played; seeing how you talk about how you played, sends us all to raid the thesaurus.

Gutsy, courageous, spirited.

Composed, cool-headed, calm under pressure.

Exuberant, joyful, zesty.

Authentic, grounded, genuine.

The real deal.

A champion.

Already an icon.

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Emma Raducanu – Image from SkySports

Your style of play makes you a mesmerising watch. Your conduct off the court is equally compelling.

Few will experience the scrutiny that you have already been exposed to – and at such a young age. Not many have accomplished a breakthrough quite as explosive as yours. And at the age of 18.

I think back to my 18 year old self. Best not to dwell too long on the messy mix of self-doubt and self-righteousness; flashes of confidence undercut by a need for acceptance, validation, the applause of the crowd. Faults and double faults smoke-screened by bluster. It was all McEnroe and not enough Borg in my case. (That dates me). It was the line judges. The racquet. The sun in my eyes. The cross wind that made me fluff the ball toss. Yes, it took me a long while to take responsibility.

Then there’s you. Not only a champion, an athlete, a history-maker, an achiever of sporting miracles. But also, it seems, utterly unfazed by the feverish swirl of the moment. You are at home with yourself and your surroundings. Poised. At one with yourself. Real.

We have a saying at my school – Intus Si Recte Ne Labora: “If right within, worry not“. In your game, you have to stay within the lines. Yet you do it with such freedom. You make exceptional look so easy. Something so sublime, so uncomplicated in its excellence is the fruit of hard work; of gifts diligently cultivated.

You praised your parents – for their strong values and demanding standards; you deflected glory onto your team; the support of others. All true, and deserved praise, no doubt.

But let’s be honest. This is about you. You radiate something purely brilliant. You are right within. And you will inspire others – many many others – to discover and share their light.

Character as true and as luminous as yours can only come from within. From the person you are. You have lit up the sporting world. As you go on, surely to further glories, I hope your unique light shines on unfiltered and true.

Dear Gareth

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Written on the day of the Euro 2020 Final, 11 July 2021

I remember when we met in 2017. You kindly joined the Boarding Schools’ Association (BSA) Conference in York when I was Chair of the BSA. We did an ‘In Conversation’ session in front of an audience of boarding school headteachers. You took questions from the floor. You gave us 90 minutes of your time. Then you went to visit Martin House – the children’s hospice where my wife worked at the time – and spent the rest of the day with the families and staff there. You did it all for no fee and with the utmost of respect and attention to all those you met.

When we were ‘In Conversation’, you did not know that a journalist had found his way into the audience. You had spoken with candour and honesty about your own experiences of adversity; your insights into leadership; your sense that schools and football clubs have a lot in common. You spoke about mental health and the need to speak out and encourage dialogue, especially amongst boys and men. The reporter focused on your answer to a stray question about whether young footballers were paid too much. I’m still sorry today that we let that happen. You were noble in making light of it. However, I knew it had caused unwelcome noise. You rose above it. And your words had the insulating effect of integrity. And truth.

Thousands upon thousands of people have a Dear Gareth story. You have become an icon of leadership; a national treasure; a hero. The values you showed on that day in York have been on display, with unerring reliability, in recent months. No wonder so much has been written and said about you. Your virtues have been written large in the media. And rightly celebrated. Humility, integrity, honesty, compassion, care, endeavour, courage, spirit. The authenticity of your answers on that day in May 2017 was merely a snapshot. 90 minutes that showed the authenticity by which you live and work.

I’d like to add my letter to the pile, the mountain, of praise and appreciation. Not so much for what you have achieved – though your accomplishments are remarkable, proud and historic. This letter adds to the billions of words of admiration for the way you have gone about your work. The way you have lead; the values you have communicated; the template you have set for others; and the players you have inspired to be athletes on the pitch and activists off it.

This letter is written on the day of the final of the Euro 2020 competition. You have led the national men’s football team to a first major final since 1966. I don’t know who wins. I don’t know if it’s coming home…

What’s come home to me – as I have followed and admired your leadership, your work ethic and your communication – is the mighty power of sincerity. Whatever the result, these qualities (and many other things besides) make you a winner.

Gareth Southgate, In Conversation, at the BSA Heads’ Conference, York (May 2017)

LFS23

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 Three-Dimensional Learner

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As schools in England re-opened for the final weeks of the Easter term, we returned to three-dimensional learning.  After seven weeks of screen time – delivered and shared with as much creativity and energy as we could collectively command – it was a joyful relief to be back in person. 

Three-dimensional learning is, without doubt, the best way to go.  This is particularly the case in boarding schools.  

Certainly, we have shown that a boarding school in remote is possible.  Indeed, necessity has been the mother of some extraordinary invention. We have shown that whole person education can be re-invented for the screen and much can be achieved through flipped learning; break-out rooms; online challenges; virtual collaboration.  Those still not able to be with us here in Shrewsbury have continued to access Online Supported Learning; to take part in house life; to engage in a virtual co-curriculum.  It is vital that we find the best ways to stay together when we are apart.

However, what has been evidenced strongly in our most recent return to in-person learning is that the deepest kinds of learning happen best when we a real community.  That is not to say that great learning cannot happen virtually: it can. But, personal development is a multi-aspect process. Some things can be done by remote control; some things are best down hands-on – albeit at a social distance. 

What we know, though, is that a Shrewsbury Education has one-off elements that achieve full colour and depth when it happens in three dimensions.  Our culture, our educational philosophy, our unique brand of ‘whole person education’ – these are rooted in a sense of belonging to a distinctive community in a real place.

Some of the craft of teaching and learning can be transferred to the screen: we have seen this.  Teachers and learners have undergone a paradigm shift of capability over the past year.  We have seen significant gains in two-dimensional mode.  But a virtual boarding school is, fundamentally, a contradiction in terms. 

We knew it before, and we know it even more deeply now: a boarding school community is three-dimensional.  As we pass the one-year milestone of lockdowns in England, it is clearer than ever that learning in person gives the broadest range of opportunity.  In person, we are constantly connecting, sharing, challenging, transforming, enjoying, celebrating within a real community of real individuals.

It has been profoundly affirming to have you – the three-dimensional learner – back in person.  Back, we hope, for good.    

Dear Ben Gone to the Sea

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A Letter From Shrewsbury on the poetry of Ben North, who died 18th October 2020, aged 49.

We never met. And now you are gone.

Twitter introduced us. Your final Tweets: some algorithm brought them to me. It told me that you were dying of a brain tumour. Two in fact.

In this strange, garbled age of unfiltered sharing, your words cut through.

Image
Ben North, poet.

You left behind a trail. It’s clear that you were very well loved. Successful. Creative. And I see that you were noble and angry; brave and gentle in your suffering.

The algorithm led me to discover your book of poetry: ‘Thirty-Three Poems: some of which are about death‘. Dying shared. Poetry shared.

They are beautiful. This one, for example, about a clear, crisp night:

Ben North

Or this one, clever and wise – ‘This Is a Lie‘:

The final poem in your collection is called ‘The Sea‘. As I write this short letter, I am looking at the slate-grey waters of the North Sea. It is five days on from the day you died. I read it again and consider its simplicity, which is its power. It was not, I think, your last poem. But it is an ending:

‘The Sea’ by Ben North

Your poems are not brilliant because you were dying. They are brilliant because they are brilliant.

It’s hard not to wonder what else you might have written. As it is, you are gone; and you leave us 33 poems. A slim volume, you said. Yes, short. But full of wisdom and humanity.

What is the end of a poet? To leave something that endures? To connect? To look at the Sea and put it to words. Before the end of the poet.

Thank you, Ben. We never met – but I feel that I would have liked you very much.

Ben’s volume of poetry is priced £2.99 and available from Amazon.

Dear Minister for Exams

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There is something in the air. In fact, everything seems to be up in the air just at the moment.  I’m not only talking about the logistics of the Summer 2021 exam session – though some good sense and clarity on that would be good. I really hope that you listen to the experts: those who teach and support children.

It’s the whole thing, really. It feels as though it’s time you took a long hard look at yourself.

You’re probably way too busy to read letters. I’ll bet you get a lot. Such as this one; or the one I sent to the paper the other day, suggesting that we have a golden opportunity to re-think how pupils’ learning and wider skills are assessed. 

Daily Telegraph, 7th October 2020

This is a big picture discussion that would need to be held across the width and breadth of education.  When GCSEs were invented, the school leaving age was 16.  Children in England are assessed by written test more than most others on the planet.  As we all know, written tests are not the only measure of a person. Time for a re-think, surely?

Rethinking Assessment HOME
Rethinking assessment – a cross-sector alliance

I should perhaps emphasise that Shrewsbury pupils do very well indeed on the current diet.  Our GCSE results are excellent. We prepare our pupils well and they succeed in these examinations. In that narrow sense, nothing’s broken from our point of view.  These assessments are a significant part of the story but our teaching extends beyond the set curriculum; we aim to explore and instil a true love of learning.  Character strengths, skills and aptitudes are developed outside the classroom: through sport, music, drama, expressive arts, leadership, enterprise and adventure, to name a few. 

