Apr 01

Why it is important to want to be different

It is a tradition at Ascham that in the run-up to Easter the youngest children make hats out of newspaper, decorate them themselves, and then show off their creations to their parents in a ‘Grand Parade’. Teachers enter into the spirit of the occasion and create their own hats, as well as encouraging their charges to stretch their imagination; the result is an explosion of colours, sparkles, wafting pieces of material, and lots of proud creators. This year’s parade was magnificent – a triumph of ingenuity, with much deserved parental applause.

Sometimes a theme emerges in a class, and such was the case in one particular class whose teacher is to be married over the upcoming vacation. Her hat sported a long veil, and white netting fabric adorned the hats of the majority of the pupils in her class, some of whom took it upon themselves to walk in solemn procession behind their teacher as self-appointed flower girls. As they entered the hall, they explained what they had chosen to do, and clearly felt the weight of responsibility on them to ensure that their teacher’s ‘big day’ was a great success. Service in action, clearly.

One girl from the same class, however, was not bedecked with a veil. Her crowning creation was black, striking, and very different. As she passed me, she piped up cheerfully, as an adjunct to the explanations of service and help given by her peers, with the words: “and I’m Darth Vader”.. Indeed, her headgear did bear a remarkable similarity to Darth Vader’s mask; and, yes, she carried this off remarkably well.

And as a host of bridesmaids paraded around the hall, with an encouragingly jolly Darth Vader in their midst, I was struck by how very, very important it is for schools to encourage their children to be different. Team work is essential in life – we will not survive as a human race without it – but of equal importance, sitting in harmony with the need to work together, is also the need to be authentically ourselves. We are all unique and distinctive individuals, and our society most definitely needs too the creativity that comes with exploring and extending this uniqueness and distinctiveness.

Schools have an enormous role to play in balancing and drawing out both teamwork and individuality in the young people they are helping to educate, and the real skill is in enabling this to happen at exactly the moment that is right for each child. Each of Darth Vader’s classmates will have the opportunity to explore her difference at some point; each will have multiple opportunities during her school years to extend her capacity to be able to be more ‘different’ and more ‘same’; and each will learn that we must all value this difference as much as we value this sameness.

When schools get to work, it is a great sight. And we all benefit.

 

Mar 25

Being Australian

One of the pleasures in coming to a new country is experiencing for the first time events that long-time citizens of that country take for granted. It is refreshing and stimulating to encounter such events, especially when they have at their heart strong and positive elements which lift the spirits.

Such was the case last week, when I experienced my first ‘Harmony Day’. As the Government website devoted to Harmony Day puts it, Harmony Day “is a day of cultural respect for everyone who calls Australia home – from the traditional owners of this land to those who have come from many countries around the world. By participating in Harmony Day activities, we can learn and understand how all Australians from diverse backgrounds equally belong to this nation and enrich it.”

Although the leading Labor party chose about that same day to implode in in-fighting, knocking most of the national Harmony Day activities off the news (politicians, it would seem, are the same all over the world), it is clear that Harmony Day was taken seriously across this vast country. Festivals were held, awards were given, and orange – the colour chosen to represent Harmony Day – was worn all over the country. Schools had a particular role to play in highlighting the importance of the day, and at Ascham I attended two great assemblies, at each of which we sang the beautiful song (written by The Seekers) – new to me, but clearly a powerful and well-known hymn to the power of diversity – ‘I am Australian’.

The Year 2 class who were leading one of the assemblies I attended had made up a third verse about themselves:

We came from New Zealand, from Greece and Italy,

From India & China, from England, Germany,

We came to find a new life in the Great Southern Land,

As immigrants together, we became Australian.

As I heard it, it struck me powerfully how special this country is, in its amalgamation of peoples from around the world – people still coming to seek a new life, from every country on earth. This blending of cultures makes for an uplifting mix, and while immigration is never without its challenges, I have marvelled at the essential connectedness of the Australians. Almost every single Australian you meet will tell tales of connections with countries far and wide, often several of them. In a world where travel is easy and yet where fundamental misunderstandings between races and national groups can lead to terrible wars and atrocities against fellow human beings, we need the robust openness that these connections and sense of belonging to multiple cultures bring.

At its best, Australia provides a model for unity and harmony, and Harmony Day reminded us all of this, very explicitly. We should all become Australian.

