Voice from the Past

A couple of weeks ago, our Head of School Katrina Samson, my wife Alison and I attended the annual meeting of Heads and Board Chairs from the Canadian Accredited Independent Schools (CAIS – the association of independent schools, which also has responsibility for accreditation.)

With the explosion of private schools in Canada over the last 20 years (there are now close to 2000), there is a huge risk factor for parents deciding where to turn. I have spoken to many families from outside Canada who have made some unfortunate decisions because they didn’t know any better and were seduced by some sophisticated marketing. CAIS accreditation provides a very strong quality indicator of the school and all major independent schools are members/accredited.

Most of the sessions at the annual conference provided lots of insight into trends and issues in education today. One morning, however, the day started with R.H. Thomson playing the role of the late great author and academic Robertson Davies. Thomson was reading Davies speech to the Headmasters of the forerunner of CAIS at its annual dinner in 1971 at TCS. At that time, most of the member schools were all-boys (the all-girls schools had a separate association of Headmistresses) and a few co-ed institutions. (When he gave this speech, I was in Grade 2 at Brown Public School on Avenue Road in Toronto about to move to a CAIS school. I know – I don’t look that old!)

I found the comments fascinating, especially as my mind went quickly to the zone of assessing what has changed and what has stayed the same. Some of his ideas (and how he presents them) have fallen out of favour, but others are still very relevant 43 years later.

Here is what Davies said in 1971:

“One of your great weapons in keeping anarchy at bay in your schools is the system, devised by Dr. Arnold of Rugby and still in existence though much altered, of a chain of command. You had a form of student government before the state schools had dreamed of such a thing. Your pupils, therefore, have a chance to learn the invaluable, realistic lesson that nothing is for nothing and that power is inextricably bound up with responsibility.

 

It is astonishing how many your people reach the University without having mastered this simple lesson – that power is a weary burden as well as a satisfaction, and that the use of power has to be learned gradually….

 

Your first great strength is your strength of choice. You are not obliged to take all comers. I know you are under pressure to take all kinds of boys for all kinds of reasons, and some of your greatest successes have been with unpromising stuff. But at least you have freedom to back your own hunches and though you use the power with caution, you do have the power to get rid of boys who may be, for one reason or another, disruptive nuisances. The power this gives you to keep you own path is incalculable. If you make too many wrong guesses, you will lose your job. But then this too, is part of the system within which your schools operate; a system of realism which may sometimes be harsh in its decrees, but which never becomes flabby.

 

“Guard the keys,” said Arthur Woodhouse, “and you won’t go far wrong.” And I say it to you.

 

One of your keys is a golden one. The sanction of gold, my friends, is another of your great strengths. The parents whose boys you accept are paying handsomely for their sons’ education. They want something in return and you have to deliver the goods. This is good for you, and good for the boys.

 

Not long ago, a young man at the university where I teach, told me about meeting a girl – a very intense, young, student-politician – who asked him where he went to High School. He answered (one of the well known boys schools of the day). She became more than ordinarily intense. “But did you really enjoy that school?” she asked. She thought the question important. I am glad to say that he did not. This notion that school must provide, before everything else, enjoyment – meaning a constant nervous stimulation, continual discussion and shallow cerebration which is not thought or feeling or intuition, and a quick abandonment of whatever seems to call for laborious preparation and submission to often vexatious discipline – is widespread.

 

The real challenge of education, of course, if something very different. It is the challenge of discovering whether you can bend your proud neck to the yoke and work hard enough and long enough to get ready for very much greater challenges, which will come when school is left behind. School is often dull, because it teaches us many elementary techniques without which no achievement is possible. Real professionalism is achieved by years of necessary dull work.

 

A school, of course, should teach many sorts of professionalism. Greatest of all, it should teach a professional approach to life, and by that I mean an understanding of what can be achieved and the price achievement will cost in the hard coin of time, skill and personal devotion. Even geniuses have to know this. Indeed, a great part of being a genius consists of knowing these things without being taught them.

 

Keep your advantage. Don’t worry about your critics. Teach as professional teachers dealing with professional learners. All the real advantages in education, with which go all the big risks, are on your side.”