Learning cross-fertilises and our pupils are recognised and developed not just in the exam hall but across a wide field of activity.  This is what we call ‘whole person education’: the intellective development, which is in part measured by examinations, is allied to active, expressive and reflective learning.  The process is about becoming fully human and developing Salopian virtues that will last a lifetime.

Shrewsbury has a long history of asking difficult questions and being willing to challenge the status quo.  Is our examination system fair?  Can we influence it to be fairer, more holistic, more responsive to the teachers’ knowledge of the children– more fully human. How can we exercise our independence to provide a broad and holistic curriculum?  Recent history shows that we are seizing opportunities here: the introduction of the Institute of Leadership and Management Young Leaders Award and the creation of Shrewsbury U, for example.

I know we’re all struggling day to day. Big thinking takes time and effort – and genuine will to address issues. At a national, system level, there is a debate to be had. This feels like the time.

I have two questions for you, the fictional Minister for Exams:

Question 1: Is there a better, fairer, more human way to assess our children?

Question 2: Read Brian Patten’s great poem, The Minister for Exams? And discuss.

The Minister for Exams
Brian Patten
Brian Patten
‘How shallow is the soul of the Minister for Exams?’

Is there are better, fairer, more human way to assess our children?

Dear John on the Mainland

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a brief meditation on connecting to the main

Your oft-quoted lines suggest that “No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main” [John Donne, Meditation 17]. You were talking of the ultimate separation that our mortality entails.

In a time when we are trying to operate a community that is both together but distanced, your words take on new meaning.

The sense of isolation that characterised many young people’s experience of lockdown has, with the re-opening of schools in September, been replaced by a renewed sense of community. We learn each day not just how important community is; but also how challenging the time in lockdown was for so many. Concerns over how much learning was actually achieved across the UK’s schools during the remote period are matched by a watchfulness over the mental health impacts of the past six months on the nation’s children.

Shrewsbury has found a way to thrive under the necessary limitations of the day.  These first five weeks of term, we have all been on campus pretty much non-stop seven days a week.  This has generated a strong sense of togetherness and community.  Equally, we remain alert to the world beyond and our part in it.  Our school is strongly embedded in its local community and we strive to play a positive role in society. 

We were quietly proud to share the news that we have been listed as finalists in the national Independent Schools of the Year Award 2020 for community outreach (winners to be announced 8 October 2020). [Update: we won two awards!] During lockdown, our community engagement work continued, with the Design and Technology Faculty making hundreds of protective visors; the school donated PPE and webcams to local hospitals and surgeries. Difficult times call for sharing, rather than looking after our own interests: sharing, not hoarding.

Shrewsbury the town is, of course, a nearly-island. Nestled in a graceful loop of the River Severn.

Shrewsbury. Not quite an island.

Yet, we are connected to the mainland. Alongside an historic association with the Shewsy, our youth club in Everton, and numerous volunteering programmes and educational partnerships with over 30 state schools, this community activity is part of our essence.  And it is essential that our pupils foster and develop a keen sense of social responsibility during their time at the school.    

We will continue to work hard to give the pupils the best experience that they can have. And to extend opportunities in collaboration with partner schools in the state sector.  We are proud to be a distinctive community – a Salopian nearly-island – but we are also dedicated to being a constructive “part of the main”. 

John Donne

Dear Dr Johnson

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As one of the most quoted figures in English literary history and the creator of the most famous English dictionary, I wonder what you would make of current times. What words would you have for us?

By current I mean 2020. 236 years have elapsed since you passed away. Your dictionary has been updated and updated. Language doesn’t stand still; it flows. And is a mirror of its time.

2020 is certainly re-shaping the daily dictionary. The word ‘unprecedented’ is enjoying unprecedented use. And terms such as ‘self-isolation’ and ‘social distancing’ are now in the daily narrative. I wonder how you would define a ‘hand sanitiser’? I suspect that you would probably apply a verbal sanitiser to the expression: ‘new normal’.

Was ‘lockdown’ in your first dictionary? (I know that ‘aardvark’ wasn’t. Nor any word beginning with X). Or ‘Zoom’? ‘Quarantine’? ‘Outbreak’. ‘Pandemic’?

Yes, you would take great interest in the words of our current world.

A genuine celebrity of your time, your sayings resonate as strongly as ever. Your witticisms, take-downs and one-liners are legendary. One for almost every situation.

“Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful“, you warned. And elsewhere quipped that “A fly, sir, may sting a stately horse and make him wince; but one is still an insect, and the other is a horse still“.

Samuel Johnson: Who was he, and why is he so important to the English language? | The Independent | The Independent
Dr Samuel Johnson

As we travel in unsteady times, I remember your encouragement:

“Life affords no higher pleasure than the surmounting of difficulties”. 

These are difficult times, for sure. And, in our corner of the world, we are having to find solutions to new challenges every day. The children in my school continue to display wonderful energy, as well as good-hearted acceptance of the measures we have in place to keep them, and our staff, safe. Equally, there is abundant positivity. My colleagues do wonders daily – and defy words at times.

As you wisely observed, “A man’s [by which you meant person’s] mind grows narrow in a narrow place.”  I see Shrewsbury as a place of breadth in all things. And these times demand wide thinking, not narrow minds. 

The word most used in 2020 is a new one. Coined by the World Health Organisation – something that certainly didn’t exist in your day. Covid. So far this year, this new word has been used in print more than any other in the English language.

You wisely advised: “None but a fool worries about things he cannot influence”.  As we move through difficult times, we will heed your call to focus on the things that are within our control.  In my case, that is giving the pupils in our care the best environment and challenge that we possibly can. And urge them as you did:

“Curiosity is one of the permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect”.

Curiosity and stickability. (Another word for your dictionary, Sir.)

Yours in words.

Leo

Letter written on 18th September 2020 – your 311th birthday.

Dear Jeremiah

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You and your kind seem to be everywhere.

If we spend any time following the news media, we know how much has been said about education.  About the process of awarding grades; about the fairness or otherwise of our education systems; about the process of re-opening schools.  So much of it negative.

More broadly, the reality of COVID-19 in the UK and across the world has utterly dominated.  Understandably. And with good reason. But, this dominance has meant that we have all got used to living with some very negative narratives.    

We have been living with a pervasive language of limitation; a language of blame; and a language of fear.  This must have had an impact on even the most upbeat of people. I think we need to work hard to reclaim a language of possibility; a language of responsibility; and a language of hope.   

The language we use – the way we frame things – will have a direct effect on the children in our care and indeed all with whom we spend our time.  We need to find a way back to more positive language.

To illustrate: let’s consider the example of a child who has climbed a tree.  And got stuck.  She is getting panicked; holding onto a branch.

There is an adult below who calls up to the child. He thinks about what to call out: “Don’t let go!” or “ Hold on tight!”

Which is more likely to encourage child to cling on until she can be reached and brought safely down to earth?

  • Don’t let go!
  • Hold on tight!

Surely it’s the latter: Hold on tight!  Because negative commands and prohibitions can become fixating – paralysing even. In this particular case, ‘Don’t let go!’ reinforces the fear of falling. ‘Hold on tight!’ reinforces the hope of staying safe.

Hold on Tight!
Photo by Valeriia Miller on Pexels.com

The news media will continue to frame its language as it chooses. I suspect that the negativity, the fear and the blame will continue for a while yet. Of course, there’s a lot to think about and we need to be conscious of risk. The world needs its mixture of pessimists and optimists. We need the optimists to build the aeroplanes; and the pessimists to design the parachutes.

This is a simple but necessary point about the negative effect of negativity; and the positive effect of positivity. It’s time to lift the mood, Jeremiah.

In schools, as we welcome the children back from a long time of separation, it is important for us to assume a language that is responsible – but is framed as positively as possible. Things are getting better; we are more in control. It is vitally important for the children in our care that we are affirmative in how we present and interpret daily life. 

This doesn’t mean having our heads in the clouds.  It is a matter of affirmative presentation. In education, we should be holding on tight to the excitement and optimism that flow freely at the start of a new academic year.  Even if we are starting in a time of limitation, we should focus our talk on all the possibilities ahead and let go of the negativity.

Dear Upper Sixth Leaver

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A message to the U6th (Year 13) pupils at Shrewsbury School, June 2020

Dear Upper Sixth Leaver

This is not how we planned it.  None of us imagined that your final term would be spent in bubbles of isolation.  None of us thought you would be saying goodbye to the school through a screen.  None of us thought that when you went home in March, you were leaving for good.  There is no way to dress this up and make it look nice.  This is not how we wanted it to be for you; and it is really very sad.

Some of you have been Salopians since joining the School in Third Form; others joined in Fourth Form; and others still became members of this community in the Sixth Form.  Each one of you is valued; each of you has had experiences here that will shape and stay with you for life.  Each one of you has been part of a house, teaching sets, sports teams, activities, ensembles, friendship groups.  Each one of you has contributed to the richness and vibrancy of this School.  Each one of you is a Salopian.  Each one of you deserved a better ending.

This year, you have shown extraordinary qualities and never more so in this last term.  You have embraced the new normal.  You had to absorb the news that the public exams to which you had been working for 18 months were not going to happen.  You had to decide how to play the summer term in remote.  You could have disengaged.  You could have been half-hearted; cynical; dismissive.  Instead, you chose to be positive.  You chose to turn a disappointment into an opportunity. 

