“I wanted to see what would happen!” part three

Following on from parts one and two of his blog, Simon Vincent continues to share his insights into teenage boys, gained over his 12 years as a junior boys’ housemaster.

"Mistakes are the portals of discovery." - James Joyce

Most boys have an innate desire to find things out for themselves and, given the opportunity, will do so despite the best advice that they are given. Certainly, the consequences can seem terrifying, but I would contend that the consequences of not allowing them to do so are worse. The well-known observation “Why, when someone tells you that there are 100 million stars in the universe do you believe them, yet when you see a sign saying ‘Wet Paint’, do you have to touch it to check?” is one that applies particularly to teenage boys. What makes this worse is the extent to which they wind each other up and challenge an arms race of bravado. Among young teenage boys unused to each other’s company this forms an essential part of early interaction. Boys are not great at having meaningful conversations about themselves, as they are all terrified that others will find them boring and immature. They are so desperate to show their credentials to their peers that they exaggerate to an amusingly ridiculous degree. In an overblown social version of the card game Liar, the stakes of calling each other out are raised by the prospect of being called out in turn. What is left is an environment where boys think that others may not be telling the entire truth, but recognise that they, in turn, have perjured themselves so they all just go along with the illusion. I have overheard the most ridiculous (and often shocking) claims of boys earnestly telling others that their dad invented the SAS or that they have been to a pool party with Rihanna or other such nonsense! I remember clearly the horror when I saw a (not very gymnastically-talented) boy in the house garden standing on the fence, surrounded by a cheering crowd, and clearly about to do a back flip off it. Time seemed to slow down as I rushed for the back door to try and stop him, but flip he did, landing flat on his back on the hard ground. I had images of A&E flashing in my head. Thankfully he was unhurt, but what emerged was that he had told other boys so many times that he could do it, that he had actually begun to believe that he could. This is a fairly benign example, but it is at the root of many that are less so.

The world is changed and it is an inevitability that our risk-averse culture has arisen (especially with the paperwork at schools). This is all very sensible and helps to keep the lawyer from the door, but I am not the first to recognise that organised fun is often no fun at all! My best memories of boarding school are not the wonderful school trips or the coaching sessions we had but those where we went freestyle, took charge of our own leisure time and tried to do something different. Pupils still do this, thankfully, and in a much more controlled environment the thrill of doing something for themselves has added piquancy. The boys, when left to their own devices, are often much more sensible and risk-averse than we give them credit for, but our inability to give them enough leeway makes them all the more committed to challenging action. I completely understand the desire to keep children safe, but the teenage years are a time when the mantle of ‘child’ is starting to shrug from their shoulders and they are looking (albeit through rose-tinted, psychedelic spectacles) at the fact that they may be a viable individual in their own right. I see our role as giving them advice and a road map, whilst always being on standby to jump in with roadside breakdown cover if really needed in case of failure.

Failure is probably the most important learning process in a teenage boy’s development, so let’s not deny it to them. Some years ago I coached an U14 rugby team with a colleague. Our season statistics by December read Played 15 Won 15 and County Cup Champions. Amid all the celebrations at the end of that autumn term, my colleague and I both voiced our misgivings. Most teenage boys have pretty high opinions of themselves and, if not slightly tempered, can cross over from confidence into arrogance. Don't get me wrong, I love my teams to win but when they start to believe their own hype about themselves there are problems coming. In this instance, rather predictably, the rugby team refused to listen to the advice that they were given to change the way they played at U15 level or to work on core skills. As a result they only won five matches out of 12 at U15 level. A quote from a classic film best summarises this when Commander Stinger tells the well-nicknamed Maverick (Tom Cruise), “Son, your ego is writing cheques that your body can’t cash.” This is spot on. In order to become better young men, boys must experience failure and disappointment and test themselves against that, rather than success. I do not suggest that we should create losing situations for them, rather that we allow them to fail (gently) more than trying vicariously to exorcise our own past failings by attempting to solve all issues for our children. This is to deny them the very learning opportunity that makes us seek to help them. Again, this is totally understandable and I am sometimes unable to resist with my own children – but I try.

And so ...
I have been enormously privileged to welcome so many wonderful young men into Bryanston over the last 12 years and I have been truly proud of the way that they have progressed and moved on. The fact that my first intake of boys is now 26 years old is terrifying but such is the march of time. As I have said, my main motivation in writing this is to provide some kind of balance to the emotional turmoil of parenting that is all the more accurately felt if your current teenager is your first. There is no blueprint for success here, just some observations about how to make a really difficult job as a parent a little bit easier and to make interaction with the school more straightforward.

