School rules

“There are two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says: “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes: “What the hell is water?”

“It’s about the real value of a real education, which has almost nothing to do with knowledge and everything to do with simple awareness; awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over:

“This is water.”

“This is water.”

David Foster Wallace, This Is Water: Some thoughts delivered on a significant occasion, about living a compassionate life

Every year I talk to the school at least once about our rules. As a school of 675 adolescents, you might expect pupils to need what the army calls ‘judicious repetition’. The result is that most Bryanstonians can quote these rules off by heart by the time they reach the B year … though that certainly doesn’t mean they’re all angels!

But why do we have rules? Simply put, without them we would find ourselves unable to live together in a number of more than two. And by and large, we human beings like each other’s company. As Aristotle put it over two thousand years ago: “Man is a social animal.”

I have worked in schools with endless volumes of school rules, neatly divided into sections and indeed subsections, which you were required to carry around in your blazer pocket and to produce on request – by the sort of teacher we all remember from our school days – with an appropriate flourish and an ability to quote with accuracy and reverence.

Bryanston’s fundamental rules are, by contrast, ultra simple. There are just four of them.

1. A breach of common sense or courtesy is a breach of school rules.
2. A breach of the law of the land is a serious breach of school rules 
3. We ban sex, drugs, alcohol and smoking and you are liable to be expelled for involvement in either of the first two. 
4. Furthermore, the following are automatic suspension offences: 
• night wandering, 
• being on the roof of the main building, 
• smoking in a building. 

Rules one and two cover pretty much everything that matters regarding anti-social, dangerous and illegal behaviour, whilst rules three and four are more specific, reflecting our own particular location and ethos. These four rules essentially form our constitution; they are the basis of our everyday interaction, helping individuals and the whole school to flourish. They make us Bryanston and not somewhere else.

Given that at Bryanston we more or less really enjoy each other’s company, and given that we therefore need rules for each to be able to do so, I think these rules are about as reasonable as any could be. Each term I make plain to pupils that I hope for no infractions but, should infractions occur, that they will be fairly and firmly dealt with, including the use, if necessary, of the sanction of departure from the school. I also spell out what that generally means for their poor parents, as such events are rarely convenient and very few schools consider admitting pupils who have left another school after breaking such core rules and values.

But there’s a second vital reason for our having rules at school, I think. As well as keeping each and every member of the school safe and well and in an environment in which they can flourish, I have a further duty, which I take seriously: to prepare our pupils for being a success in life.

Teddy Roosevelt used to say “The most important single ingredient in the formula for success is knowing how to get along with other people.” Put like that, it sounds easy. But I don’t think it is achievable without knowing you’re in the right place, recognising the rules of that place and the value of those rules. Pupils here at Bryanston might as well learn this life skill at 13, practise it until they get it spot on in this safe and stretching environment and then, hopefully, full of an enviable (perhaps even unequalled) emotional intelligence, they will be ready to go out and make a success of those next steps.

As adults, we are accustomed to encountering rules wherever we go. I want Bryanstonians to make sure they recognise the fundamental rules wherever they go; to question those rules if they need questioning; never to sign up for a set of rules which are morally bankrupt or with no core value; never to agree to play by rules they know to be wrong, lazy, or corrupting; and never to sell their soul for the sake of personal convenience or an easy life. Because that would make you an unhappy sheep. It’s about recognising and never letting go of what really matters. All of which leads me back, as do so many things that really matter, to the words of This Is Water, the wonderful commencement address by David Foster Wallace.

I want Bryanstonians to work out where they want to be, and how to play by those proper rules, which are an essential part of their environment. Then they can make their own unique contribution to the world, confidently and generously.

People, not things

Another summer term has drawn to a close and another successful Speech Day has allowed us to send off with love and every best wish both departing staff and 150 or so departing A2s. It’s always a time of nostalgia (how can you forget those 18 year-olds as their 13-year-old selves, bright eyed, bushy tailed and very nervous, five short years ago?). But mostly this time of year is a time of looking forward, we hope not too sentimentally, to the great things ahead of them in life. It’s what makes this job of mine the best in the world.

Speech Day allows me to see these young men and women ready to move on and ready to achieve still more. It allows me too to say to them my final words as their Head. This year I spoke of David Foster Wallace, Ken Robinson and Gillian Lynne. The theme, as mine so often is, was about what really matters in life.

There can’t be anyone on the planet who has children in a school who hasn’t listened to Ken Robinson’s TED Talk. But those of you who don’t know David Foster Wallace’s This is Water might like to add it to your own summer reading list. It’s short because it’s a commencement speech (a graduation speech, I think, in British English) and it’s a really good read. He talks about the absolute necessity of knowing what it is that matters to you. Of never ignoring the blazingly obvious. Of looking after your inner self so that you can be a social and happy self too. I recommend it to you in the warmest terms. Here’s its opening, to whet your appetite:

There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, “Morning boys. How’s the water?”

And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, “What the hell is water?”

It’s important in life that we work out what we really need and what it is that really matters. It won’t be the size of your house or how much you earn that makes you happy. It will be how you feel about yourself and how you then interrelate with others. As David Foster Wallace puts it, “In the twenty years since my own graduation, I have come gradually to understand … that the liberal arts cliché about ‘teaching you to think’ was actually shorthand for a very deep and important truth. ‘Learning to think’ really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot or will not exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed.”

For me, how I keep that control is by reminding myself of an old friend’s wonderfully simple, rather hippy mantra, “People, not things”. By reading and immersing myself, whenever I can, in an internal imaginative landscape. By spending time with my husband and daughters. By walking the dogs and finding time for quiet reflection.

The A2s, as they leave this wonderful garden, will go on to play their part in the world. We hope very much that they will take Bryanston with them. As part of them. Take with them the memories of their friends, their teachers, their (best in the world) Chaplain. We very much hope that they have learned to enjoy learning, of course; but more than that, that they have learned the importance of friendship, of shared experiences, of their own emotional and spiritual well-being. That they have real goals, not fake, hollow goals. That they know how to love life. That they put people before things.

I am about to sign off for a little while and head off for a summer holiday. I’m taking a pile of books up a long lane in Devon (with no internet connection, I hope), re-establishing my link with quiet, and having fun with family and friends too. I wish you all a wonderful and fun-filled summer too. See you all back refreshed in September.

Intelligent Life: David Foster Wallace, in his own words
Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity?
Huffington Post: People, not things, bring happiness, study shows