You kept going with your academic learning, running a race knowing that the finish line had been removed.  You showed a proper love of learning.  Then, we launched Shrewsbury U and the ILM course for Young Leaders.  Again, as a year group, you seized this with both hands and the vast majority of you have participated, engaged and kept your minds active. This will stand you in great stead for whatever comes next. Well done indeed and thank you for all your endeavours.

We are now entering the final fortnight of the term.  Normally, for the Upper Sixth, this is a twilight zone of post-exam fun, communal relaxation, soaking up the place before the finale.  This has been denied to you.  Again, there is no way of making this anything other than it is: a huge disappointment.  None of us wanted you to be living out your final two weeks of school from home. 

The Housemasters and Housemistresses, your tutors and your teachers, are thinking of you.  They are in touch and wanting to do all they can to connect with you share memories of your time here and to celebrate with you.  There is no way of replicating the kinds of real experiences they would like to offer, but they are doing their best and I know you appreciate this.  And, as we move towards the end of term, our Virtual Speech Day aims to give you the very best send-off that we can right now.

Beyond that, you know that we have made a commitment to give you all the chance to be together here at Shrewsbury for a social gathering at which you can share memories with fellow pupils and staff.  We don’t yet know when that will be; the Heads of School have taken your views, and the message we have is that you want to wait until we can do something properly.  We will honour this commitment.

I often say that it is the Upper Sixth who set the tone of the School for the pupils.  This is so true this year – you have done it brilliantly.  Even in remote, this positive tone cascades and permeates through the year groups.  You have been real leaders in so many spheres of school life.  

The Heads of School and their Deputies have continued to guide and shape this term with their dedication, positivity and generosity of spirit. 

Each leaving year group hands on the torch to the one that follows it. Your year group will have a unique place in Shrewsbury history. You have lived through unprecedented times: ‘the year they didn’t do exams’; ‘the year they weren’t at school for the summer term’.

But: we will not remember you as the year that ‘did not’. We will remember you as the year that ‘did’.  You did manage the most exceptional of times.  You did stay together.  And you did the School and yourselves proud.

As each of you prepares to leave Shrewsbury, remember that the School is here for you – for life.  We are all proud of you. You are the year group that did.  And you will go on to be people who do. 

Once again, thank you for all you have given to Shrewsbury. 

See you again soon. 

LW

Dear Video-Conferencing App beginning with Z

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A few months ago you were quite something – but mostly quite something that Fortune 500 companies, management consultants, international businesswomen and tech dudes did.  Born in 2011, massively profitable in 2019, you certainly moved fast.  Z by name and Z by nature. Now, everyone seems to be talking about you – and through you.

I’ve got used to your sign-on routine; learned the rules of engagement.  Using you for work has become second nature in these days of remote working. For me, work is school. You’ve rapidly become indispensable to us: teachers can teach; pupils can learn.  Pastoral care in remote is so much more meaningful if you can see you tutor group; your year group; your housemistress.  Headteachers can do the mysterious things we do: and we do love a meeting.  I can host and attend meetings to my heart’s content; keep in touch with colleagues across the country who are facing the same questions that I am; I can connect across the world. 

A rather handsome chap doing a Z… meeting

Through your neatly-squared gallery, families and friends are quizzing, celebrating, catching-up, checking in, keeping an eye out for each other.  What greater service can you offer than a means to connect people in these disconnected times? 

Yet, your detractors (rivals?) called you malware.  I’ve been called plenty of things in my time, but never malware.  That must hurt.  Seriously, we did need to check this out and put sensible risk assessments and safeguarding measures in place for use in schools.  This is to protect children and teachers alike.  So, we use your excellent record facility for all our live lessons, for example.  Everything is open to misuse, but we think what you can help us do is well worth the carefully mitigated risk. 

Teaching works well enough if the lesson is well planned and the teacher throws endless energy at it.  We’ve found that short and sweet is better.  And don’t try to collaborate: you seem to work best in a formal, bilateral, conch-holding kind of way. 

The main thing you’ve given us is a way of keeping in contact face to face.  For those of us who live and work in boarding schools, the sense of community, the reality of being together, these are the things that fuel our purpose.  Inevitably, these times in remote have pushed us apart.  You help us to be together apart.

Can I be honest with you, though?  You can have too much of a good thing…  Reading non-verbal signals is exhausting.  Seeing my face talking back at me is unnerving.  Going seamlessly from one session to the next is frazzling.  The ‘celebrity squares’ on the screen make the eyes boggle.  There’s so much to read and interpret in miniature. One day I used your excellent services for 14 different meetings.  All I could manage at the end of that was a sub-verbal grunt. 

Overall, I’m a big fan: a convert.  Like most things in life, you work best in moderation.  Thank you, Z….  You’ve been a revelation. 

And the most cathartic feature of all your many qualities?  The ability to put all your participants – let’s say a collection of headteachers, for example – on mute.  What a blissful silence that is

Thank you, Video-Conferencing App Beginning With Z.  Now, it’s ‘Leave Meeting’ from me.  I need to catch some screen-free Zzzzzzs.

Dear Cricket

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This is a love letter.

You know the old saying: ‘Out of sight, out of mind”?  Well, that couldn’t be further from the truth for me.  The longer you are away, the more I miss you.  Every saying has its opposite.  With you, it’s definitely a matter of ‘Absence makes the heart grow fonder’.

It’s just not the same without you.  Summer is on its way and the stage is set.  And yes, of course, I completely understand why you can’t be here.  It’s not your fault.  You are a stickler for the rules and are rightly taking your responsibilities seriously.  I know we need to do the right thing and stay apart.

My head tells me this.  Of course, it does.  But my heart?  It longs for you.

I miss the sight of you.  The theatre of green in which you play out your many acts.  The drama of each moment, rich with potential, as something might happen, or not, with the very next ball.  The eager mobilisation of the players, white-clad on the green grass, at the end of the over.

I miss the sound of you.  The thud of ball on ‘deck’; the solid ‘thock’ of willow on leather that sets off a soothing ripple of applause.  The charged, low rev, anticipatory silence between balls.  The slow-moving silence of quiet overs, where sleep seems just around the corner.  The eruption of a wicket.  The sporting greeting of seeing a new adversary to the crease.  The push and pull of players calling to each other.  ‘Come on buddy’.  ‘Next ball’.  ‘Nice areas’.  You can be quite noisy too.  Remember Saturdays at Headingley.  Quite the party animal…

I miss the shape of you. Whether it’s the Friday night friskiness of T20 or the sedate Sunday best of a test.  Or on your days off, casually attired in the back garden.  You look great in anything, really.  I was looking forward to seeing you in your new Hundred get-up. 

I miss the smell of you.  Cut grass.  Linseed oil.  The occasional waft of beer or ice cream on a gentle summer breeze.  Other people’s fancy picnics.

I miss the way you talk.  All stats and facts; and poetry and jokes and random diversions; the idle chat; the shared speculation. 

And, your greatest charm: uncertainty of outcome.

View of the playing fields at Shrewsbury. A perfect setting in which to watch and play cricket.

It’s true, I’m remembering the very best of you.  The perfect days we had together.  You do have your moments: rainy days when the covers stay on and you refuse to come out to play; dull days when you can’t find a way to make life interesting.  Honestly, though, those grey days don’t linger in the memory. 

And until you do, I’m going to read your old love letters.  I shan’t dwell on the difficult days.  I’m going to look at photos and films of what we did last summer.  Lord’s, then Headingley.  Wow.  Or our trips to Australia – say, Melbourne 2010?  Other happy times at home: Edgbaston or Old Trafford in 2005.  Or back again to Headingley, in 1981, when we were just starting out together.  Ah, those early days… 

And so on, I’ll keep playing back the memories until you’re back here by my side.

A summer without you?  It’s just not cricket.  So, please, come back soon. 

Dear 2020 – Day 82 (Mothering Sunday Update)

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Well, 2020. You certainly turned out to have a nature only a mother could love. Fires, floods and now this.

I write now at the close of Mothering Sunday. Reading now what I wrote then, when you were 9 days old, I wince. I wished you dull. I wished you fairer, kinder, more happy than your siblings 2019 and 2018. Look at you now? 82 days old and so hard to love.

Recalling my wide-eyed, new-year wish-making, I find myself curating a curious mix of shame, defiance and hope. Like a parent, I can see that you are not living up to expectations; like a parent, I fear for you; like a parent, I regret the way things are going. And yet, like a parent, I cannot give up on you. Even as you continue to behave so badly. Or so it seems.

You are far from ordinary and the big stories of your life so far have been nothing but horror. You have a lot to answer for and there is so much you could do better. But, there is so much about you that is admirable and good. So much ordinary kindness and extraordinary courage that your acts and errors are requiring from people across the globe.

Yes, you are far from dull. And you have a very dark side. Below is what I said back when you were tiny, just 9 days old:

Welcome to the world, new-born thing. I hope you find your feet quickly. And I have some other hopes for you too. Your older sister, 2019, was a fiery one. Capable of so much good, but full of contradictions and often quite disagreeable. That’s teenagers, I suppose. Mind you, she was nowhere near as confounding and unpredictable as her older brother 2016. You never knew what was coming next with him. I wonder how he looks now, four years on.

