Learning the importance of decision making and accepting responsibility through outdoor education

Head of Outdoor Education Duncan Curry explains why outdoor education plays such a crucial role at Bryanston and how it goes hand-in-hand with the challenges pupils face in everyday life…

Just recently, someone complimented me for making ‘playing outdoors’ into a career. Although this was certainly never my intention at school, 14 years in the outdoor education sector have made me realise that it has indeed been the perfect choice for me. Over the years, I’ve been lucky enough to witness the transformation of many pupils, from nervous, shy first years into powerful and confident sixth-form leavers.

I have always been sure of the benefits of outdoor education and spending time in the natural environment, which include but are not limited to: enhanced personal and social communication skills, increased physical health, enhanced mental and spiritual health, and an improved ability to assert personal control.

As a department, we believe that it’s often what happens outside the classroom that pupils remember most from their school days. That’s why we greatly value the outdoor education programme at Bryanston and work hard to ensure that pupils can transfer emotional strength gained during these activities and use their experiences to their advantage in meeting and overcoming the challenges they face in the classroom and everyday life.

Whether it’s striving for higher grades, forging supportive and productive relationships with others or engaging with the world around us, outdoor education makes us all stronger, more resilient and more likely to achieve our full potential.

In life we need role models. We can be taught the theory of action but until we see this in practice, we don’t fully understand what is required of us. Most of us are lucky enough to gather this information through our parents or siblings, but the older we get, the more challenging it is to find suitable role models.

The best role models work even harder in their absence. For my own, I created two figures sitting on each shoulder, the first my university tutor, and the second my head of department in my first job. Climbing high above the ground in the Italian Dolomites, leading pupils at 5,000 metres in the Indian Himalaya, or balancing along a ridge in the Scottish Highlands, Lee and Rupert would keep me on track. If I was about to rush a dangerous move, or take a shortcut with my rope work, they would immediately put me in place. Their words would echo back to me from a lesson learnt in the past, ‘Take your time, check that knot, tread carefully, stop, turn back or move fast’.

When I am asked what the best part of my job is, my answer is that I am able to work with the same pupils for five years whilst they are at Bryanston. This is a great deal of time to impart as much knowledge as possible and see significant developments. I now realise the important influence that a teacher can have on a young adult and I wonder how many shoulders I might now be sitting on? This is a powerful reality check and ensures that my lessons are succinct, clear and ultimately safe: perhaps the next time a pupil is tying into a rope, rather than having the luxury of a qualified instructor, they could be about to embark on a challenging adventure with a friend.

The beauty of the outdoors is there are very few rules. The freedom found when exploring, either by foot, by boat or through climbing, is huge. I remember being asked on Snowdon what time the rangers would be shutting the paths. Of course, this would never happen. Sunrise or sunset on Snowdon, when the crowds have disappeared, is certainly the best time to appreciate the mountain. It would be wrong for paths to be shut because of the apparent risk. Outdoor education, or adventuring in the outdoors, is one of the few environments left to us where we have to think for ourselves and accept the responsibility. If you walk into Coire an t’Sneachda in the Scottish winter and on to Carn Etchachan, you had better have a map and a good awareness of tough navigation. There will be no one to help you on the featureless Cairngorm Plateau as the early night draws in and you need to find your way home.

I believe outdoor education at Bryanston plays a crucial role in strengthening our pupils through their experiences. For young adults growing up in the present day, learning the importance of decision making and accepting responsibility for their own actions is a very valuable lesson. It is becoming more and more challenging to be allowed to make mistakes but only through our mistakes do we learn and develop. If a mistake can be made under a watchful eye, it can be a lesson learnt rather than one from which to run away. Once we have learnt these lessons under the guidance of a role model, we are then ready to experience them for ourselves.

Soft rules

This week we welcome Bryanston's Head of Pastoral, Dr Preetpal Bachra, as he examines the 'soft rules' of social interaction.

The Head recently blogged about the core school rules. I always consider these to be the ‘hard rules’, i.e. those which tell you where you stand. In this blog I want to examine some of what might be termed the ‘soft rules’, especially those relating to social interaction and how these are evolving and changing.

As a general rule of thumb, I try not to forget what it was like to be a teenager and perhaps I should share a few observations from my own teenage years because, as Maya Angelou observed, 'we are more alike than we are unalike.'

At the age of 14, I became attracted to Eastern philosophy, but that may have been because I thought the yin and yang symbol was ‘cool’. John Bellaimy gives a simplistic view of it as the yin being the dark swirl and the yang being the light swirl, and each side has a dot of the opposite colour illustrating the concept that everything contains the seed of its opposite. I used to think the symbol was about balance in life but it is more to do with things not being complete opposites. Rather, things are relative to each other. We can act in certain ways but there is always the seed of the opposite that can extend from it. 