A former Headmaster of this school is reported to have told new parents that “A boarding school education is like cooking a casserole. Put all the parts in and as long as you don't lift the lid or stir it for five years it will turn out delicious.” This is probably apocryphal, but it does sum up a now-outdated attitude towards boarding. The reality these days is very different, but there is an essential point in the quotation. The whole point of these five years is a move towards adulthood – our children’s adulthood. Up until this point we have been their major guides through life, but this will probably not be the case in five years’ time and we need to learn to let them go a bit. This is a transitional period when teenagers are looking for other role models, other sources of advice, other sources of love and friendship. It is difficult for the boys, but far more difficult for the parents. Good luck!

• “I wanted to see what would happen!” part one
• “I wanted to see what would happen!” part two

Balancing act

This week Sarah Thomas reflects on the importance of balance - a topic she covered on Speech Day last weekend.

At Speech Day this year I spoke of balance and how to keep it in this turbulent and unpredictable world. I even made reference to Weebles. For those of you who were not children of the 1970s, Weebles were egg-shaped toys, weighted so that, if you pushed them over, they always bounced back upright. “Weebles wobble,” the advert ran, “but they don’t fall down.” I think Weebles could be the icon for these turbulent times. 

A year and a half ago would we have believed we would be coming out of Europe? Seeing scenes of terrorism and heroism again on the streets of Manchester and London? Enduring another inconclusive General Election? And let’s try not to mention President Trump. So how are we to deal with all this, in our own families and in school? How do we aim for our pupils to stay balanced?

At Bryanston we offer the widest range of opportunities we can. We teach creatively and we offer the right level of encouragement and guidance, both inside and outside the classroom. We don’t expect anyone, child or adult, to be perfect. Indeed, to expect that creates a toxic effect for any child, however talented. We talk about our own wellbeing and are honest about our need for support, whether from exercise or music, or meditation, or God. Which reminds me of a Boris Johnson story I heard recently. In an interview about his Christian faith, he described it as “like tuning in to Virgin Radio

whilst driving through the Chilterns. Sometimes the signal is strong; sometimes you lose it.” A really lovely metaphor. We encourage our pupils to keep tuning in to a support system which works for them, and we let them know that’s what we, in our imperfect way, do for ourselves.

A key way we stay balanced at Bryanston is through positivity and this comes, in part, through engagement in good times. It is important to celebrate achievement and good times, as we did at Speech Day last weekend, and indeed do throughout the year. 

But finding balance isn’t easy. And it’s different for everyone. You can’t necessarily teach it in classrooms. You can’t measure it in exams. So it’s not something that many schools are prepared to shout about. Certainly not those which boast exclusively about their academic achievements. Or those which fail to recognise the connection between unreasonable academic pressure and mental health issues. Or those which shy away from the truth that so much of our educational landscape was designed to meet 20th- century challenges. In the future, our young people will need balance as

much as they will need imagination; creativity; perspective; the ability to take a step back, to take a wider view, to make links and connections; to have good ideas; to make difficult and brave decisions. Show me how each A level can test those skills. Yet a school which is not passionate about these things is not, in my view, doing its job.

As we wish our departing pupils farewell and look forward to welcoming a new intake in September, I hope that each Bryanstonian gets what they want from life and, above all, that they channel their own Weeble and find their individual balance.

You can see more photos from Speech Day here.

Avoiding educational labyrinthitis

This week we welcome our Director of Sport, Alex Fermor-Dunman, who shares his thoughts on the importance of providing the balance in education. 

Balance: An even distribution of weight enabling someone or something to remain upright and steady

At Bryanston we pride ourselves as being tailors of an outstanding education. This means that each pupil has a distinct and individual ‘balance’, which is always forefront in our thoughts as teachers and educators. Through regular one-to-one tutorials and correction periods we facilitate and ensure that each individual has an even distribution of weight to remain upright and that the elements of school life are equal and in correct proportions. It is one of the founding and fundamental principles of our educational philosophy.

