No . 136 The Trusty Servant
So which traditions do you look at and think , I really like that ?
I think the new format for Founder ’ s Obit is very meaningful , and looking at all these very young boys wideeyed in College Hall afterwards , is a wonderful marker of their matriculation into Winchester , and I think Tim ’ s innovation here works wonderfully , because it continues the marking of William of Wykeham ’ s death , but it gives it a personal resonance for each boy . And talking to OWs who ’ ve had that , they really remember it , which I ’ m not sure you would ever have said of Founder ’ s Obit in the format of ten or twenty years ago .
Now a more general question . What do you think the future of full boarding is ?
I see a real opportunity . All of the social trends are towards atomisation , so families are smaller , and their digital lives are so much more dominant , and once you ’ re online , as we know , it ’ s very easy to withdraw from anybody who challenges you , who acts differently , or thinks differently from you , and so the echo chamber , the polarisation are exaggerated . And all of these trends we know are exceptionally poor for the mental health of young people , and they ’ re very bad for society . They make young people quite brittle , and boarding has a fully-fledged proven solution to this , which is we put you together with people whom you didn ’ t choose , and you have to get along with them . And the fact that we still have galleries and not individual rooms , as I keep saying to parents , is not an accident , it ’ s a design feature .
We are all about learning the art of friendship , and that includes relating to people , and enjoying the company of people , who think differently from you . And I think as a society we ’ ve lost that : the institutions which used to bring people together from radically different backgrounds were churches and temples , and they ’ re not a part of the active life of the majority of the population now . Nothing has replaced that .
I think we have a really powerful narrative to explain to parents why boarding is one of the best possible things you can do for the present and future happiness and resilience and success of their children . In the age of AI and technology and so on , technical skills will be a discriminator at the very highest level , but the one thing that people have , that machines don ’ t , is people skills . It ’ s a brilliant solution to how to be a better human being .
So within that , the commitment to full boarding , so you don ’ t say , I don ’ t fancy it tonight , I think I ’ ll go home ?
That ’ s it . The pressure for children to come home can be as much , or even more , about the parents and their needs , so we must be much more proactive about explaining this to parents . We know that the human species is wired , during this period of adolescence , to increase the distance from the family unit . Any society will have its cultural traditions to enable and facilitate that . And because in the individualistic West we have started to pull back on that , I think there ’ s a close correlation between that fact , and the failure to thrive of young people , because they haven ’ t spent enough unmediated time with their own age group .
And finally , Christopher Normand wanted to know , were you to have any free time , how would you spend it ?
I love active holidays ; I love cycling and camping and exploring . I love making music but I do too little of it – last time I was regularly singing in a choir was here in Michlā – and I play the piano very badly in my own time . I love reading , of course . My favourite reading is that golden age of the nineteenth -century novel – Trollope , Eliot , Dickens , Austen – and I am a Patrick O ’ Brian tragic .
Which brings us back round to your first answer , and the idea that all enthusiasms are valuable .
[ A pause for HM to wish a Jun : Man happy birthday , and give him a chocolate wallaby .]
And that ’ s what I associate with this school : to create a cohort where they have these individual enthusiasms , and where that is so strongly supported by the dons , and taken to any level that they wish , is precious . That is quite a remarkable thing . And then not only are they all enriched , because as you said , anything can be an enthusiasm , anything can be valuable , but they also get this sense of agency , that things are possible .
When I first saw the word ‘ entrepreneurship ’ set out as part of our mission , it didn ’ t sit easily with me as the caricature of an entrepreneur is brash and materialistic . But the way our pupils pursue their enthusiasms and draw other people into them and make something extraordinary out of it – that ’ s all about agency and initiative , and the ability to get other people involved . Which shows that maybe that ’ s just a very contemporary word for something that is a long tradition with us .
3