Feb 25

The Road of Lost Innocence: The True Story of a Cambodian Heroine

As I said to girls in Assembly last week, even when we are very busy, we must find time to read. Reading stretches the mind and fills the soul, and we are not complete human beings without it.

This is true of books even when – perhaps especially when – they deal with subjects that we find painful to contemplate. I have just finished reading a book about Cambodia – “The Road of Lost Innocence”, by Somaly Mam – and it was a very, very painful book to read. Originally published in 2005 in France (and translated into English for publication in 2009), it is the autobiography of a Cambodian woman who was sold into sexual slavery by her grandfather when she was twelve. The brutality that she faced in the brothels where she was housed is almost beyond imagination; her tale is dreadfully disturbing, and I would hesitate to recommend this book to young people (certainly without their parents having read it first), even though they need, at some point in their lives, sooner rather than later, to understand that such terrible violence against girls and young women takes place.

This book was recommended to me by a former teacher at school who remains so passionate about Ascham’s involvement in Cambodia – building and supporting two schools in the remote province of Mondulkiri – that she continues to visit and fundraise. Each year, a group of girls go out to visit these schools, bringing supplies, and undertaking some teaching, and as each year passes, the relationship between Ascham and the Ascham Cambodian schools grows stronger. As I read ‘The Road of Lost Innocence’, and as I understood more of the terrible history of Cambodia, I was grateful for this relationship. I was reminded incredibly powerfully of why it is so important that we do not restrict our thoughts and our aspirations to the (largely comfortable) day-to-day activities we experience. It is our duty and responsibility as human beings to reach out beyond our everyday life towards the needs and requirements of fellow human beings who are less equipped or able than us to manage their own needs.

And I was reminded too that out of adversity can come great strength. Somaly Mam’s story began in poverty and horror, but after she escaped her incarceration in her early twenties, and rebuilt her life, she became an internationally recognised fighter against the sex trade in Cambodia, helping and rescuing girls as young as five or six. She has made a phenomenal difference in her life since.

International Women’s Day is not far off now; as we approach it, we should offer our applause and praise for all women who survive against the odds, and then seek to make a positive impact on the world. We salute you.

 

Feb 18

Schools: places of amazing professional learning

Schools are at their essence about students – the student sits (or should sit) at the heart of all endeavour in the school; schools are there in order to educate students and to assist in guiding their personal development and growth. Schools were invented to ensure that young people were well-prepared to play a role in society – this is why they are so important, and why we should value them. They enable children to become adults. This is the central and immovable reason for their existence.

We should not, however, overlook the teachers who prompt, facilitate, guide and oversee this incredibly important process. A campaign to recruit teachers in the UK in the late 1990s had as its slogan “No-one forgets a good teacher”, and this struck a chord because it is very true. Teachers matter to young people precisely because they are the people who will often have unlocked the understanding that they were seeking, or because they will have eased their fears, or because they will have shown them how to develop and practise the tools to be able to organise and extend their own learning. What teachers give is a gift – not hand-delivered on a platter, but teased out of individual students so that it becomes theirs: teachers give students the gift of their own education.

Without teachers, no student would learn to the same degree; or at the least, it would be much, much harder. The best teachers will not tell students what to think, but will guide them, wisely, into learning how to think. The best teachers will respond to the very individual needs – mental, physical and emotional – of students, and will go out of their way to observe, understand and evaluate the impact that they as teachers are having, so as to redirect their efforts to make them most effective. Teachers empower students.

It is only right, therefore, that we should invest in the professional and personal growth of these important people. With the exception of witnessing the growth and learning of young people, there is little that is more exciting than seeing the growth and development of teachers, because this will impact directly and positively on their ability to be able to educate. And it is particularly thrilling to see this growth and development of teachers stimulated by their colleagues – by professional conversations, by insights gained into the work that goes on in different disciplines, presented to teachers by teachers. For we are all in schools not as individuals, but as a team, with the child at the heart, and when we work together to connect what we do, both latitudinally in the present, and longitudinally from pre-school to university entry and beyond, the quality of education of that child is unsurpassable. We should absolutely be enabling our teachers to learn and grow, just as we enable our students to learn and grow.

