PRINCIPAL
INSPIRATION FROM ORIGINALITY
MR TOM BATTY SCHOOL PRINCIPAL
ILLUSTRATION OF JACK GREALISH AND PAUL GASCOIGNE
During a recent European international soccer after-match phone-in show , someone on the end of a line compared current England prospect and Aston Villa favourite Jack Grealish , to Paul Gascoigne . It was , rightly , met by stunned silence . I don ’ t know an Australian equivalent , so won ’ t try for one , but wise people don ’ t compare a hopeful ’ s soccer talent to that of Gascoigne . There have been other gifted English players , but none so impossible to predict for an opposition player , fan or referee . In the main , you were always left suspecting , because Gazza himself was never quite sure what he was about to do . Indeed , his post-match attempts to explain his genius were generally as steeped in reason as his conversations with his mate Jimmy Five Bellies .
Like the truly gifted , Gazza wasn ’ t painting by numbers .
Gazza was on my mind when , during one of the many moments of lockdown solitude , I picked up my well-thumbed copy of Ed Smith ’ s wonderfully insightful , What Sport tells us about Life . Ed Smith , as some may know , is a journalist / author and former England Test cricketer , who , perhaps for any past sins , is currently England ' s chief national cricket selector . Some may also know he ’ s a pretty smart cookie , which is not to suggest that ’ s a prerequisite for his current role . Flicking the pages , the section in which Smith reflects on inspiration caught my mood and fomented my thoughts . In it , Smith quotes T S Eliot : ‘ If the word inspiration is to have any meaning it must mean that the speaker or writer is uttering something which he does not wholly understand – or which he may even misinterpret when the inspiration has departed from him ’.
How do we , as educators , make place for inspiration in school life , when , to use the language of my piece in the September Great Scot , the two currently dominant heads of the education dragon focus all on content and assessment ? How , when so much is based on testing , can we free young minds to utter something instinctively insightful , but not fully understood , that may , subsequently , disappear from consciousness ? What place do we carve for nurturing that which is meaningful , but ephemeral and not readily deconstructed , or , in the current ‘ go to ’ language ‘ scaffolded ’? How do we instil the confidence in young people to embrace a state that , though enormously fulfilling , will leave them open and vulnerable ? How do we integrate such passing insight with academic rigour ? Importantly , how do we , as teachers , inspire such fleeting bursts of creativity , when , as Smith notes , as we get older we get smarter and seek control over our creative impulses ?
Progress can flow from rigour and discipline , as generally that is how we form an appreciation of , and a language to describe and manipulate , the fruits of such insights over the course of history . But rigour and discipline are not enough ; inspiration is not something that can be controlled or taught by recipe , much less assessed by grade or rank order .
Smith suggests the ‘ answer ’ to becoming original is by living originally . If it is so , how do we sow the seeds that can blossom into an original life ?
I suspect it starts with values that respect individual freedom and responsibility , and takes shape in a rich and varied network of opportunities , amidst which
4 Great Scot Issue 161 – December 2020