The Headmaster's Blog
Tuesday 11 October 2016
I wanted to write a few thoughts after the recent HMC conference in Stratford-upon-Avon. It also happened to be the 99th anniversary of the birth of the jazz pianist Thelonious Monk yesterday so I put on some of his music to get my creative juices flowing.
The theme of the conference was creativity, and listening to Monk chimed nicely with some of the themes that had run throughout it. The following piece comes therefore with apologies to those who have no time for jazz at all!
Thelonious Monk had the most individual approach to playing the piano of any of the great jazz pianists. Although his playing was steeped in the jazz tradition, his music is instantly recognisable. He came to fame in the late 1940s and early 1950s when the style was for rapid runs of notes while he favoured a more measured approach based on spiky clusters of sounds. The music he wrote seems quite simple on the page but it always poses surprising challenges; unusual corners to negotiate (one of Monk's most famous albums was indeed called Brilliant Corners). Every musician who played with him ended up adjusting their style and sounding fresh and different in order to make the music make sense.
This made me think of some of the sessions at the HMC conference where we thought about how to inspire creativity in our schools. Will Gompertz, the BBC's arts editor, reminded us that creativity does not just come from the ether but that ideas arise from a tradition. What is required though for new ideas to emerge are 'disruptors' - Gompertz cited the example of Baudelaire's impact on Cézanne - who challenged received thinking and set us off in a new direction. Monk's chord sequences act as musical disruptors, forcing improvisors to think on their feet and reject hackneyed sequences.
Some of the best teaching works the same way. An English lesson where pupils are required to re-write a poem without using the letter 'a' (with credit to Graeme May, Deputy Head Academic at Abingdon); a rugby drill where players have to execute a skill in an artificially narrow space; having to talk your way 'around' a word that you do not know or can't remember in Spanish or German, rather than being immediately given the word by the teacher. Some exciting learning can take place when pupils are 'disrupted' and have to work their way out of an unusual or difficult situation. I suppose it comes down to really making pupils think - and that is the very best teaching.
Who would have thought that the HMC conference and Thelonious Monk could possibly have so much in common...
Friday 23 September 2016
During my brief time at Abingdon to date, I've really enjoyed sampling boarding life and getting to know some of our boarders. They play a very important part in our community, providing a welcome element of internationalism and sharing their different cultural perspectives, while contributing fully to all aspects of school life.
It was a real pleasure therefore to be able to meet a good number of our current boarders' parents in Hong Kong at the start of the week. It was my first visit to Hong Kong and I was fascinated by this buzzing, dynamic city. I certainly look forward to visiting again and I hope to stay a bit longer next time. I was struck by the warmth of the welcome in Hong Kong and by the regard and affection that our parents feel for the benefits of a UK education and for Abingdon in particular. It was great to be able to share news of their sons with them and to get to know them better. They also enjoyed hearing about recent developments at Abingdon, as did the Old Abingdonians whom I met in Hong Kong. It was great to hear their stories too, including two OAs who are now collaborating as film-makers in Hong Kong, and who had produced a film that recently won a prize at the Milan Film Festival. One of them had cut his teeth in the Abingdon Film Unit (which has its annual night of screenings on 1 October in the Amey Theatre), while the other had been a stalwart of the music scene here, and it was inspirational to hear the effect that their experiences at Abingdon had had upon them.
Their story, and the many others that I heard in Hong Kong, bore very powerful testimony to the value of the boarding experience at Abingdon.
Friday 16 September 2016
Abingdon is known for its excellence in 'The Other Half' - extra-curricular activities - and the Activities Fair at the start of term gave me a great opportunity to see what it is all about. I have a long-standing belief in and commitment to the value of extra-curricular activities in that they play a key part in the personal development of pupils, while also giving them something to savour and enjoy as part of their weekly routine, so I was keen to see what was on offer.
I was blown away. The range and scope of activities here at Abingdon is truly remarkable and goes beyond what I had even expected. The value of those activities is enhanced by the commitment that the school shows towards them in terms of the time, resources and staff allocated. The opportunities for involvement in sport, art, music and Outward Bound activities are absolutely superb, and I am sure I will return to them in future blogs.