My life and how I saw the world at 14 may not be so different from how pupils see the world today, but there is a difference in how they interact with it. In my teenage years, I had one key aim, one key aspiration, and that was to be Bruce Lee. He starred in one of my favourite films of all time, Enter The Dragon, and there was one particular scene that I wanted to replicate. I would practise with my nunchakus and there were plenty of accidents. In fact, if people had videoed me then my outcomes may have found their way into the litany of ‘YouTube fails’.

The important difference is that my life was private and all those stages that I went through, I explored on my own. There are records of these stages, of course, housed in family photo albums, but none of them are in the public domain. I didn’t, and still don’t, honestly think anyone else would be interested in the goings-on in my life. Banksy, in an interview for Time Out in 2010, summed it up well, “I don't know why people are so keen to put the details of their private life in public; they forget that invisibility is a superpower.”

Today so much more of young people’s lives is on public display, and this isn’t without consequences. For example, in 2015 ChildLine conducted over 11,000 counselling sessions nationally with young people regarding online issues. And in a 2013 study for Northwestern University 29% of Facebook users surveyed reported ‘losing face’ from embarrassing content posted by friends. As a school we alert pupils to the dangers of putting themselves and their friends on public display through PSRE lessons, reminders of the support available, lectures about protecting themselves and so on.

This use of digital communication can lead to embarrassment and humiliation. The distinction between embarrassment and humiliation is that the former we bring on ourselves and the latter is brought on us by others. In 1998 a scandal broke in the US when Monica Lewinsky admitted relations with Bill Clinton, the then president. She did something that embarrassed her, but the response was intense because of how people commented.

From a psychological point of view, the comments Monica Lewinsky endured can be partly understood by the process of disassociation, i.e. the person commenting is separated from the victim and understanding the implications of their comments: they cease to remember that those people have feelings. And here is our soft rule: don’t put yourself out there. If pupils (or any of us) choose to share things that others do not want to be shared then it will humiliate them, and we take a very dim view of that.

Of course there are positives to the use of social media: the messages of support to each other; ensuring people are not left out; sharing happy times with loved ones; contact with family; the sharing of ideas to make us think and broaden our horizons, and we should remember that this is why technology has a place in our lives. It can be an incredible force for good and it should be used as such when appropriate.

However, we should all be careful what we post, be careful with other people’s privacy and not put ourselves in a position where we or our feelings, or those of others, might be abused. It is these soft, unspoken rules, along with the hard rules, that go some way to ensuring we can flourish and thrive within our own communities and the wider society in which we find ourselves.

The changing of the guard

Peter Hardy

We welcome Peter Hardy, Second Master, with his guest blog on the role of Prefect at Bryanston.

The role of Prefect is a long-standing tradition in schools, particularly in independent schools, and has evolved over time. It is a tradition that Bryanston has always kept as part of the et vetera, in my opinion, for good reason.

During this term the current School Prefects step aside from their duties to focus on their exams. It is at this time, as forty A3 pupils acquire the role of Acting School Prefect for the term, that I often reflect on what the role of Prefect means for both the school and for the pupils concerned.

At Bryanston being selected as a Prefect is not about popularity, but is more about being well esteemed and respected by both the staff and pupil bodies. The selection process involves separate rounds of voting by the whole school, A3 pupils and staff and it is interesting to note that there is rarely a significant inconsistency between those nominated by A3 pupils and those nominated by staff. For me, there are a number of key qualities that a Prefect needs and these include efficiency, reliability, understanding, empathy, objectivity and knowledge. This is not about fitting a particular mould or style; it is about the individual and what they can bring to, and gain from, the role. Our Prefects have a variety of styles and strengths which combine to make an effective team, contributing to the smooth running of the school and the pastoral support of other pupils.

Most Prefect responsibilities carried out at Bryanston take place within the boarding houses, but there are also responsibilities at the school level. Some of these are relatively straightforward and include helping to organise the Dining Hall queue, helping with Prep duties and helping to ensure pupil compliance with punctuality by issuing early morning reportings (EMRs). Prefects need to learn how to enforce their will with only limited sanction to support this. This takes a certain amount of natural leadership, self-belief and presence, as well as the ability to assess a situation quickly and pick up on any nuances before reacting. During this term the current Acting School Prefects are developing the skills they will need to be successful if they are chosen as Prefects for next year.

Becoming a Prefect does mean additional responsibilities for those concerned. It also benefits pupils in that they learn key skills needed in the wider world, as well as gaining an insight into how their school is run, as they attend weekly meetings with the Head and myself, as well as getting involved in organising various events, including Charities Day and the Leavers’ Ball.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank the outgoing Prefects for their commitment over the past year and wish the Acting School Prefects all the best for the rest of this term and into next year – I am looking forward to working with you.