In a sporting context, as coaches we preach about ‘proprioception’, or the ability to grasp and fully understand the relative position of parts of your body at any stage in a movement; in essence, sporting balance. You can observe and analyse this over hundreds of sporting channels on your TV. I urge you to watch a full-blooded Rory McIlroy drive, any All Black off-loading out of a rugby tackle, Christa Cullen drag flicking a hockey ball, the outstretched body position of Lindsay Keable whilst playing goal defence for England. My list of balanced and awe-inspiring athletes could be endless, the point of my argument is not. It is impossible to play any level of sport without balance.

The catalogue of crucial inputs to develop and improve balance in sport is enormous. World-class sportsmen and women strive their entire careers to conquer and master these, with help from head coaches, strength and conditioning experts, sports psychologists, sports scientists, physiotherapists, massage therapists and nutritionists: the list of the entourage becomes manifold. With David Brailsford’s ‘marginal gains’ theory on the lips of all elite coaches worldwide, it is no surprise that the search for an athlete’s or team’s perfect ‘balance’ becomes almost the holy grail of coaching.

But what of an individual’s balance? At the most extreme end of the sporting continuum we could analyse American swimmer Michael Phelps. In peak training phases, Phelps swims a minimum of 80,000 metres a week, nearly 50 miles. He trains twice a day, sometimes more if he’s positioned at altitude; sessions last for five to six hours a day, six days a week.

Phelps adds a punishing weightlifting regime to his dry-land work depending on training phases. He lifts weights three days a week, but prefers own body weight exercises which he feels keep him leaner and less likely to add muscle bulk. In terms of his diet, Phelps eats over 12,000 calories a day or approximately 4,000 calories per meal. This is his balance, his even distribution of weight, that which keeps him upright and steady. It is this balance, combined with a mind-boggling physical frame, intense focus and desire, alongside specific genetic attributes, which has played a large part in his becoming the most decorated Olympian of all time. It would appear that Phelps for the last 14 years has, in a sporting context, been pretty well balanced.

But what happens when your balance deserts you? Anyone unlucky enough to have suffered from labyrinthitis or the inflammation of part of the inner ear will be able to tell you: dizziness, vertigo, spinning rooms, nausea and the absolute urge to lie down, culminating in life grinding to a halt, until rest and medication restore the body to its usual state. 

So let’s cut to the chase: what is my point? It is simply this, at Bryanston an individual’s balance is precisely that, individual. We have no one in Michael Phelps’ sporting league at present, but we do have 677 pupils who need to find their even distribution of weight. They need their specific individual equilibrium of lessons, assignments, exams, drama, music, sport, tutorials, free time, tours, trips, of laughter and of tears. 

This is the Bryanston balance and, for some, sport and exercise will take up a greater percentage; for others, less so. It is our job, as tailors of an outstanding education, to realise this and to facilitate the individual’s balance at every turn, helping them stay healthy, upright and stable. To focus on one specific part of the educational balancing act at the expense or detriment of any other is a sure way for a failure in balance.

Perhaps we could refer to this failure in balance as ‘educational labyrinthitis’: this is a condition simply not on the agenda at Bryanston. A one-size-fits-all approach will not cut the mustard with regard to what we aim to achieve at Bryanston and is not the recipe for success in the classroom, recital room, concert hall, theatre or sports field. I know that all connected with sport at Bryanston will continue to strive to find our individual athletes’ and teams’ sporting balance. They will keep searching for the sporting holy grail, knowing that this time is well spent, not only in making sport and exercise fun and successful, but also in keeping each of our pupils educationally upright and steady; simply balanced.

Against the clock

It’s a term of exams; one which is more complicated than any of my teaching career, as the latest round of national exam tinkering starts to bite. The country’s Year 12 pupils (we call them A3) are engaging, depending upon their choices, in a mix of legacy and reformed A levels - and it is a cocktail that is producing headaches across the country. Our job, parents and teachers, is to keep our charges sane. And to allow them to do their best.

Exams are one of those unavoidable snapshots of life; not attractive to many of those engaged in them, apart from a few odd souls who relish the adrenalin rush of proving themselves against the clock and without access to any notes that may help them. I remember my tutor at college, the wonderful Stephanie West, asking me as I was getting a little ‘stressed’ preparing for my unseen papers in Greats (which means ‘Finals’ in almost every other part of the world): “If we found a new manuscript of a Greek author, to whom would we give it for the better translation: a nervous finalist student in an exam with no dictionary, or a focused and rested expert in a library surrounded by all the texts one could possibly need?” That helped me a lot to realise what a damn silly idea in lots of ways an unseen translation exam is. It has to be done of course, but the aim of the test is not the production of a perfect translation, but the production of the best you can do in the most unnatural of circumstances. Doing well in exams is all about recognising upon what it is that you are being tested and making your peace with that.

