When it comes to school improvement – or the fine art of problem finding and solution seeking – it’s always best to try and get everyone involved in the process. It’s a way to develop co-ownership of the culture and collectively seeking solutions that have a chance of actually being effective. As Margaret Wheatley says: “There is no problem to…
Paul Nash’s fascination with aerial bombardment led him to an ecstatic vision of “the sky blossoming with floating flowers”. This, and William Blake’s poem “Ah Sunflower”, inspired his late paintings, in which an airborne sunflower glides over imagined landscapes. Nash was seriously ill with asthma (he died of heart failure in 1946) and his growing sense of mortality is reflected…
I’m not giving anything away by quoting the deep irony of the last lines of Saplings: Turns you over, don’t it, to think of the children? I was saying to my daughter only yesterday, we got a lot to be thankful for in this country. Our kids ‘aven’t suffered ‘o’-ever else ‘as. – (361) That last sentence translated from the…
Long years ago, we made a tryst with destiny and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge… At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. – Jawaharlal Nehru Indian Declaration of Independence, on eve of independence, August 15 1947. In celebration of the 70th anniversary of Indian…
“I was so rushed I had not time to go into the details,” – Cyril Ratcliffe. The political leaders of the independence movement in British India were unable to agree on a united post-colonial future. The result was a plan for a territorial division. The task was huge and fraught with difficulties. The consequences were traumatic. August 15th marks the…
After early mist the morning of Sunday August 18 1940 was bright with clear skies. It came to be known as the hardest day in the Battle of Britain. The detail from Diana Gardner’s wood engraving makes it seem like night but there is a figure on the bottom left looking up and shielding his eyes from the sun. It…
The land army fights in the fields. It is in the fields of Britain that the most critical battle of the present war may well be fought and won. – Lady Denman, the Director of the Women’s Land Army, WW2 Who Won the War? It wasn’t the WRENS who won the war Whatever the WRENS may say It was the…
I once worked in a school where the librarian arranged the non-fiction by the color of the spine. It made for some serendipitous browsing. He was a friendly fellow with a big bushy beard, a scholarly demeanor and who claimed to have a PhD in philosophy. We got along well. There came a day when two men in suits arrived…
August 1914 What in our lives is burnt In the fire of this? The heart’s dear granary? The much we shall miss? Three lives hath one life – Iron, honey, gold. The gold, the honey gone – Left is the hard and cold. Iron are our lives Molten right through our youth. A burnt space through ripe fields A fair…
Did you have times like these in your life? Times that you look back on with a sense of loss even though they weren’t exactly easy? Times that were tough but carefree enough that you recall them with nostalgia? Maybe you’re still living them. Diving down the back of the sofa to find the lost coins that will pay the…
The Manumit School was an experimental Christian socialist boarding school in Pawling, NY. and later Bristol, Pennsylvania. Manumit means freedom and release from slavery and this was a school with a clear mission. It was racially integrated, religiously tolerant and worked “toward a world order based upon justice and co-operation, in which the individual may find freedom.” It was founded in…
In Ivor Gurney’s nightmarish vision, the dead among the living bear dire warnings and mockery. Ballad of the Three Spectres As I went up by Ovillers In mud and water cold to the knee, There went three jeering, fleering spectres, That walked abreast and talked of me. The first said, ‘Here’s a right brave soldier That walks the dark unfearingly;…
Those of us who were heads of school in 2008-9 probably remember all too well the pain of school downsizing and some may still bear the scars to show for it. It was a tough time all around. And that’s what made it easier. The whole world was struggling and any particular school or enterprise or person was not alone.…
It’s becoming harder and harder for independent schools to stand out from the crowd. Unless a school is truly a place that is clearly defined by a unique mission – and has the program and lived values to bolster the claim – it risks sinking. Either a facilities arms race will outpower it or lower price alternatives will undercut the…