And hooray for our amazing teachers!

 

Feb 11

Why it really matters that our athletes are free from drugs

Hot on the heels of Lance Armstrong’s confessions to doping, aired across the world, have come further revelations of drug taking at high levels of sport. Last week, the Australian Crime Commission released a report that effectively accused top level sportspeople (as yet unidentified) of taking drugs – and, to make the situation even worse (if indeed it could be any worse), of links to organised crime which may potentially have led to match-fixing too.

To say that Australia has been severely disturbed by the scandal would be an understatement. A father said to me recently that Australians are laid back about everything except sport, and there is a huge passion attached to sport in this country which is enviable. When this is understood alongside the strong Australian sense of fairness and fair play, it is not surprising that the ACC report has caused such a massive stir.

It matters an enormous amount that athletes do not attempt to enhance their performance with artificial substances – that, in other words, they do not attempt to cheat. These sporting stars (and rising stars) are role models to whom we point our young people to counter the pernicious influences that arise in a world which has – regrettably – embraced Andy Warhol’s “15 minutes of fame for everyone”. We want our young people to do sport because it is not only essential for their physical wellbeing, but it is also a great discipline, both physically and psychologically. We want our young people to be inspired by those who have worked hard to achieve the highest levels of fitness and sporting achievement because it proves that if they too work hard, they can achieve their goals. Our sports stars are role models – we look up to them, and they are hugely influential on young people.

If these sports stars turn out not to be as they seemed, then they are communicating that it is all right to cheat and manipulate … and this is wrong. It is not right to cheat; integrity and honesty are key values in the world, and we abandon them at our peril. I have written before about the intense disappointment that comes when it is discovered that great sporting stars turn out to have been false idols because of their doping. By the sounds of it, we will have a number of severe disappointments ahead of us, and we are right to feel let down.

We are going to have to find a way through this disappointment, to re-establish our trust and our faith in our sporting heroes, and we can start by delighting in the performances at school level of some amazing athletes (I write on the back of witnessing some excellent tennis and fantastic rowing this past weekend). In turn, the elite athletes of today must never forget – ever – their responsibility as role models for all the young people aspiring to find their way on to the podiums of the future.

 

Feb 04

Why every school should have a school song

In our first senior school Assembly of term last week, the very first thing we did was to sing the school song. This song refers to the history of Ascham (which was named after the tutor to the great Queen Elizabeth I, Roger Ascham), and then continues with these words:

With heart and soul we tread the way

Which leads to freedom and to truth

To do our best in work and play

And by our actions show the proof

Which dwells in our sincerity

O Ascham this we owe to thee

Vi et animo – With Heart and Soul – is the school motto, and it struck me, as the theatre resounded with the sound of strong female voices, how important it is to reflect regularly and openly on what schools stand for. Exploring the words of the school song reminds us why we are in school: With heart and soul – that is to say, in everything we do, with our entire being – we tread the way – we learn, we become educated, we move forward, we grow – the way Which leads to freedom and to truth – we have a goal, a vision that transcends our daily lives – To do our best in work and play – we give our all, we do and are the best we can be – And by our actions show the proof – we commit to this, we will do this – the proof Which dwells in our sincerity – our intentions are sound, they are based on strong values, and we mean them.

Schools – great schools, that is – are very strong and vibrant places, with a clear purpose. And what is learned at school is far from restricted to academic subjects or school activities. At school, students are in fact learning about themselves, and about others. They are learning about their capabilities, they are learning what it is they have to offer to the world, and they are learning to look up and beyond who they are currently are, to who they can and should become.

Moreover, they are learning to live with other people, to relate to other people, to appreciate and respect other people, because their life will be richer in the future because of others, and so will the lives of others because of them.

Most importantly of all, our students in schools are learning all of this because they have a huge responsibility in life – they are learning to make the most of who they are, and to become the best person they can become, so that they can contribute to making the world a better place. It is our collective responsibility as a society and as a human race, and this is why, ultimately schools exist.