Anyway, after 25 years of teaching, and 16 years as a parent, I know not to judge one sibling by another. Each child is wonderfully, bracingly different; unique individuals with promise and potential; needs and demands; fears, expectations and hopes. The poet Philip Larkin wrote a poem to the newly born daughter of his friend, Kingsley Amis. He wishes her something “none of the others would”. Instead of wishing her beauty, talent and love, he says: “May you be ordinary […] In fact, may you be dull.

My hope for you is like that of Larkin. You’ll have your moments, for sure, and as with all your family, there will be sadness, despair, loneliness – horror even, sad to say. But… I hope that the weight and volume of all the unseen good, and the plain day-to-day ordinary that you think and do, all this stuff will be the thing that truly defines you. I hope you are fair: or at least, fairer than your forebears – gradually but meaningfully fairer. And kinder too.

There are lots of other things I hope for you, new-born thing. But Larkin’s odd and surprising incantation says it so much better. He wishes balance and ordinariness. A life more ordinary: “If that is what a skilled, / Vigilant, flexible, / Unemphasised, enthralled / Catching of happiness is called”.

Having re-read these words, despite all the chaos, confusion and despair you’re causing 2020, I still have hope for you. Alongside the awful, there is still the wonderful. There is even some unintended good coming from your most troubled acts.

Life with you is anything but ordinary, 2020. For so many, it must feel like day after day of creeping horror. This is a crushing truth: you are doing so much harm.

And yet; and yet. Despite everything you’ve done so far, I stand by my hopes for you. There is good to you. And, like a parent who can somehow always see the good in its errant teenager; can still sense the virtue amongst all the vice; the kindness in the carnage: I’m sticking by you.

Still hoping, 2020.

Leo

Dear Detectorist

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Can I set the scene? It’s a beautiful English summer’s day.  We’re on a sandy beach in North Yorkshire.  It’s one of those rare, ultra-calm, windless days when sound travels with exceptional clarity and everything feels close, and yet distant, at the same time.  

There are several families on the beach, climbing on the rocks, building sandcastles, skimming pebbles into the sea.  The air is perforated with the shrill cries of children on the beach and those of the circling seabirds overhead. 

A group of canoeists paddles into the bay and beach their canoes.  About 10 of them sit down on the beach and produce a lavish and unlikely picnic, cracking open bottles of beer and reclining in wet-suited splendour, looking, from a distance, half-human, half-seal.

On the cliffs we can see nesting gulls.  There are bird-watchers toting binoculars and draped in bits of kit. There to spot anything with feathers.  Crowds of twitchers along the clifftop, angling their necks and pointing their bins to capture the plummet of the gannet; the serene arc of the curlew; the rock-hopping of the oyster-catcher; the busy aeronautics of distant puffins. 

The tide is at its lowest, so you can clamber all the way through some of the caves and reach the open see the other side.  The rock pools are populated with anemones and seaweed.  There are barnacles aplenty on the craggy rocks.  With a firm stab of a booted foot, you can dislodge a stubborn little arthropod, inspect its inner workings, emit a noise of fascinated disgust, and carefully reinstate them on the rock.  You can look for crabs in the rock pools. 

Then, a new couple comes down the steep steps carrying two metal contraptions.  Those of us already established on the beach are giving them the once over. Gently sizing up the new arrivals, as they rattle their way onto the strand. We reckon that they are mother – probably in her 60s – and grown-up son – around about 40.  We surmise that he’s single, quite possibly still living in the maternal home.  Something about his clothing suggests that: the saggy luminous orange kagool zipped up despite the clement weather.  Beige trousers that are just a bit too short in the leg.  And, the footwear: a frightful public union of sandals and socks, so often the preserve of the unattached.

Saying very little to one another, each puts on a pair of chunky red head-phones.  They plug the lead into their devices.  And off they go.  Pacing – slowly, methodically – up the beach.   Sweeping their instruments before them.  Immediately engaged in their work.  Immersed.  Listening intently for a ping – a ping that would signal the confirmation of metal. Occasionally they stop; put the metal detector to one side; and dig with a small trowel in the sand.  And turn up something, nothing.  Something and nothing.

They do this for an hour and a half.  Gradually, the pair becomes the object of most people’s attention.  As we all keep a casual eye on them, questions gently mount in the mind, like sand passing through an hourglass.

Eventually, idle curiosity grows into something more urgent and we have to break the silence.  Someone goes over to address the pair.  “Have you found anything yet?”.  The man, to whom the question was directed, jumps in surprise.  “Sorry!”, we say.  “Didn’t mean to shock you….  Have you found anything?”.  Probably an annoying question to poke into this unwelcome break in his focus.  “Not yet”.   It’s clear that conversation is not high on his agenda for the day.  “What’s the best thing you’ve found?”, we persist. “Found a Roman coin once. Gave that in.  Mostly it’s ring pulls ‘n shot gun cartridges”.

So, let’s get this straight. You spend all that time looking and you only get to keep the things that aren’t worth anything. “Yes, that’s about it”.

All pass-times can seem a bit clubby, a bit geeky to the uninitiated. But it’s fair to say that metal detecting would probably come in quite low on a league table of activities that command instant respect. Adrenalin sports would top that table: base-jumping; parkour; free-climbing. These are high impact activities where adventure, movement and risk are the chief gods.

Your deities are different.  The gods of metal detecting are method, patience and luck.  It is a ritual of hope.

An archaeologist will likely bristle at the sight of you.  Others might disparage you as funny, slightly deluded individuals grubbing about in largely fruitless isolation.  I’ve never done any metal detecting but there’s something rather wonderful about the sight of you.  The undiluted focus, the obsessive fascination, the hermetic zeal of the activity.  Something meditative about the gentle hovering of the detector disc above the ground, its faithful attention fixed on the floor, as you guide its slow, sweeping motion. 

You and your metal detector are bound in a mutual and private search.  You seem so focused on the detecting work, so insulated from other events, that I could easily imagine you walking with steady confidence off a cliff – still listening for the jubilant beep.

Why do you do it?  Is it because you’re looking to find that special find?  Or because you are part of a citizen scientist movement, democratising knowledge and encouraging a love of heritage. Or, do you do it because the process of looking is, in itself, a pleasant, addictive, even life-enhancing state? Metal detecting, like fishing, is about waiting. 

So, I’m putting aside any sniggering assumption that people who use metal detectors should be pitied or even derided for their dodgy clothing and apparent lack of social skills. I’m going to park the idea that your type are acquisitive Golums, addicted to antique shiny things; or rural bounty hunters methodically stripping the land of its precious little secrets. Maybe you detectorists are ok. Oddly cool. Maybe even role models.

As an activity, metal detecting requires patience and method.  It encourages the constant readiness for discovery; the acceptance of simple labour in the pursuit of some ecstatic moment, a chance unearthing of something really interesting, really valuable.  Like all the best hobbies, metal detecting stands on a central foundation of futility.  And the infinite resurgence of hope over experience.

If I’m feeling poetic, I could see your metal detectors as instruments of hope. Ok, they may not be style magnets but, viewed in this way, they are images of the human being’s desire and determination, to search out truth and beauty, and to continue to hope that truth and beauty do indeed lie out there.  Truth and beauty are often to be found buried, obscured by the accumulated silt of other, less remarkable things.

All the great thinkers and spiritual leaders have emphasised the need for hope.  We know that human beings are capable of acts of ugliness, cowardice and falsehood.  These thinkers hold us firm to the belief that, as individuals and as communities, human beings are capable of great beauty, courage and truth.  And that these great universals can be unearthed in all kinds of places; in all kinds of interactions with others. 

Presumably, detectorists are afflicted by finite disappointment on a routine basis.  It’s part of the process.  But you seem to be powered by infinite hope. Maybe you detectorists aren’t that odd after all. 

Maybe I’ll follow you up the beach and see what I might find. Or not find.

Leo

Dear Gerald

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News of your passing has reached me.  You went out smiling, I’m told, and at the very decent age of 81. 

You worked all your life at the same school.  As a caretaker, odd-job-man and general lifter-and-shifter.  You spent over 50 years serving the same school community.  Same in name, but – like a river – always changing and flowing forward into different times with different people.  Yet, you were a constant. 

I remember you from when I was a child, growing up with a teacher for a Dad, in a boarding school where the staff children roamed free in the holidays.  And during term-time, our teacher parents were busy looking after other people’s children.  You were one of the benign constants that held us gently in place.  You were an ever-there. 

With your trademark greeting, unerring in your cheerfulness, you would say to all you met: “Lovely to see you!”.  You’d bellow that greeting in advance from a distance; or boomed it as a valediction – a validation – as you rolled along to your next task, your next greeting.  You were utterly indiscriminate – in the best way.  You showed no judgement.  Yet this greeting did not feel cheap or empty.  It was a simple, joyful affirmation. Your famous wheezy laugh fizzed with gentle mischief.