 

Mar 18

Parents and schools: a partnership from birth

I recently read Paul Tough’s excellent book, ‘Whatever It Takes’, the story of Geoffrey Canada, the pioneering Harlem principal who created the Harlem Children’s Zone, which has revolutionised the life chances of thousands of some of New York’s poorest and most disadvantaged children. It is an absolutely fascinating – and inspiring – read, which demonstrates how with determination and an uncompromising vision, almost anything is possible, and I thoroughly recommend it. What particularly struck me, however, was how Geoffrey Canada realised at an early stage that in order for his plan to work, he needed to engage with parents and their children at the very earliest stage of their lives. Parenting is really important, he realised, but parents could not necessarily be expected to parent all on their own.

The Harlem Children’s Zone came about in part because of the influence of research such as that done by Hart and Risley in the early 1980’s. They conducted ethnographic linguistic studies of the interactions in 42 families with newborn babies in Kansas City and were able to make a sharp distinction between the size of the vocabularies employed in families with professional parents and those with parents on welfare. By the age of 3, children in families with professional parents had a vocabulary of around 1,100 words, while children in families with parents on welfare had a vocabulary of only around 525 words. The IQs of these children corresponded very closely to these vocabularies: the average IQ of children in professional families was 117, while the children in families on welfare had an average IQ of only 79. The researchers were able to go further, and identify that the children’s vocabularies were directly related to the number and type of utterances to which they were exposed in their families.

Geoffrey Canada needed the parents of children in Harlem to know that they could increase the IQ – and life chances – of their children by talking to them more often, and in different ways, and so he set up Baby College, sending out staff to recruit parents (or parents-to-be), to get them to hear what they needed to do. He recognised that parents cannot be expected to know everything; they need other people – society, if you will – to help share with them the experience and knowledge that we are gaining all the time about how to help our children.

It is very easy in today’s world to victimise parents and blame them for all their children’s ills. But parenting is a hard enough skill – if not a way of life – without the added pressure of constant blame. Parents do not need more pressure. What they do need is help, support, guidance, and a sense that we are all in this together. We have a collective responsibility to bring up our children, and we all need to work to make this happen.

Geoffrey Canada understood this, and has transformed the lives of poor children in Harlem as a result. It is an inspiring story, and we can all learn from it. Together – schools and parents – we are stronger – and our children cannot fail but to benefit from this.

 

Mar 11

Investing in women is the smart thing to do

With the celebrations and messages of International Women’s Day last week still reverberating, I thought I would devote this blog to reminding us why it is so important that we devote time, energy and resources to developing opportunities for women throughout the world. Justine Greening, the UK Government Secretary of State for International Development recently gave a speech in which she covered, eloquently, all bases, and I quote from it below. The whole speech can be read here; I leave her words below to speak for themselves.

And I wish you an ongoing Happy International Women’s Day. Here’s to a brighter, fairer future for all women throughout the world.

Investing in girls and women is the smart thing to do.

By unleashing their potential, we see incredible returns for girls and women themselves, for their families and communities, and for their economies and countries.

Some people have called it the Girl Effect:

In education, we know that getting girls through primary and secondary school works.

An extra year of primary schooling for girls increases their wages by up to 20% and for secondary school it’s even higher.

More time in education means that girls face a lower risk of sexual violence, they marry later, have fewer children, and have better health outcomes for the children they do have.

It’s better for them and their families and communities.

We know that when a woman generates her own income she re-invests 90% of it in her family and community.

And it’s better for their economies and countries.

In India, the states with more women in work have seen faster economic growth and the largest reductions in poverty.

In Pakistan, women entering the national parliament on a gender quota were able to work successfully across party lines on legislation relating to honour killing and acid crime control.

Countries with higher civic engagement and stronger attitudes towards equality and fairness towards women have significantly higher levels of per capita income in the long run.

But of course investing in girls and women isn’t only the smart thing to do, but also the right thing to do.

This is a matter of universal, basic human rights. It is about girls’ and women’s right to have control over their own bodies, to have a voice in their community and country; to live a life free of the fear of violence; to choose who to marry and when; it’s about their right to be in education, which gives them a chance of productive work, and a chance to choose how they spend that money they earn.

Locking out women isn’t just bad for an economy, it’s bad for a society. It seems common sense, but it’s still happening.

From the very start girls lose out.

They lose out at school, with less than one in five girls in sub-Saharan Africa making it to secondary school.

They lose out when they are married, with one third of girls in the developing world marrying before the age of 18, some as young as seven years old.

And when they have their first child, in spite of dramatic progress, medical complications from pregnancy and childbirth are still the leading cause of death amongst 15 to 19 year old girls worldwide. 

Women perform two thirds of the world’s work, produce half of the food, but earn only 10% of the income and own only 1% of the property.

More broadly, all too often a women’s place in their community and society is downgraded:

In 11 countries, the testimony of a woman carries less evidentiary weight in a court than that of a man.