Our school song is very clear – we are committing to treading the way to freedom and truth, to doing our best and to making a difference in the world. It is so easy, from day to day, to be caught up with the practicalities and logistics of life, and to tumble from one thing to the next without taking time to reflect on our purpose, let alone to articulate it clearly and beautifully in word and music. Schools are places where groups of young people gather together with a purpose and an intent that speaks of the hope they are offering for the future and for our world.

Let us sing this from the rooftops.

Jan 28

Raising Girls: why schools and parents make a perfect combination

Steve Biddulph’s latest book, Raising Girls, caused a bit of a stir when it was published earlier this month, and with reason: it is a very sensible addition to the literature on how girls grow up, and parents of girls should find it of genuine interest. Pressures on girls in our society are enormous – overwhelming, even, at times – and sometimes as parents we forget what it was like to feel a shifting mix of powerful emotions, deep insecurities, unbearable frustrations and great uncertainties, all within a short space of time. Moreover, some pressures exist today that did not exist in the same way for parents – pressures to appear and act in certain ways – and for this reason too, parents will find Mr Biddulph’s book helpful, and even, in places, possibly a revelation.

I was, however, struck by the – perhaps inadvertent – additional pressure that the book places on parents by concentrating on the role that they have to play in making sure that their daughters learn to navigate the minefield of teenagehood. Parenting is in any case one of the hardest jobs in the world; when parents feel that they alone are responsible for bringing up their daughters, it can seem even harder. Of course, parenting is essential for the happy upbringing of children, but we often forget the wise old notion that it takes a village truly to raise a child. In our society, there is an enormous pressure on parents to be ‘perfect’, to create ‘perfect’ children and to lead ‘perfect’ lives. If life in reality turns out to be less than this perception of perfection, then parents can feel failures, and books which attempt to show them how they should in fact be doing things, can simply add to this sense that they are not good enough parents.

In truth, parents who do their best are being perfectly good parents. What they need is the support of extended families and of wider communities to help provide the grounding that it is nigh impossible for individuals to provide for children as they become teenagers and young adults. For their part, these young adults also need to hear other voices and encounter other interpretations of our diverse world if they are to learn to make sense of it, and to grow to understand others. When other adults support parents, it spreads the load of expectation in bringing up a child, and it brings to that child fresh and valuable perspectives, not least on who she is, and who she can be. When schools – and the numerous potential mentors they contain – are brought into the equation, this spectrum of understanding, support and available guidance is widened further.

Schools exist to educate young people, but it is a mistake to think that this education is separate from, or at odds with, what happens beyond the school gates. Schools are about helping everyone associated with a child – her parents, her relatives, her friends, her teachers, and above all herself – to understand who she is: a multi-faceted, unique combination of talents and interests. The collective task of all those who surround a child, from infancy to adulthood, is to do something about this: to strengthen her strengths, to help her be resilient in approaching those areas in which she is less strong, and to grow her heart, her mind, and her soul.

Steve Biddulph may not spend much time in his book on this aspect of raising girls, but schools – and especially girls’ schools – are expert at this. Together we are preparing the girls of today to be the great women of tomorrow.

 

Jan 22

Learning from the great women of this world: the humility of a local hero

At the weekend I attended the celebration dinner of the annual Student Leadership Conference run by the Alliance of Girls’ Schools (Australasia) – a fabulous 4 day conference in which Head Girls and their Deputies from girls’ schools in Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Singapore, the Phillippines and further afield, including the US, are led through a journey of self-discovery and affirmation of their ability to lead themselves and their peers. The dinner – the first time I had attended, obviously – was held this year at the Women’s College at the University of Sydney, and the guest speaker was an amazingly modest woman who held the hall – all 160 girls plus numerous school principals and guests – in thrall.