You wore blue workman’s dungarees, with splashes of paint and oil and grease, over a white string vest (have I made that up?) and always, whatever the weather, a bobble hat.  Yellow, was it?  And lacking the bobble.  

One time, you dropped a large metal radiator on your foot.  It landed like a heavy blade, taking one of your toes off in your shoe.  You wrapped and carried it like a little bug in your huge hands, searching for someone to help you.  The first person you met was my Dad.  He drove you to the hospital and kept you talking.  Something you did willingly, as if you were sharing a routine trip to the shops.  They patched you up somehow.  And you never forgot the kindness. 

From time to time, some of the children at the school would try to find fun in you.  You defused their nuisance with your constant greeting and undefended heart.  Soon, everyone knew that there was no fun to be had in setting traps for you.  Rather, they saw that you were a treasure; an institution; a legend.  Your loyalty; your appetite for hard work; your unearthly strength; your trustworthiness; your sheer reliability: these were qualities that even the most bone-headed of us could see were golden virtues. 

Love came from what you did; and love was the source of it.  And you were loved for being you. 

Rest in peace, Gerald.

Lovely to see you.

Leo Winkley

Dear 2020

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Dear 2020

Welcome to the world, new-born thing. I hope you find your feet quickly. And I have some other hopes for you too.

Your older sister, 2019, was a fiery one. Capable of so much good, but full of contradictions and often quite disagreeable. That’s teenagers, I suppose. Mind you, she was nowhere near as confounding and unpredictable as her older brother 2016. You never knew what was coming next with him. I wonder how he looks now, four years on.

Anyway, after 25 years of teaching, and 16 years as a parent, I know not to judge one sibling by another. Each child is wonderfully, bracingly different; unique individuals with promise and potential; needs and demands; fears, expectations and hopes.

The poet Philip Larkin wrote a poem to the newly born daughter of his friend, Kingsley Amis. He wishes her something “none of the others would”. Instead of wishing her beauty, talent and love, he says: “May you be ordinary […] In fact, may you be dull.

Well, 2020. You are 9 days old as I write this and there is no danger of you being dull. At least, that’s what the news suggests. Of course, there’s lots about you that will be mundane, ordinary. And, indeed, good. Particularly when lived and viewed from this safe corner of the world in Shrewsbury.

My hope for you is like that of Larkin. You’ll have your moments, for sure, and as with all your family, there will be sadness, despair, loneliness – horror even, sad to say. But… I hope that the weight and volume of all the unseen good, and the plain day-to-day ordinary that you think and do, all this stuff will be the thing that truly defines you. I hope you are fair: or at least, fairer than your forebears – gradually but meaningfully fairer. And kinder too.

There are lots of other things I hope for you, new-born thing. But Larkin’s odd and surprising incantation says it so much better. He wishes balance and ordinariness. A life more ordinary: “If that is what a skilled, / Vigilant, flexible, / Unemphasised, enthralled / Catching of happiness is called”.

May you be dull, 2020. May you catch more happiness.

Yours in hope

Leo Winkley

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….

Against cynicism

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“There is nothing quite so tragic as a young cynic”. Maya Angelou.

When he rose to speak at the Sorbonne in Paris on April 23 of 1910, Theodore ‘Teddy’ Roosevelt delivered a powerful call to action against the seeping cultural tragedy of cynicism, which, in his view, was a poison aimed at the heart of a just and democratic society.  Roosevelt, who served as the 26th president of the US, cautions against “that […] cheap temptation” to be cynical.  He said:

“The poorest way to face life is to face it with a sneer. There are many men who feel a kind of twister pride in cynicism; there are many who confine themselves to criticism of the way others do what they themselves dare not even attempt. There is no more unhealthy being, no man less worthy of respect, than he who either really holds, or feigns to hold, an attitude of sneering disbelief toward all that is great and lofty, whether in achievement or in that noble effort which, even if it fails, comes to second achievement. A cynical habit of thought and speech, a readiness to criticise work which the critic himself never tries to perform, an intellectual aloofness which will not accept contact with life’s realities — all these are marks, not […] of superiority but of weakness.”

One of the tendencies we might find most troubling in contemporary culture is that of mistaking cynicism for critical thinking.  This confusion seeds a pernicious strain of unconstructive and lazily destructive condemnation.  Amid this epidemic of self-appointed critics, it becomes harder and harder to remember just how right Bertrand Russell was when he asserted nearly a century ago that “construction and destruction alike satisfy the will to power, but construction is more difficult as a rule, and therefore gives more satisfaction to the person who can achieve it.”

Cynics have a jaundiced view of life. They operate from the assumption that people are motivated purely by self-interest rather than acting for honourable or unselfish reasons.  They tend to assume that anything that appears to be well-meant and for the good of others, is corruption and selfishness dressed up to look pretty.  Cynics are suspicious of decision-makers; they seek to knock things down in the expectation of exposing their corrupt foundations.  They like to negate and destroy.

Now, you might well say that a drop of cynicism is a sensible homeopathic remedy against the abuse of power and the apparent madness of our times. History illustrates that, indeed, institutions and individuals can use their responsibilities and powers to evil ends.  In this way, the part-time cynic might say that she protects herself from the abuse of power.  However, I would like to suggest that cynicism as a default setting is as imprisoning as the abusive use of power and self-interest.  It is also a lazy non-participative attitude.

Roosevelt concludes:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat…”

Powerful stuff indeed.  Yes, as the modern world spins with shape-shifting complexity, the appeal of making a retreat into self-protective cynicism may be increasingly tempting.

In her excellent book, How to Build a Girl, Caitlin Moran, regular columnist in The Times newspaper, writes against succumbing to the temptation to recline into lazy cynicism:

“When cynicism becomes the default language, playfulness and invention become impossible. Cynicism scours through a culture like bleach, wiping out millions of small, seedling ideas. Cynicism means your automatic answer becomes “No.” Cynicism means you presume everything will end in disappointment.

And this is, ultimately, why anyone becomes cynical. Because they are scared of disappointment. Because they are scared someone will take advantage of them. Because they are fearful their innocence will be used against them — that when they run around gleefully trying to cram the whole world in their mouth, someone will try to poison them.”

Ok – you do have to be a bit savvy; a bit street-wise. Not every individual is trustworthy; not every organisation is benevolent.  But, the default must surely remain with optimism.

This place, this school, is the least cynical place I’ve ever worked. You are the least cynical children I’ve ever worked with.  Ok, there can be the odd rolling of eyes; the occasional sideways glance – but I forgive you that – you’re teenagers after all! (He said, patronisingly).

And for the very most part, you raise your concerns and express your voices in a constructive spirit. See, for example, the work of the School Council, as I did yesterday, and you can admire a blend of open discussion and reasoned challenge.  You don’t have to be cynical to change things.

The staff here are the least cynical I have ever worked with. Even the longer in the tooth rarely grumble, and if so it’s mostly about sensible things.  On the whole, this is because our School encourages a constructive approach to life.  That it is better to get stuck in, than to stand on the side-lines and comment; that it is better to participate than be a spectator; that you get more out if you put more in.  That it’s easy to sit in the armchair and poke fun at others; but much harder and more rewarding to get up and do something.  That it is the creators, the optimists, the constructors, who make a difference.  That nobody ever put up a monument to a critic; and, when it comes down to it, nobody likes a smart-arse.

We must be on guard against the pernicious laziness of cynicism. Here’s to positive engagement; true critical thinking; making change happen from the inside.

 

 

[Source credit for inspiration and excerpts in italics: http://www.brainpickings.org – Theodore Roosevelt on the Cowardice of Cynicism (Accessed 8.5.2018)]

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. 

International day of the girl

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Benazir Bhutto was a Pakistani politician who served as prime minister of Pakistan from 1988-1990 and again from 1993-1996. She was the first woman to head a democratic government in a Muslim majority nation.  Ideologically liberal, and a secularist, she was a controversial figure in Pakistan, feared and revered in equal measure for her modernising views and charismatic leadership.

Bhutto’s political life is far too complex to do justice to in just a few minutes, dogged as it was by controversy and accusations of bribery, nepotism and corruption; Bhutto was ousted from power through a rigged election. After a period of time in opposition, she came to power again.  Although her efforts at reform and liberalisation were thwarted, her name was synonymous with democracy and she became a global icon of women’s rights.  Bhutto was respected in the west as a stateswoman of global reach and significance.

After losing elections in 1997 and 1998, Bhutto went into self-exile in Dubai from whence she continued to lead her party through proxies. She returned to Pakistan in 2007 to contest the 2008 elections.  She knew well her return to Pakistan put her own life at risk.  Bhutto was assassinated in a suicide bomb attack in Rawalpindi.  Al Qaeda claimed responsibility, although the Pakistani Taliban were widely suspected as being behind the attack that ended her life at the age of 54.

Spool forward half a decade. On the 9th October 2012, Malala Yousafsai was climbing onto a bus in Taliban-ruled North Western Pakistan.  She was 14 years old.  As she boarded the bus, a gunman appeared, asked for her by name, and shot her in the head.  She was left for dead.  Miraculously, however, Malala survived the attack.  She and her family were flown over to the UK and settled in Birmingham.  The reason for the attack, for which the hard-line Taliban claimed responsibility, was an open diary that Malala has been writing and publishing, under a pen name, arguing and campaigning for the rights of women and, in particular, for the right for girls to receive an education.