And although women make up more than half the population, they represent only 20% of political leaders in the world […]

Perhaps most unacceptably, how women are physically treated is often underpinned by violence.

Around the world one in three girls and women will be beaten or raped in their lifetime. Perhaps this statistic is so shocking that it simply overwhelms us.

But we urgently need irreversible gains in the rights for girls and women and an end to violence against girls and women.

[…] these issues represent the greatest unmet challenges of our time, not some sideline issue. And we cannot turn a blind eye. Nearly one hundred years after women in Britain got the vote, 180 years after the abolition of slavery, gaining the most basic human rights for women around our world right now, remains perhaps the most profound human challenge the world has.

Mar 04

Stop telling girls untruths about Maths

Many international brows are beaten on a regular basis about why girls do not seem to choose to study Mathematics with the same enthusiasm or to the same level as boys, and the most recent manifestation of this was on the front page of the Sydney Morning Herald. A recent Australian study has shown that the number of girls eligible for an ATAR (the ranking, derived from the Higher School Certificate, which permits entry to Australian universities) who have not studied Maths as part of their final two year course at school has risen from 7.5% in 2001 to 21.5% in 2011. In other words, over a fifth of girls in Australia are not studying Maths to university entrance level. Similar stories abound across the globe.

There is no doubt that the study of Maths is important. Maths teaches us about relationships between space and time. It reveals patterns and helps us to understand designs and configurations. It helps us to appreciate the world around us. It is a beautiful subject.

Moreover, Maths opens the door to careers which are important and growing now, and will be even more significant in the future; as we rely ever more heavily on technology, and as we seek solutions to ever more complex problems around population growth, disease, food security and climate change, Maths and Science-related jobs are going to be where the action is. Although we will always need great liberal thinkers, historians and linguists, among many, many other disciplines, for a well-balanced and well-oiled society, there is no doubt that Maths will underpin many of our practical needs for the next few decades. A recent report by the Royal Academy of Engineering highlighted the steep increase in need for engineers over the next decade; the fact that on current reckonings, only a fraction of this percentage will be trained is therefore really concerning, and the additional fact that statistics are showing that girls – half of the population – seem reluctant to take to Maths is even more deeply concerning as a result.

What can we do about this? How do we ensure that girls choose to take Maths? Of course, in many countries in the world girls are still prevented – by poverty, cultural expectations or religious fundamentalism – from having an education at all, so a discussion about how to encourage girls to take up Maths may in this context seem a luxury, but the question in a wider world context is still undeniably an important one.

The answer is actually very, very simple: we have to stop telling girls that beauty is more important than brawn or brains.

We don’t as a culture think that we do this, of course. But tune in to any group of adoring adults around a little baby girl, and you will hear exclamations of praise for her beauty that you will not hear in a group clustering around a little baby boy. Words like ‘pretty’, ‘sweet’ and ‘cute’ associate themselves with girls ahead of boys and no matter how linguistically aware you are, or how committed to gender equality, you will – if you are honest – recognise this association. This focus on girls’ appearance, started young, becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy and translates into gender specific toys through childhood, rackloads of pink and frilly clothes in department stores, and teenage magazines where girls are taught how to preen and prettify themselves, at the expense of their self-esteem and their focus on doing and thinking rather than just appearing.

There are perfectly understandable reasons for this – until quite recently in our history, being pretty most definitely mattered to girls and to their life chances. Praising beauty was the right thing to do for girl babies; teaching them how to be successful wives or courtesans was important. Generations – hundreds and thousands of generations – of girls have grown up with these messages. Now, of course, we believe that girls should have the same access as boys to happiness and status; we believe fervently in equal opportunities, and in moving on from the past to a better, more harmonious future. Where we fall down is that the old messages are so embedded that they have become assumptions, unchallenged and therefore harder to shift without critical awareness and thought. Hidden prejudice is always so much harder to dismantle.

It is of course possible to change cultural perceptions of girls and women – and indeed, when you enter forward-thinking girls’ schools, who are explicit in countering this cultural perception of girls, you will find the hard statistics that show how many more girls take Maths to a higher level than the national or international average would indicate. Equality is the key; as demonstrated in a 2011 University of Wisconsin study of 86 countries, quoted in the UK’s Daily Telegraph last year, girls do better in Maths when raised in countries where females have better equality. (In fact, gender equality also boosts boys’ performance in Maths – a win-win situation for all.)

Real equality – not just the legislative frameworks, but the changing of hearts and minds – takes work. The first step is a real and continued effort to expose hidden assumptions and gently but firmly move our power-brokers, the media and the average person in the street through to a position where we can all remove these pressures on girls so that they can release their inner mathematician. If we want these engineers of the future, it is up to us all to make it happen.

 

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.