Her name was Lynne Sawyers, and you can hear her story here, on YouTube, and read an interview with her here. She is (very) fast approaching her 70th birthday, but is still active in the role for which she was awarded the honour of Australia’s Local Hero 2012 – the role of foster parent. She and her husband have fostered more than 200 children over the past few decades, and her utter commitment to giving a better life to those in need shone through the words in her speech. She recognised, when her own youngest child was still a baby, that there were many children whose childhood was far less happy than was hers as a child, and she resolved to do something about it. Sometimes children stayed with her for a few days, sometimes for several years. She talked about them with pride but also with a modesty about her role that underplayed her crucial influence on the life of these young people.

Not all children have the benefit of a stable family background; even those who do can still suffer from anxieties that take them off track in life. Young people need significant adults in their lives as well as their parents and their friends, to help them test out who they are and work out in what direction they should be headed – not just to please themselves, but to ensure that they make a really valuable contribution to the lives of others. These significant adults – whether they are sports coaches, teachers, close family friends, teachers or indeed foster parents – can help provide the glue in the lives of young people, giving them the courage and means to reach out and fulfil their own, immense potential.

Lynne Sawyers embodied that essence of significant adult, and the girls who heard her speak understood this. At the end of the questions after her speech, one girl went up to the podium and said: “I don’t have a question; I just want to give you a hug.” She did, the hall of the Women’s College erupted, and we all shared in the recognition of the power of humility and service.

We can learn so much from the great women of this world.

 

 

Jan 15

Dalton style

I have just been re-reading Helen Parkhurst’s excellent book ‘Education on the Dalton Plan’, and I thoroughly recommend it to discerning educators and those interested in how children learn in schools. Written and published in 1922, it contains an exposition, analysis and case studies of the progressive educational approach – the Dalton Plan – which Helen Parkhurst developed in the early decades of the 20th century. Her theory – which she demonstrated successfully in practice – was that children need space and time in which to learn; learning cannot be pre-determined in convenient chunks, and to try to mould a child’s learning to a fixed timetable is to do him or her a great disservice.

Helen Parkhurst came up with a practical plan to enable children to learn in ways that suited them rather than suited the dictates of a timetable: she ensured that the students in the schools in which she worked had access to clear, detailed assignments – a month’s work in each subject – in which were laid out the problems they had to solve. Teachers then were available to the children, and were able to work with the children to draw out their understanding in a much more individual and personal way. Helen Parkhurst called these ‘Laboratories’ – the classroom was transformed into a place of experimentation, and the student was able to discover the answers. A strong framework of progress checking and corrections was the final piece of her approach, and this ensured that all students made excellent progress – but with regard for their own individual learning styles and capabilities.

Ascham School, of course, has used a modified form of the Dalton Plan ever since one of its great Headmistresses, Miss Bailey, brought the plan to Australia in the 1920s, and it is hugely successful. Reading Helen Parkhurst today, one cannot fail but to be impressed by her no-nonsense, eminently sensible and far-sighted approach to educating in schools. In fact, one has the distinct impression that had our politicians and educational policy-makers spent more time over the past century reading her book, and less trying to fit more and more assessment into an already crowded curriculum, state-sponsored education in general might have had far more successful outcomes. “The true business of school”, she writes, “is not to chain the pupil to preconceived ideas, but to set him free to discover his own ideas and to help him to bring all his powers to bear upon the problem of learning.” (p.105). When writing about the problems of her age, she could almost be writing about the very same issues we have as educators in schools today when we are faced with the demands of exam boards and external assessment: “Today we think too much of curricula and too little about boys and girls … Subject difficulties concern students, not teachers. The curriculum is but our technique, a means to an end.” (p.23).

Christmas has now passed, but when our policy makers come round to thinking about what they want for Christmas in 2013, they could do far worse than to request a reprint of Helen Parkhurst’s tome. In the meantime, the Dalton Plan is alive and well in many great schools around the world. Ascham girls are, thankfully, not the only ones to have – so I have heard – ‘Dalton style’.