The story of her recovery – from delicate surgery at a Pakistani military hospital to further operations and rehabilitation in the UK, was widely covered in the media. Malala was discharged from hospital in January 2013 and her life now is unimaginably different to anything she may have envisaged when she was an anonymous voice chronicling the fears of schoolgirls under the shadow of the Taliban.

Malala has become an international symbol for, and advocate of, the fight to improve girls’ literacy around the world. She is iconic of the power of human will to overcome brutality and marginalisation.  In 2014, Malala became the youngest person ever to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.  This year she was made the youngest ever UN Messenger of Peace.

Earlier this week, exactly 5 years to the day that she was shot, Malala began a course in PPE at Oxford University. She is at Lady Margaret Hall, the same college that Benazir Bhutto had attended, and following the very same course.  In Bhutto’s day it was an all-women college (as it was when my mother was there); in Malala’s, it is a mixed college (as it was when I was at the same college): co-education has become very much the norm in our part of the world.

Indeed, we live in a part of the world where the idea of equal access to education is taken as read; a given. Lucky us.  The world still has a long way to go, even in our supposedly enlightened times, before we have a society where girls and women enjoy equality and fairness.

A BBC article published on 10th October listed the 10 toughest places in the world for girls’ education.  9 of the 10 countries listed are in Africa.  In the Central African Republic there is one teacher for every 80 pupil; in Niger only 17% of women between the ages of 15 and 24 are literate.  Only 1 in a 100 girls Burkina Faso completes secondary school.  In Ethiopia, over 40% of girls are married before the age of 18 – this applies across all of sub-Saharan Africa.

Yesterday (11th October) was international day of the girl.  And with over 130 million girls still out of school, the global campaign for the right of access to schooling and education for girls is as urgent as ever.  Icons such as Malala, following in the footsteps of her own hero Benazir Bhutto, can influence and draw attention to the host of issues that affect girls and women across the world: poverty, disempowerment, lack of education, sexual and physical abuse.

Who knows what things Malala will go on to achieve in her life? Because she has been exceptionally brave; because she has been exceptionally fortunate to escape an attempt on her life; because she is using her extraordinary voice to change the world; and because she knows the liberating power of a good education.

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.

What’s the point of school?

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These were some thoughts at the start of the new school year at St Peter’s in 2018.

This is a strange question for a Head Master to ask, perhaps – but: what is the point of school?

For the grown-ups in a school like mine, for the teaching and support staff, the school provides us with our jobs, our livelihoods, our vocations and a very significant part of our life’s purpose. Every teacher will have an answer to the question: what is the point of school?  But, what of the pupils? For the 571 pupils starting this new academic year at St Peter’s, what is the point of school?   I hope that the most immediate thoughts are things like these: to learn, to have fun, to make friends, to play, to get involved in all manner of activities.

Yet, the most obvious answer is that they’re in school because they have to be. All children have to be educated as a matter of law.  And it’s a matter of law because education is a fundamental human right and essential for the exercise of all other human rights. It is worth reminding ourselves of this blindingly obvious truth. Education empowers and liberates human beings.  This is a fact that we sometimes lose sight of in the Western world.  We can become rather blasé.  In emerging nations, there is an insatiable hunger for education as the route to a happy, independent life.

Parents in this country have a choice as to how they would like their children educated. They can choose for their children to be educated at home.   The vast majority of parents, however, choose to send their children to some version of the institution known as ‘school’.  In this country, most children attend a school that provides education free of charge – state education.  The remaining minority of parents make the choice to send their child to a fee-paying independent school.  Like St Peter’s.

Interestingly, the word ‘school’ derives from the Greek word ‘schole’, with the paradoxical meaning “leisure” or “free time”. When school was invented, it was about putting people into groups so that they could learn in their free time.  So, right at the start, we have the idea that school is about learning and about freedom.

The Revd. Dr Martin Luther King once gave a lecture entitled ‘The Purpose of Education’. Dr King summarised what he believed was the true goal of education in three words: “intelligence plus character“.  By that, I wonder if he meant that education is not only about filling young minds with knowledge and equipping them with a range of skills and aptitudes; but that it is also about developing the whole person; shaping and nurturing the values, the beliefs, the individual character of every child. “Education is not the filling of a bucket, but the lighting of a fire.” (WB Yeats).

It is, of course, hard to identify a single purpose to school. Everything is important.   Our academic learning is vital to grow our own individual intelligence to its full and varied potential, to experience the delight that comes from learning new things and acquiring new skills and, of course, to strive for the best possible outcomes in formal exams.  The certificates matter: they form the passports to the next stage.  But, just as my passport is not me – which is good news if your passport photo is anything like mine – the grades we achieve are not the full story; but they do provide the keys that open doors. With this in mind, it is terrific that this summer’s exam results at both A Level and GCSE have been very strong indeed.  This school can provide its pupils with the conditions for its pupils to achieve their own personal best in exams – with the right effort – to secure the passport.  But, this is not the true purpose of education.

As the new school year begins, perhaps more than any other day, we will all of us be feeling a heady mix of hopes and fears. We human beings are made up of a shifting flux of feelings, reactions, emotions, opinions, judgements.  We carry in us a finely tuned emotional dashboard – we all have to learn to manage that dashboard.  This self-management is the most important learning there is.  Through a good education, we learn how to manage our inner emotions; how to direct our attention purposefully; to look after our minds; to control and look after our bodies.

We need to learn how to behave. We have to develop the inter-personal skill-set, the habits and manners, of a fully rounded person.  Education is about becoming the best possible version of ourselves.  It is about becoming fully human.

Thus understood, our education never ends. It goes way beyond our school years.  The point of our school years is to set the pattern and lay the foundations of our lives.

A school is a community of individuals. Every individual matters.  We want each individual pupil to develop his or her own intelligence – to grow the mind – to develop wisdom and insight. We want you to enjoy physical activity, culture, the arts. We want each pupil to find ways to explore their spiritual self.  We want you to thrive on the friendship and shared enjoyment that comes from a vibrant communal life: in house, in teams, in group activities of all kinds.   We want each individual pupil to feel valued and respected for who they are; and to grow in confidence so that, when you come to the end of your school days, you can look backwards with gladness and look forwards with confidence.

School should be ‘serious fun’. School should be about enjoying our learning; facing the hurdles we have to jump; keeping a sense of perspective; being active; trying new things; playing a part in something bigger than your own individual self; growing and staying healthy in mind and body.  A great education should instil a balance of confidence blended with humility; independence tempered by a sense of social responsibility; individuality anchored in a deep sense of communal identity.

What’s the point of school? I think that the point of school is to begin the lifelong project of educating the mind, the body and the soul.  This is the all-round education I want to offer all the pupils in my school this year.

Older People: thoughts on living longer

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One day a year, it’s international ‘older people’s day’.  An interesting – and presumably deliberate – choice of words to talk of ‘older people’, rather than ‘old people’ or ‘the elderly’. This turn of language prompts some questions about what we mean by ‘older’. What is ‘older’? Who are these ‘older people’?

Of course, we’re all ‘older’ – you and I are all older than we were yesterday. And we will keep being older all our lives – presumably until the point where we are simply ‘old’: the point when the relative becomes absolute.

Older People’s Day is about raising awareness of the issues related to ageing. It aims to be a day to ‘respond to the opportunities and challenges of population ageing in the 21st century and to promote the development of a society for all ages’. (OPD Website)

The World Health Organisation (WHO) declares that: “Most developed world countries have accepted the chronological age of 65 years as a definition of ‘elderly’ or older person, but like many westernized concepts, this does not adapt well to the situation in Africa. While this definition is somewhat arbitrary, it is many times associated with the age at which one can begin to receive pension benefits. At the moment, there is no United Nations standard numerical criterion, but the UN agreed cutoff is 60+ years to refer to the older population.

Although there are commonly used definitions of old age, there is no general agreement on the age at which a person becomes old. The common use of a calendar age to mark the threshold of old age assumes equivalence with biological age, yet at the same time, it is generally accepted that these two are not necessarily synonymous.”

In other words, the term ‘older’ is relative to where in the world we are born and where we live and the kind of life opportunities open to us.  These are the conditions of birth that drive our life expectancy.  WHO use 50 to mean ‘older’ in global terms.

Respect for one’s elders used to be a given in pretty much every culture. This may have brought with it some rather brutal or disparaging attitudes to the young. The Victorian approach to children being visible but inaudible (‘seen and not heard’), for example, indicated a clear age-based hierarchy. But, it also brought a healthy regard for those of mature years.  This is less so now. Arguably, the young and vigorous attract respect; the ‘older’ and less vital are often viewed as a burden; a problem; or just out of touch.

We have an increasingly top-heavy population. The ‘younger’ have a growing duty to carry the ‘older’. And this duty is increasing. How much carrying will our children and grandchildren have to do? How much tax and NI will we have to pay to support the NHS and state pensions? How long will you have to work before you can retire? Will the notion of retirement disappear altogether?

