An inexhaustible source of magic - Scotch College

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An inexhaustible source of magic

principal2011

Mr Tom Batty
School Principal

Words have the power and purpose to pluck at our innermost self.

The pen is mightier than the sword’; ‘Actions speak louder than words’; ‘A picture paints a thousand words’; ‘Where words fail, music speaks’; ‘Sticks and stones will break my bones ...’; ‘Facts do not speak for themselves’.

We like to attempt to simplify that which is complex.

Like many young lads growing up, my bedroom walls carried carefully penned transcripts of favourite poems, prayers, passages of novels, speeches and cuttings from newspapers. A recent visit to my childhood home showed some remain: the almost obligatory (for a young English boy approaching adolescence) copy of Rudyard Kipling’s If; my favourite lines from Hesse’s Treatise on the Steppenwolf; André Zirnheld’s Para’s Prayer; a newspaper cutting about Rolling Stone Keith Richards being forced to quit his luxury New York apartment on the grounds he played deafening music 24 hours a day.

I liked words and still do.

Words help us progress, share and celebrate our thoughts, moods, passions, hopes and beliefs; they give considered form to our reflections; they help us rationalise, delve, cajole, create and invent. In so doing, words empower (perhaps even compel) us to connect that which is within to that which is beyond; to participate in the world beyond our reflective being.

This is perhaps the innate purpose of language. And of course words are not our only form of language.

My bedroom walls also contained the odd mathematical proof; some of my grandfather’s watercolours; postcards from travels (mine and others'); tickets from bands I had seen live; scarves and pennants of football teams played for and supported. Between the walls rested a small mono record player used to play the stack of vinyl now gathering dust. Remarkably, because the room isn’t large, there was also once a drum kit which was the source of some of my fondest memories even though I couldn’t play it for quids.

Words, art, music, action, reason, all forms of language; all connecting the inner with the outer.

To attempt to separate one from any other is, to my mind, to miss it all. There are direct parallels in education where attempts to impose top down ‘one size fits all’ mantras are littered with division, alienation and, ultimate failure. Imposed on all, supposedly for the good of all, they appeal to many for the comfort imbued of simplicity, but they neglect, or choose to ignore, that the core entity – us – is anything but simple or uniform.

Even when there has been progress in addressing the complexities of working at the level of the individual, too often the desire to oversimplify undoes much of what is good. The advent of Gardner’s learning styles (Visual-Spatial, Bodily-Kinaesthetic, Musical, Interpersonal, Intrapersonal, Linguistic and Logical/Mathematical) provided welcome levers for teacher and student alike, but with it came the desire for many to allocate badges of ‘why can’t do’ as often as ‘why could do’.

Whilst we have strengths in certain styles in certain areas, we all learn through a mix as rich and varied as our identity. Fortunately, the light of good research is now shining to this end; towards establishing the sort of relationships that enable teachers to get inside the minds of those they are guiding, anticipate where and why they will struggle and where they will fly, and to best construct pathways which overcome hurdles, unlock interests and improve outcomes to the greater social good. It’s about relationships between people, and as they say in Yorkshire, there’s now’t so queer as folk.

Much of real worth in personal development comes away from classrooms, and with the range of Gardner’s learning styles in mind, it is worth reflecting on the opportunities offered by Scotch staff over the recent vacation: a cadet tour to the UK and Germany; debaters participating at the Raffles Institute in Singapore; Global Village building in Cambodia; the NASA Space Camp in Alabama; a Pipes and Drums tour to Scotland and Northern Ireland; an outing at the Henley Regatta; an Indigenous Partnership Programme trip to the Tiwi Islands; ski training at Mount Hotham; a Year 10 Outdoor Leadership camp at Howqua; and a Year 9 football tour to Adelaide.

The relationship between words and actions is one I find particularly interesting. I have written before on what I see as the primacy of performance and doing. Too often, words are themselves the end point, a skilfully crafted means to abrogate responsibility for action.

At Scotch, as I hope you are aware from our strategic intents, we declare that, for each boy, essentially what we look to do is four-fold:

  • find interests that can become passions;

  • improve his outcomes in all he does;

  • encourage him to be curious; to have an independent mind and a global outlook; and,

  • empower him to challenge those things which need challenging and support those which need supporting.

Fine words, bold aims, stirring (hopefully) stuff. But without action, any initial momentum is lost; the words remain amongst the many others in glossy school magazines lacking real impact in the lives of the boys in our care, remaining at best a mantra to convince us, and others, that we are involved in something admirable. I hope, however, that you see such intents reflected through your son’s Scotch experience. I can report, that in addition to earlier work to these ends, developments in recent months have included:

  • Trialling a peer observation programme for teachers (separate from the formal staff development programme). Research, and experience, indicates that having teachers observe colleagues, reflect on their practice, and engage in collegial conversations on teaching, has the most powerful effect on modifying classroom practice in ways that improve learning.

  • Implementing a new Learning Management System which enables more fluent diversification and differentiation.

  • Running a bring-your-own-device pilot to perform a close study of learning in the more ‘open’ environment afforded by ready access to technology; and, in particular, the potential of such an environment to allow boys to progress their learning at rates and in manners best suiting their needs.

  • Making differentiated teaching the focus for teaching and learning groups and departments, in order to identify classroom teaching strategies that challenge each boy at an appropriate level.

  • Introducing the Year 8 Academic Challenge Programme for English, mathematics, history, science and languages.

  • Reviewing our Year 9 and 10 electives to ensure they offer appropriate opportunities and challenge for all boys.

  • Implementing a new programme of support for boys with English as an Additional Language (EAL).

Perhaps words are vibrations seeking resonance; resonance that, although unique to each point of reception, carries similarity borne out of shared experience and our shared condition. Whilst they are special moments to me, I doubt I am the only locally born person who struggles to walk through the fields around St Giles’ Church, Stoke Poges, with the sun going down, unaccompanied by at least the opening lines of Thomas Gray’s, Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (which happens to be that churchyard):

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea,
The ploughman homeward
    plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

This power (and purpose) of words to pluck so readily at our innermost self, leaves us vulnerable and ultimately defenceless.

As Dumbledore said (courtesy of J K Rowling) to Harry Potter in an imagined Kings Cross Station:

‘Words are, in my not so humble opinion, our most inexhaustible source of magic, capable of both inflicting injury and remedying it.’

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Above: Mr Batty with Year 7 Students Chris Papapetrou, Howie Japp, Charlie Wilson and Eddie Montgomery