My husband is a big horse-racing fan. He often talks to me about the horses, the trainers and the races and I understand a (very small) percentage of what he says. This is of course the secret of a long and happy marriage. He talked to me recently about ‘breeze up sales’, in which young horses (two-year-olds) are galloped (‘breezed’) for a quarter of a mile or so, the better to inform the on-looking prospective purchasers as to their potential as racehorses. Recently, it has become modish to time this test gallop. And still more modish to pay the highest price for the fastest horse. This has resulted, of course, in young horses being specifically prepared to excel in the test gallop, with less regard for their future health and racing prospects.

I was struck by, and indeed moved by, some of the language of horsemen who see the limits of this exercise. One said: “It’s a fad. But the shrewd guys are seeing through it. They know that if you push these young horses too hard, their heads will be fried, their legs will be fried, and you can forget any idea of them becoming racehorses. Best of luck to these lads with their stopwatches … I know we’re being penalised for not doing fast breezes. But our turn will come. People will come full circle.”

We all have to do ‘breezes’ against the clock. We call them exams. But whilst we accept we have to do them, and that it is generally a good thing to do well in them, I do hope that by next year we shall indeed be seeing a full circle. We will very soon be returning to the days of a two year sixth form (i.e. no AS exams) and, by 2019, we’ll be going back to something like 1926 and the School Certificate, with GCSEs graded 1-9, rather than A* to G. With that might return also the educational memory that not everyone is supposed to get only the highest grade; not everyone is first in a particular race. Or as another racehorse trainer put it: “A lot of the real ‘road runners’ that break the clock at the sales don’t turn out to be ‘race runners’, so to speak … and some of our best horses were bought simply because we liked their make and shape and attitude.”

I have two OB daughters in their early twenties who I very much hope, having been pretty decent ‘road runners’ at Bryanston, are now much more importantly ‘race runners’. All I have ever cared about is their ability to be independent, happy, and fulfilled. I wish them lives of brave choices and paths explored. I wish them loving and loved. These ‘breeze ups’ or exams are, and always have been, just irritating snapshots on the way to these greater goals. I do very much hope that between us we can make sure all our children have the right priorities in life. Some of achieving that is in making sure we don’t buy into any nonsense.

In other words, focus long-term. Or if you prefer, it’s not the snapshot or the stopwatch that matters but how it fits into your plans for a happy, fulfilling, and contributory life.

Who owns the school?

There’s a famous story I’ve used before about Cyril Alington, Head Master at Eton College from 1917 to 1933, being asked by a small boy in his school, “Sir, Sir! What is the difference between you and God?” And of Cyril Alington’s tearing his gaze away from the lofty firmament (his natural habitat), and replying, “Well, boy, there is one but whilst you are at my school you need not let it trouble you.”

Headmasters are not gods, not even I fear gods with feet of clay. The schools with which we are involved, however closely aligned to our own values, morals, even our personal energy, are not ours. Schools, particularly I would hazard boarding schools, are organisms; precious and complex, not unlike a Benedictine monastery in some (but not all!) important regards. Indeed I sometimes read to the pupils in assembly from the Benedictine rule for a new brother (they love that) when talking about the importance of community to the individual. In fact, I’m only interested in the balance between the two, and not solely in either one nor the other.

It’s an interesting antidote to the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s “ME, ME, ME!!” mantra and, in my view, the basis of a life-long sane and healthy sense of emotional well-being.

Bryanston allows more latitude than many schools in both regards: the community is recognised and allowed to breathe – and be and develop (we spend as much time planning for the social as for the academic when building or refurbishing) – whilst the individual, in its true and glorious Bryanstonian variety, is cherished within this loving environment. And it’s the governors’ and Head’s joint role to ensure that OBs who return after 70 years away from the school recognise the ethos every bit as much as those who left five years ago.

Interestingly, this means that we must do the opposite of stand still. It means instead we must focus on our overarching strategic aim:

The overarching aim of all we do is for Bryanston to provide the highest quality of co-educational boarding education in the UK; this is expressed in our producing happy, purposeful and well-balanced 18-year-olds, rather than merely processing pupils through an exam factory. A further statement of this is to be found in the prospectus. All of this is very much in line with the principles upon which Jeffreys founded and Coade built Bryanston.