 

Jan 09

Navigating the social media minefield

Schools tend to be cautious about social media, and with real reason. In school, we see it in daily use amongst young people: schools, remember, see many hundreds – thousands, even – of young people in close proximity to one another, and as educators in schools, we gain an insight into their lives that is quite unique. It is a different perspective from that of parents, who know and love the special characteristics of their children, and who see them day in and day out in an environment which is very individual to their family; great schools should indeed also value, support and extend these individual characteristics, but they add too the essential dimension of the collective – young people together, learning to live together and work together, in preparation for their life in society and the contribution that they will learn to make to the world. While they progress along this path, these young people experiment, investigate and try out what the world has to offer, and social media is undeniably a part of this. In schools, we see this happening on a large scale, and can as a result draw various conclusions. Here are a few …

Social media as a concept is extremely positive. The history of the world is full of human conflict that can be put down to lack of communication and fundamental misunderstandings, and for most of this history, no way has existed to overcome the barriers of our natural world – time, distance, geography. Now, with the internet – and in particular a means of using the internet which enables immediacy of communication – we have the potential as the human race to overcome these misunderstandings and to grow in awareness of how other people live and work, to the ultimate benefit of us all. When fires ravage the Tasman peninsula, not only can people on the ground communicate and free themselves from danger, but people over the world can be alert to their predicament and offer support, both practical and emotional. When an Indian woman is gangraped and subsequently dies from her horrific injuries, the whole world can communicate, strongly and unequivocally, its horror, and can help to change both the law and the culture of her home culture. Social media played a tremendous role in the Arab Spring; it plays a smaller but nonetheless significant role on a daily basis for individuals who use it to connect with friends, grow relationships, and keep up to date, sensibly, with what is going on in the world.

Social media in reality has many dangers and pitfalls. It can be a huge timewaster. It can dominate lives and become an obsession if not held in check and in its proper place – the virtual world can never, remember, replace the real world. It can skew an understanding of the world rather than enriching it; computers, after all, are only as good as the data-input allows. Make poor choices of who to follow on Twitter, and you will have a very odd view of the world. Moreover, the very immediacy which brings so many benefits can also drown the user in banality; when people are indiscriminating in what they communicate online, and when other people are indiscriminating about what they read and soak up, the result can be a sea of inanity. At worst, it can be used to abuse, bully and torment. In all of these cases, however, it is the human perpetrator who is at fault. The immediacy of social media may accentuate the issue; it is the human behaviour that underpins the action of writing and sending that needs to be addressed

With this in mind, parents and schools need to lead – very firmly – by example. This is true in everything, of course, but is particularly important in situations where lack of adult guidance can lead to personal danger. We would not dream of allowing our young children loose on public highways without us holding their hand and educating them about road safety, and we recognise that this is a process that may take several years. Social media can be seen as the internet equivalent of the public highway; if you did not know the rules of the public road, you would learn them before you sought to educate your children, and you would practise before you allowed your children to proceed. This said, you would also recognise that children needed to be able to move around in their lives, and need to learn to navigate roads. So too it is with social media. If as educators and parents we can discover and learn about social media from the inside, if we can test its boundaries and work out what works and what doesn’t, then we are far better placed to be able to help guide our young people.

Life without the internet and the connectivity it brings is almost inconceivable today, and we can afford to embrace this as a positive if we are alert to the negatives and seek actively to prepare our young people to avoid the dangers and pitfalls. Social media has a tremendous amount to offer our world if we can bring our human wisdom to bear upon it and construct strong and safe boundaries around it. Onwards with the task of education …

 

Jan 02

Why write a blog?

A new year always brings new energy and new forward vision, and this is especially the case when the new year coincides with change – a new post, perhaps, a new city, or a new country … or even a new hemisphere. It is also a time to reflect on current practice and make sure that it continues to have relevance and force in the new order. Reflection is particularly important in a world which does not always seem to value the pause for thought; for those of us engaged in education, be we pupils, parents or educators, we have a distinct duty to remind people of this.

This blog, therefore, reflects on why writing a blog is, on balance, a good thing. I have been writing a blog for 18 months, testing out the medium, using it to comment on what is happening in the world, and I have reached the following conclusions:

People should write more. Writing is an under-valued art, and yet it is one of the most powerful ways we have as a human race to share not just information, but ideas, thoughts, perceptions and feelings. Writing can persuade, inform, challenge and reveal new perspectives. Writing enables the writer to think before communicating, and allows the reader to reflect while receiving and interpreting the message. Writing counters the instant, soundbite culture of our time, where words flow from mouths, to be lost in the ether. Writing – and reading what others have written – is important to help us all stop living predominantly in the superficial, and to reflect deeply and more profoundly on issues that are really of importance to us.