Living beyond 100 will become the norm in your children’s generation, according to projections from the ONS. Within two decades, the average (that’s the average) life expectancy of a new born girl in UK will be 97 years and 4 months. Baby boys born in 2037 should expect to live, on average, to the age of 94. By 2057, the average life expectancy for a female will be 100. Average. You could consider yourself unlucky not to reach 100. For boys, that mark will be reach in 2080, according to the ONS.

The key, though, is not just life expectancy but healthy life expectancy. That is, being ‘older’ and yet being independent, healthy, mobile etc. Not just being alive but being able to live. This is increasing at a lesser rate. In other words, the old will become more and more dependent on the young. For longer.

We might feel that, being ‘younger’, these issues are not relevant. Older People Day might prompt us to reach out more to the ‘older’ population. Or it might, out of pure self-interest, spark a realization that the decisions, policies and attitudes that we promote and allow in our youth, will come back to affect us in our old age. When it comes to getting older, we will reap what we sow. And the reaping season will be longer than the sowing season.

So, thinking about older people, and issues to do with ageing, is in all of our interest.

Of Hope and Despair – reflections on darkness and light in the news. HM Address.

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Of Hope and Despair

At the opening of a new calendar year, I often find myself thinking about the word ‘hope’. Hope is, of course, one of our seven school values depicted in the stained glass of the new window in Chapel. A New Year seems, by its very nature, to trigger a new release of hope and expectation. And yet, as we followed the various global news stories in the final days of 2014, it was difficult to find evidence that the world is a place of hope and progress. Rather, it seemed to me, in large measure to be a place of despair and profound ignorance; darkness rather than light.

This year Boxing Day marked the 10th anniversary of one of the modern world’s worst natural disasters. The Sixth Formers amongst you, and certainly the adults here, will remember the Boxing Day tsunami – a giant wave that swept across the Indian ocean, killing 230,000 people. I remember Boxing Day 2004 as a grim day – even if you were thousands of miles away from the natural disaster. I remember a sense of hollowness; a huge question in my mind about how the previous day we could be cosily in our families, in churches, celebrating the hope embodied in the birth of Jesus, and the next day wake up to a tidal wave of suffering and loss; of the very opposite of hope – deep, dark despair.

Amongst those who died was a pupil who had just left the school at which I was teaching at the time. One individual loss amongst all those tens of thousands: his disappearance devastated his family and swept through the school like an after-shock, as pupils, staff and parents re-gathered after the Christmas holidays. Again, this event came at the cusp of a new year in the western world. It was hard to see hope; still less, to detect the agency of a divine power shining light into the future. The brute force of 70 foot waves swept away lives and left a wake of destruction and despair. Particularly in the face of such indiscriminate and merciless forces of nature, the human light seems very feeble.

This Christmas holiday, on 16th December, the world reeled in shock at the brutal massacre of 132 schoolchildren and 16 of their teachers in the Army School in Peshawar, Pakistan. In this appalling and calculated attack, the deadliest terrorist act in Pakistan’s history, the Pakistani Taliban deliberately targeted the children of army officers; these innocents died in their classrooms, with their teachers, in what must have been panic and abject fear. Surely, no ideology, religion or political cause can justify these killings. It is impossible to condone such an act of pure moral evil inflicted by man on his fellow man and difficult to see the light of anything good coming from it.

And yesterday morning, three masked gunmen walked into the offices of a well-known French satirical magazine and shot the Editor, several cartoonists, a caretaker, a visitor, a police body-guard who was protecting the editor and a policeman involved in the fire-fight as the killers made their escape. This taking of life was calculated, deliberate and meant to send a message: a message in the name of some deeply twisted and politicised interpretation of religious duty. Once again, moderate Islam, a religion that loves peace, has been hijacked and debased to serve political ends and to sow fear and terror.

The wrongs of the world – and there are surely many – cannot be righted by callous blood-letting acts like this? They are acts of terror that strike not just at the individuals involved, and all who love and care for them, but also at the values of a free and caring society. How can we have hope for humans when this is what they can do?

It may or may not be easier to accept the fact of suffering caused by natural events; that the blind power of nature is capable of sweeping all in its path. We may point to the huge compassion and human togetherness that is often shown in the wake of disaster. The remarkable story, for example, of the 11 and 13 year old western children who were orphaned by the Tsunami who now, 10 years later, run a charity for orphans in one of the areas struck by the tidal wave. We may also be able to accept that the price for all the freedoms and technological advantages we enjoy is that accidents and failures can happen: that plans can crash; that new year’s parties in China can end in tragedy and loss of life; that damaged people do damage to others. We may take comfort and see hope in the global sense of outrage at the Peshawar massacre and look for political progress to come from this appalling loss. We may gain some optimism and sense of dignity from the huge turnout on the streets of Paris last night; the show of solidarity and determination to defend and stand tall in the face of terror, to defend liberty and freedom of expression as the French people define them.

But when you lump all this suffering together; when you read all these accounts of sorrow and loss, it is hard not to feel hope ebbing away; to sense the darkness overcoming the light. Indeed, there are times when a sincere hope for a fairer, kinder, gentler world seems to be no more than a comforting and wilful self-delusion.

Theologically speaking, there is, in fact, much that can be offered to reconcile belief in a loving Goodness in the world with the evident evil that we humans do, and the suffering that nature and accident can cause. This is the stuff of a philosophy course and we don’t have time for that now. Irrespective of religious questions, of which there are many, this is a profound human challenge. We could characterise it in terms of a struggle within us as individual human beings; we could characterise it in terms of the struggle in human-kind itself: the struggle between hope and despair.

I suggest today, in the shadow of the dark events I have mentioned, never mind all the others we could mention in our own experience, that we are presented with something that is, at its simplest level, a pragmatic choice between two options. A binary choice between hope. Or despair. This choice amounts to a profound and recurring test of our character. Our own experiences and the evidence of what we see going on around us will inspire, or challenge our hope. Events, disappointments, losses, failures will call us toward despair. Some, sadly, do indeed reach a state of despair. They reach a blank place where there is no hope. Despair is an option.

The other option is hope.    Sometimes I think we get the wrong idea about the word hope.  It’s a word that devalues in its daily use: that it is about crossed fingers; a passive state of anticipation.  At a deeper level, hope is a universal human phenomenon. People hope for peace in time of war; food in time of famine; justice in time of oppression. Hope generates energy and sustains people through difficult times. For some people, hope is so strong that it inspires self-sacrifice to turn hope into reality.  True hope grows in the face of adversity. Because it springs from a trust, religious or otherwise, that the world will become a better place.  For Christians, of course, this hope is based on a deep trust.  A trust that can withstand all the evidence that threatens to undermine it.  For Christians, hope is not always spontaneous or easy. There is work to be done. As well as trusting God, believers have to develop qualities of steadfastness in our own character.  As St Paul wrote in his letter to the Romans: ‘We know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.’  (Romans 5:3-4)

Remarkably, it does seem that however much life throws at human beings, hope is a core, perhaps even irreducible, part of our human nature. Hope springs from character. It responds to stern challenges and is strengthened in the furnace of adversity. Like a cork in a bottle, hope keeps on bubbling up. However low it goes, it only seems to know one way: upwards.

Practice

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I passed my driving test in the summer of 1989. At the second attempt. It was a great day, banishing memories of the first time round, and the disappointment of failure at this liberating rite of passage.
My first attempt at the driving test met with unqualified failure (in every sense). It came at the end of a five day residential ‘crash’ course (unfortunate term) in North Wales. This entailed five days of intensive driving practice with a fellow learner and a world weary driving instructor called Dave. We pootled along the sea-front and down the quiet roads of Llandudno and Rhyll , negotiating the gentle traffic and sedate one-way system with fellow drivers whose average age was closer to 100 than 17. The week ended with a driving test on the Friday afternoon. My mother had found the driving school, whose advertising literature promised a 100% pass rate for 17 year old drivers. I was 17: and I was about to ruin their stats.
After five days driving experience four nights of driving talk, I failed the test on several key faults. Undue hesitation. Speeding in a 30 mile an hour limit. Failing to check my mirror before performing a manoeuvre. Stalling at a junction. It was a tragedy of motoring errors. I was a menace on the roads, most of all because the course had given me a false sense of confidence. Luckily – for other road users – I fell apart under test conditions and failed. And with this failure, I reluctantly entered the Hall of Fame of the Llandudno School of Motoring. I was the first 17 year old to fail.

Ten months later, I took my test again. And passed. This time round I was successful – and my efforts met with success because of three important reasons. One – I had practised over a longer period with a focus on becoming a decent driver, rather than getting through the test. Secondly, I had more varied, and more genuine road experience. Thirdly, I was wearing my lucky trainers. And my lucky pants.

It also happened that the driving test examiner was studying an Open University degree in the same subject that I was about to study at University and he had a cat called Leo. There was a sense of alignment. This is often the case with our successes. Things click into place: if you’ve put in the hours.
I’m lucky that I have a very short commute to work. On foot. This means that I don’t drive as much as some people do but I calculate that I must have racked up 150, 000 miles of driving since 1989. I have miles of driving experience. I’ve put in lots of practice. And yet, strangely, I am not a world-class driver. In fact, I’m a much worse driver than I was about 12 months after passing my test. Why?