And in order to achieve that aim, careful, evolving change must be directed and managed to see to it that in 50 years’ time, those who return to reunions will still recognise this forward-thinking, outward-looking, proud-to-be-Bryanston school.

Currently, in terms of ethos and longevity, we’re working towards raising £20 million by 2020 as an endowment fund. This will allow us to continue to support our bursary programme, which we presently do by using 10% of gross fee income. The money generated by this endowment fund will allow us to alleviate the burden on current parents. It’s important work and with support from our close friends and supporters we hope, given their pledges and gifts already received, that we are well on our way there…The aim is to see that Bryanston is providing its purposeful and unique brand of all-round education to a broader range of interesting pupils in 100 years time by continuing to build on this work. This is not just my vision, nor even just that of Robin Pegna, Chair of Governors as well as longest serving governor, and of Bryanston’s board of governors; this was also Coade’s vision (1932-1959) and I very much hope that when I eventually hand the reins on to my successor it will be their vision and that of their board of governors too.

et nova et vetera! And the happiest of new years and best wishes for 2016 to you all.

Golden mean

It’s that time of year again where lots of the media is shrieking at us about detoxing. The saturnalian month of December is over; puritanical January is with us, and with it the annual call for self-flagellation. Saturnalia (feast) and puritanism (fasting) are, in my opinion, two sides of the same coin and both great for feeling satisfied, or even smug, with or about yourself. My view is that both activities demand a pretty unpleasant level of self-absorption, and as I get older I find both more and more questionable. It may be that I am turning into a follower of Cicero.

Cicero, the modern world’s godfather of Stoicism, is a fascinating man in many, many regards (not least the political life he led), but it is moral letters, his philosophy, based on Zeno and others, which interest me most at this time of year. He knew a thing or two about those ‘two imposters’ of Kipling’s famous poem, and dealt with triumph and disaster in barrowfuls in his own life. The most moving of all his letters for me are those dealing with his profound grief upon the death of his young daughter Tullia, and making sense of that grief as a stoic, a follower of the Greek philosophical school of thought which argued that you should learn to take both the ups and downs in life with comparative calm and aim always for a ‘golden mean’.

Cicero is an example to us, not just because of his very considerable professional and political triumphs (rather too loudly self-proclaimed for modern ears), but more so because of his disasters, personal and public. As a Stoic he aimed not to ricochet from the negative to the positive, and vice versa, but to keep an even keel throughout all that life threw at him. And it threw a lot. Not just the death of his Tullia but also the turning to ashes of his (utterly naïve, with our advantage of hindsight) plans to save the Roman Republic from men such as Pompey, Mark Anthony, and Octavian.

Did Cicero learn from his mistakes? Can we learn from ours? Is a golden mean achievable or is life forever a roller-coaster of success, disaster; happiness, disappointment; excess and fasting? Is the answer to live a life away from all fear of the negative? Should we, like Epicureans of old, withdraw from difficulty and keep ourselves safe and secure from the world?

No. That’s an impossible option, particularly nowadays in a world which is so very much more interconnected even than when John Donne wrote his famous line, ‘No man is an island entire of itself’. I think the answer to living a happy and successful life is that we accept that we make mistakes, that we learn from our mistakes, that we grow stronger from the difficulties hurled at us, that we share our experiences and support one another. We celebrate all the joys of life and don’t nag ourselves for doing so. And we don’t weigh our worthiness by how many pounds we have shed in January or how many perfect mince pies we have baked in December.

I recommend at this time of year a healthy disregard for those who want to make life a misery and who take superficial things too seriously. I recommend aiming instead for that very old fashioned virtue, humility, and for an acceptance that an awful lot of the concerns we are invited to care for are about as trivial as one could dream of. I recommend Cicero and Stoicism in times of trial. I recommend looking outwards and eschewing self-absorption. The minute you can see your life as part of something more important than just yourself, then this seems to me to make much more sense of the lumps and bumps in life, and of the joys too.

So my resolution for 2015 is to be less self absorbed. To learn from my mistakes. To embrace difficulty. To aim for humility. To weave my life’s thread in amongst those of others’. To keep on learning.

I wish you all a wonderful 2015.