Writing a blog is a discipline. Writing itself is a discipline – not just the crafting of phrases and sentences into a form which has meaning to the reader, but the regular choosing of a topic, crystallising an opinion, and communicating this via the written word. Writing needs preparation, commitment and dedication. Good writing cannot just be dashed off and left; even the most inspired authors need to take time to consider, draft and re-draft. Speak to any successful author and she or he will tell you about their disciplined writing routine – a discipline that enables them to grow and develop their skill. A blog takes only a fraction of this time, of course, but the discipline is the same. Young people especially need to learn from adults the value of discipline, because the messages they receive from society around them do not always support this understanding.

We need to write more about things that really matter. Cyberspace is awash with trivia – and a cursory glance at the magazines and publications on the shelves of bookstores will reveal much more of the same. There is nothing wrong with trivia per se, if it exists as a small percentage of the material to which we are exposed, but when it is the dominating partner, it is suffocating of thought and the enemy of reflection. Mathematics teaches us that the way to adjust proportions is to add or subtract from each of the areas; an understanding of human psychology teaches us that it is more practical to change our behaviour than the behaviour of others. It follows, therefore, that if we are to tackle what sometimes appears to be a tsunami of inanity, then we need to take to the medium ourselves and write about what really matters – values, education and our global responsibilities to the human race. For the Head of a girls’ school, it makes perfect sense to write about issues of gender equality, about the challenges still facing girls and women around the world, and about how parents and schools can work in partnership to help our daughters grow into the adults they are meant to be.

Schools teach young people to write, and they encourage them to communicate via the written word. If our children do not learn how to write, their choices in life are limited. If they do not learn how to write well, their choices will be more limited than if they do. And in order to be motivated to learn to write well, they need to see the relevance and importance of writing around them, and they need to engage with writing not merely as passive readers, but as active, enthusiastic, purposeful participants.

I encourage you all to write, as an example to the next generation …

 

Dec 26

Endeavour and the spirit of discovery

A pleasantly symbolic moment on our flight to the southern hemisphere occurred when the captain of Qantas Flight 002 announced himself as Captain Cook. He was probably no relation at all of the great explorer, Captain James Cook, FRS, RN (1728-1779), but the shared name and the nature of his task made an immediate historical connection. Captain (James) Cook’s ship on his first voyage to the Pacific was HMS Endeavour, a replica of which now stands alongside the Australian National Maritime Museum in Sydney harbour – an impressive sight.

The story of Captain Cook is a fascinating one. You do not have to travel far in the Antipodes before finding landmarks named by the great sailor – Mount Cook in New Zealand, for instance, or the Cook Islands or Cooktown in Australia. Magnetic Island off the Queensland coast was so called because as Captain Cook passed by, his ship’s compass reputedly wobbled and failed to settle. The list is endless, as any glance at a guide book will tell you.

In all, Captain Cook made three voyages from Britain to the Pacific Ocean, and none was a voyage to be embarked on lightly. He was charting the waters, not sailing by existing maps – unlike his namesake on QF002, there was no radar, no satellite tracking, and no jet engines. Those were the days when there was still much that was entirely unknown in the world, so much still to discover, and he was a pioneer.

We forget, in this age of worldwide travel, just how arduous life for the early explorers must have been. And yet, although the age of the ship-borne adventurer may largely be past, their spirit of adventure lives on. There remain unexplored parts of our planet, from the jungle to the deep oceans, and we have barely touched on the exploration of space. People are engaged every day in pushing forward the bounds of human knowledge, and there is an undeniable drive within us all to want to find out more, to understand more and to learn about ourselves and the universe in which we live. We would be wise not to forget the trials of explorers such as Captain Cook – in them we see mirrored our hope for the discovery of the future.