What also struck me as I toured the Activities Fair was the number of academic societies which also exist, often largely led by sixth form students, and which allow pupils to go way beyond the normal boundaries of subject specifications. Many of them produce publications which are incredibly well-designed and thoughtfully put together, featuring some highly erudite and considered reflections. A new society that has sprung up this term to take advantage of the new facilities in Greening Court is the GIS Club - GIS standing for Geographic Information Systems - which allows pupils to use sophisticated software to manipulate and overlay all sorts of geographic data. I saw some of our lower school boys using this software for the first time last week and they were already producing some fascinating work.
The commitment to going beyond the specification was emphasised by our Head of Sixth Form, Mr O'Doherty, in his assembly this morning which urged Sixth Formers to be curious, to read more widely, to take part in debate and discussion and to seize the chances offered by Abingdon's academic societies. The combination of intellectual curiosity with the unparalleled opportunities of the the Other Half - it's a potent mix.
Monday 12 September 2016
The induction of our new scholars at the start of a new year at Abingdon required me to spend some time thinking about what scholarship means at a school like this.
Without doubt, notions of scholarship are shifting and evolving all the time. I'm intrigued by the title given to Thomas Young, who died in 1829, who is described as 'the last man to know everything'. Allegedly by the age of 14, young Thomas knew Greek and Latin, and could get by in French, German, Italian, Hebrew, Arabic, Turkish, Persian, Aramaic, Syric, Samaritan and Amharic. Not a bad start, I suppose. He went on to contribute significantly to many fields, including our understanding of light, vision, mechanics, linguistics, music and even Egyptology. You have to say though that calling him 'the man who knows everything' smacks of exaggeration.
Indeed, we would certainly quibble now with the notion that any individual today could possibly 'know everything', not least when we can summon more information than we could probably ever process to our computer screens in a fraction of a second. Faced with this glut of information, discernment has become supremely important; the ability to sift information, to recognise what is reliable and trustworthy, to assess and judge sources.
Socrates was alleged to have said that 'the unconsidered life is not worth living' and I hope that all our pupils at Abingdon will live a considered life, that they will question what they hear, see and read and that they will not be afraid to consider new ways of living and thinking. I hope that our scholars - whose scholarships are founded on hard work and application - will take the lead in their approach to all aspects of life at school and in particular, of course, in the classroom, by engaging actively with their studies, thereby setting an example to others.
If in doubt, best just to follow the helpful advice offered by Dr Seuss:
'The MORE that you READ,
The MORE things you will KNOW,
The MORE you LEARN,
The MORE places you'll GO!'
Thursday 1 September 2016
It has been a busy and exciting summer as my family and I have moved to Abingdon. I hope I never have to see a cardboard box again… It is hard to believe that the long wait since my appointment as Headmaster back in June 2015 is finally over and it is with enormous anticipation that I look to the months ahead.
It was great to meet the new staff joining Abingdon School today. They have a great deal to offer the school collectively and I could sense their enthusiasm to get on with the job ahead. It was very useful for me to sit in on the sessions presented to the new starters by senior colleagues. I was excited to hear the focus on stretching and challenging pupils - new colleagues were encouraged to view each lesson as a workout for their pupils' brains. There was a focus too on ensuring that pupils are active and engaged in lessons. Teacher talk has its place but the test of a successful lesson is how much progress the pupils make, and that will in most instances follow when they have ample opportunity to put their learning into practice, rather than hearing lectures on a particular topic.
On occasion the focus on active learning can be dismissed as new-fangled faddism but it is anything but. I always find Montaigne's essays on bringing up children and education a source of good sense and perspective. Even in the sixteenth century, he wrote:
'Tutors never stop bellowing in our ears, as if pouring stuff down a funnel, and our job is just to repeat what they have been saying to us. I would want our tutor to correct that and, from the beginning, according to the type of mind he is dealing with, get it to show what it is capable of by making it try things out, choosing and judging them itself; and with the tutor sometimes leading the pupil on and, at other times, letting the pupil lead himself.' (L'éducation des enfants).
Montaigne presents us with a wonderfully succinct model of what effective teaching is all about.
Certainly though, the focus on pedagogy at Abingdon, including reflections upon the most intelligent use of technology in education, is hugely exciting, and I am very much looking forward to seeing and hearing more over the term ahead.