The reason is this. I have developed bad habits; I’m crossing my hands when steering; driving with one hand; checking my mirror insufficiently often. I’ve forgotten aspects of the highway code. And, crucially, I am not striving to improve. I am simply carrying out a series of automatic actions, performed from muscle memory. My mind is not focused on the multiple task of driving. It is on other things: I’m thinking about work, day-dreaming or talking or, if travelling with my children, swivelling my head around to issue reprimands and unenforceable threats. In terms of driving, I am on autopilot. This is particular the case when on a familiar route. Miles can pass and suddenly you think – ‘I can’t remember anything from the last 10 minutes of driving’.

In his book, ‘Bounce’, Matthew Syed explores the difference between practice that demands deep concentration and application. The activities and occupations in which we truly grow are those which stretch us, demand more each time. The path to mastery is one with no clear end – there is not such thing as the perfect round of golf, piece of art, musical performance. Even finite tasks with finite answers can be performed more elegantly or more quickly: if we’re motivated by challenge.

Syed offers a simple example. Unscramble these anagrams:

FAHTER
HERFAT

FOOTBLAL
LBOFTOAL

DCOTOR
RTOCOD

OUTCOEM
ECMUTOO

TEACHRE
EERTACH

You’ll quickly have seen that the pairs of words are the same, but the second is more difficult. The letters are more scrambled and mixed.

“Research across domains shows that it is only by working at what you can’t do that you turn into the expert you want to become” Ericsson. What this implies is that it is not just the quantity of the practice, but also the quality of the practice and the challenge it exposes us to.
This applies to our academic work as much as it does any other activity in life. Working hard does not mean working smart. This crucial difference is one that we, as teachers, need to help you fully to understand, so that you can make the most of your studies.

The map and the territory: avoiding educational Sat Nav

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In my car we have a battered old map from 2006.  I really should get a new one.  Friends have suggested I should get a Sat Nav. 

I refuse to as a matter of principle.  Why? What’s wrong with a Sat Nav? I did ask myself that recently when I was lost in south London trying to find a house to collect a piece of furniture I’d bought on e-bay.  But, I do prefer to read a map.  Indeed, I wouldn’t set off on a journey without one.  Handy though the Sat Nav would have been on that particular trip; and indeed convenient though they are, I don’t like the idea of being told what to do by a disembodied voice, however silken and beguiling its simulated female tones. I prefer to think for myself. even if that means the journey is less certain for it. 

I think that when you’re on a journey, when you’re driving, you should be alive to everything around you; sure, you need guides, you need people to point you in the right direction if you take a wrong turn; you should benefit from the experience of those who travelled the route before.  But, not to think for yourself about where you’re going, and how exactly you are getting there; that seems to me to be sleep-walking through life.

My famous name-sake, the Russian author, playwright and philosopher Leo Tolstoy, led an interesting life, often rejecting the obvious path, ending his life living extremely humbly and spurning his aristocratic inheritance.  Famous for his novels, such as Ware and Peace and Anna Karenina, he also wrote a lot of essays and philosophical reflections. One such was this: he wrote that “The two most powerful warriors are patience and time”.  He elaborates that “Patience is waiting. Not passively waiting. That is laziness. But to keep going when the going is hard and slow – that is patience.”

 I wonder whether the appeal of Sat Nav technology is tied up with our desire for the fastest routes through things; with a lack of patience; with laziness.  Please understand me – I’m not having a go at technology – progress is good; technology empowers and liberates people.  This is good.  But, my question is whether the quickest route is always the best.  And whether sometimes it is better to make choices for yourself rather than accept the wisdom programmed into a computer. 

Indeed, there are some hilarious – and also rather disturbing stories – about the extent to which people will hand over their free will to their Sat Nav, trusting them despite all the evidence of their senses. I love the true story about the group of bank workers on a Christmas shopping beano to France who were taken to the wrong country after a sat nav blunder diverted their coach seven hours off course.  The office outing was scheduled for the French city of Lille; they were diverted 98 miles away to a village of the same name across the border in Belgium.

Staying with Belgians (nothing personal against them of course), a Belgian truck driver blamed his electronic way-finder after leaving a £20k trail of destruction in his wake in Wadebridge, Cornwall.  Directed by his sat nav into an unsuitable cul-de-sac, the hapless trucker put his foot down in a panic, ending his turning manoeuvre by ploughing over a mini roundabout, getting a car trapped under his lorry, and destroying five more vehicles.

And what about the story of the cab driver taking Earl Spencer’s daughter Katya to a Chelsea football match ended up 146 miles off course in Yorkshire after  the driver’s sat nav directed him to the tiny village of Stamford Bridge.  They missed the Blues’ 2-1 victory over rivals Arsenal.  Good thing too (as an Arsenal fan).

Clearly, it’s not the fault of the machines, but the mindlessness of their users.

Schools shouldn’t give their pupils a Sat Nav; we mustn’t allow our youngsters to slumber brainlessly as they are led by educational GPS. The learning journey is about discovery – the map and the territory;  it should be enlivening; it should not always be comfortable; it should challenge us.  Certainly, we do not want to be paralysed by fear of the unknown; we want to feel secure and at ease – and we all need occasional reassurance that we are on the right path.  But, there are many ways to get to where you’re going.  Our job, as teachers, is to provide maps to guideour youngsters over the ancient ways; the job of the pupils is to read the maps for themselves.

No excuses

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What’s the worst excuse you’ve ever used? The worst excuse for being late, or not having done something you were supposed to do, or for missing an activity. Sometimes, like white lies, excuses are used to avoid hurting feelings or to maintain good relations. You decline a party invitation saying that you have a prior engagement. Do you really?

One of the great theatres for the performance of excuses is the reasons employees give for taking the day off work. The following are genuine examples – not, I hasten to add, given by staff at my school, but taken from an employment website:

‘My dog is having a nervous breakdown; I forgot I’d been hired for the job; my toe is stuck in the tap; a bird bit me; I was upset after watching ‘The Hunger Games’; I locked myself inside my house and I can’t get out; I can’t find my car; I’m stressed out and if I come to work I’m likely to punch someone.’

This kind of excuse-making is funny on one level. Some may indeed be true, but excuse-making ends up debasing the trust between people and, often, insults the intelligence of the person on the other end of the excuse. George Washington, the first US president said: “It is better to offer no excuse than a bad one”. It is far better to tell the truth and face the consequences, than it is to damage trust.

The second kind of excuse is what psychologists call ‘rationalization’: this is when the individual deals with emotional conflict and external stresses by through the elaboration of reassuring, self-serving and incorrect explanations. In other words, you deceive yourself; inventing a more comfortable illusion, in order to avoid facing the truth. We may do this when we find things tasks difficult and want to give up. When we fail, we may look for things outside ourselves to ‘soften the blow’ – these excuses are simple self-deception. And they prevent us from developing and facing up fully to our challenges.

Martin Luther King, Jr. said: “It seems to be a fact of life that human beings cannot continue to do wrong without eventually reaching out for some rationalization to clothe their act”. Rationalizations – excuses – prevent us from dealing with the mistakes and wrongs we have done, both on an individual or collective level. Think about some of the justifications for acts of aggression and war.

The existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre explored the idea of self-deception. He wrote: “For many have but one resource to sustain them in their misery, and that is to think, “Circumstances have been against me, I was worthy to be something much better than I have been. I admit I have never had a great love or a great friendship; but that is because I never met a man or a woman who were worthy of it; if I have not written any very good books, it is because I had not the leisure to do so; or, if I have had no children to whom I could devote myself it is because I did not find the man I could have lived with. So there remains within me a wide range of abilities, inclinations and potentialities, unused but perfectly viable, which endow me with a worthiness that could never be inferred from the mere history of my actions.” But in reality and for the existentialist, there is no love apart from the deeds of love; no potentiality of love other than that which is manifested in loving; there is no genius other than that which is expressed in works of art.” Whatever ones views of Sartre’s atheistic existentialism, these words have the ring of truth: we are judged by our acts – what we do, rather than being judged on the quality of the excuses we offer for the things we didn’t do.

In a book on leadership and self-deception, philosopher and business consultant C Terry Warner looks at sport as another theatre for excuse-making. “Except in a very few matches, usually with world-class performers, there is a point in every match (and in some cases it’s right at the beginning) when the loser decides he’s going to lose. And after that, everything he does will be aimed at providing an explanation of why he will have lost. He may throw himself at the ball (so he will be able to say he’s done his best against a superior opponent). He may dispute calls (so he will be able to say he’s been robbed). He may swear at himself and throw his racket (so he can say it was apparent all along he wasn’t in top form). His energies go not into winning but into producing an explanation, an excuse, a justification for losing.”

The spirit of good-sportsmanship is vital: playing fair and 100% committed to the final whistle and looking to learn rather than make excuses. Similarly, in our work, we must not seek to deceive ourselves or others. Honest effort and honest reflection are keys to improvement. Florence Nightingale, that epitome of honest good work and courage, said: “I attribute my success to this – I never gave or took any excuse”.

May this be a year of ‘no excuses’: let’s try to embrace our challenges, face and learn from our failures, and get stronger by doing so.