The Year That Was… and what a year that was, and I can tell you now that despite never having been a Kipling fan, for the first time his poetry is resonating with me. ‘If you can keep your head whilst all about you/Are losing theirs’ suddenly feels less stuffy, late Victoriana irrelevance and more a scarily accurate job description for running a school during a pandemic.
And so I hold up the year that was 2020-21, and I examine it: I usually consider myself a decisive person, and yet I can’t decide, at all, on examining this year, on any of the following: whether it’s gone ludicrously quickly or painfully slowly; whether it’s been the most unpredictable, adrenaline-filled year ever or the most uneventful slow-burner; or whether I’ll remember it forever, or if it’s already disappearing in a hazy blur; in short, whether it’s been too much or too little; and I think of Wordsworth’s phrase, that the world is too much with us, and I ask, is it? And I really mean that: is it? Rarely have we seen so little of the world, from staying at home entirely (and the majority of you will of course still be working from home), to going to school to home and back again – and for those of us who live ten minutes from school, that’s not a big radius of experience – but never, too, have the happenings in the world had so much impact on how we live our lives, certainly not those of us born after 1945. Which is the vast majority of the people I work with and for, for obvious reasons. And so looking back is discombobulating, it leaves us reeling somewhat – and I know that the feeling of being untethered, of not knowing how you’re feeling or where things should be, has rocked us all and will take some time to work itself round. I started the year in assembly with a notion of which Obama is fond, and which he used to talk about when considering the challenges of leadership in particular: and that is developing the ability to hold the tension of opposites; acknowledging the truth of more than one thing being the case, and holding both of them in a harmonious tension with each other. Being comfortable with uncertainty, with the not-knowingness, is a skill we’re losing as a society and I think it’s the idea which will best see us through as we adjust to what may, or may not, have happened to us, and what may, or may not, be coming next.
Because of course schools are all about unknowingness and uncertainty, about holding the tension of opposites. Not because we want our students to be hesitant, or to be uncertain in their values and sense of who they are, not at all. But because to know that you don’t yet know, that you won’t EVER fully know, is to stay curious, and alive to ideas; to stay nuanced in your thinking, to chase the learning for its own sake and not for any narrow outcomes; to work together to find things out and be inspired by each other’s passions and successes, rather than obsessing about rankings and competition in a more negative sense; this is what great schools engender, and what we see here at WHS in spades. Of course the stunning steam tower, standing tall for a whole academic year now, beautifully symbolises this approach; but so too of course do our students, who absolutely understand the joy of the endeavour to experience and understand more, as a life-long act of learning. These are young people who for fun engage in and publish real world data research, who head up GDST-wide eco-climate lobby groups, who win international competitions in design and engineering, who give of their time and pocket money to make the lives of prisoners better, who write plays which have scripted readings by the National Theatre, who row and tumble and play tennis and run steeplechase at national and international level, and who are always looking for more opportunity, more challenge.
Our girls are phenomenal – they are absolutely on top of their game and I have been so proud and awed by the way in which they have kept on finding ways to pursue their immense talents and passions, to the very highest levels, throughout this crisis.
And this is why, looking back at the year that was, I also become quite cross, if I’m honest, at some of the discourse around young people and what Generation Z can and cannot, or should and should not, lead on for themselves, and whether or not they should be listened to by those lucky enough to lead them. Whatever The Sunday Times might have to say about it, yawn, to me it’s all about working together – parents and teachers alongside the students – to bring about meaningful change, whilst maintaining the broad and balanced education we know our girls have always benefitted from. As with everything, there is a balance to be struck here between innocence and experience, wisdom and fresh thinking, and it is absolutely the case that this balance is being sought by all school leaders currently, whether in our local State primary partners, or up the hill at King’s. I think and talk about it all the time, and was searching for the words to describe it to you, when I was emailed by one of our former Head Girls, the preternaturally mature and visionary Priyanka Patel, just finishing as an LPC student at BPP and the Chair of their Youth Advisory Board; Priyanka was able to sum it up where I was not, and beautifully too: she wrote,
“It really is people like yourself who make the difference, by acting on the recognition that the wisdom of your generation can be supported and enhanced by listening to and engaging with the voice of ours.” hear hear; and building on this sort of insight, the courage of another former Head Girl Ava Vakil, and our pride in our alumnae more generally has led us to set up a former head girls’ advisory group, a board of impressive young women who will be assisting us further in our bid to reflect, examine and improve the way in which we support and educate our amazing students. But we also want the passion of Gen Z to be matched with genuine intellectual curiosity, we want our young people to think broadly, to develop the skills to listen to those with whom they disagree, and learn from them, whether that looks like changing their own position slightly, or further developing their own arguments and opinions by hearing the alternative, or simply just learning to argue with articulate nuance despite feeling challenged or even dare I say it offended.
We have to become more comfortable with discomfort if we are fully to develop intellectually and emotionally, and in my mind it stands to reason that if we are going to stay true to our Wimbledonian commitment to the development of resilience, that has to incorporate hearing views other than your own. And so in the new year you will hear much more on our new Civil Discourse programme, launching in September, and designed to provide opportunities to hear and respond to a range of ideas and voices, in a bid to combat the polarising nature of much of the discourse on social media and beyond.
So we haven’t stood still during this crisis, not at all.
This was the script of the main part of Fionnuala Kennedy’s speech at Speech Day 2021