Brilliance  

Yesterday, in the first assembly of the new term, I gave the boys a simple statement and then question: ‘There is brilliance within you. Do you believe this?’ Not, ‘Could there be?’, but rather, ‘There is, already, something luminous waiting to be discovered.’ I could sense the room thinking, some boys looking doubtful, perhaps already conducting an internal audit of recent successes and failures. That, in many ways, was the point. 

At Pilgrims’ we have educated thousands of boys, amongst buildings steeped in centuries of human aspiration. Yet here, surrounded by beauty and tradition, it can sometimes be hard for a boy to believe that brilliance is something internal and often understated or even unexposed so far, rather than something awarded, ranked, or noticed by others. This is something that we are putting our minds to. 

So – back to the assembly – I shared a handful of famous faces; people whose names now feel inseparable from brilliance in their field, but whose brilliance did not announce itself early. It took time, persistence, and the right opportunity. This was not meant to comfort the boys with the promise of future fame (that would be a rather thin consolation, rightly far from any educator’s mind), but to loosen the idea that brilliance must show up on schedule, or on a report. 

From there, the assembly turned - almost inevitably - to self-esteem. I have written in years past about a reconceiving of Maslow's famous hierarchy of needs created by the modern-day psychologist Scott Kaufman. Instead of the familiar pyramid that Maslow used, Kaufman invites us to imagine people as sailboats. The secure hull – physical security, psychological security, belonging - keeps us afloat. But it is self-esteem that forms the bridgehead to the sail itself, where creativity, growth, purpose and self-actualisation reside. Without that bridgehead, the sail exists, but it cannot catch the wind: it is latently limp. Self-esteem, in other words, is not an indulgence; it is infrastructure that releases most that is good in life. 

To further build the context of self-esteem, I told the boys a short fable about a Buddhist monk who helps a Samurai warrior to understand that allowing the words of others to grip us with anger and rage creates a hellish torment in our minds. Realising this, and so promoting the power to release that grip and reframe things in our mind, can bring heavenly relief. Many of us, I suggested, become unwitting caretakers of our own tormentors. For example, comparison with others (as Eleanor Roosevelt supposedly put it) really is the thief of joy - and often of courage too. 

This led us to a truth that feels increasingly urgent: self-esteem is intimately linked to the stories we tell ourselves about who we are. And those stories rarely originate with us. They are absorbed - from praise and criticism, from glances and silences - often long before we have the vocabulary to challenge them. One of the hopes I was trying to introduce is that boys can begin to notice these internal narratives and learn that they are not fixed texts. 

Here, it is worth keeping in mind an insight from Carol Dweck and her work on ‘Growth Mindset’: praise effort more than outcome. Effort is something a child can always control; outcomes are subject to luck, context, and timing. This feels particularly pertinent at a moment when, understandably, parents look for tangible returns on a significant investment. Yet the greatest return is not a string of outcomes neatly achieved on cue, but a son with the self-esteem to try unfamiliar things, to persist when effort seems not to immediately pay off, and to remain open to the possibility that his brilliance may reveal itself later - perhaps much later - than expected; and that that may happen in an area in which there were no real indications at a young age. 

There is something helpful and even consoling in the perspective that a good education is as much about learning to befriend oneself as it is about mastering any particular subject. A sense of achievement can be enormously helpful for self-esteem, but let us not forget a sense of highly valued effort. 

As we step into the term ahead, my hope is that the boys will carry with them the idea that brilliance is not a performance but a potential; not a race but a relationship with that effort, with curiosity, and self-esteem. If we can help them to protect and nurture that belief - together as school and parents - then whatever this term brings, it will be time well spent. There’s a nice New Year’s resolution. 

Tim Butcher
Headmaster