I’m always heartened by the number of parents I fall into conversation with who make mention of discussing the focus of my newsletter piece over the meal table with their sons each week. Building some family dialogue around that which we have covered in assemblies is an excellent way for the boys to gradually grow a sense of their own opinion in the context of the values networks they are growing up in. However, this week’s focus (I fear) may not be without its controversy. This is perhaps surprising given that it was Love… 

Set assemblies started this week off: a lovely chance for the boys to feel that tight-knit identity and pride in being a Wren, Roman, Saxon, Monk or Norman. A cause of particular excitement was the return of the much-loved Set Quiz, which will have regular rounds this term leading, of course, to the all-important Final. Many thanks indeed to Mr Duncan for relaunching the quiz: it is, I suspect, something he’s rather enjoying… giving a chance to indulge his inner Paxman! 

Since leaving The Oval Office, Barack Obama has observed that as POTUS he had all the technical expertise he could have wished for at his disposal and he could have hired anybody at all to work for him; but that, for all this, most of the problems that crossed his desk could not be solved by technical solutions and most had no clear solution at all

I was talking to a parent in the Yard the other day about what Lieutenant George from Blackadder Goes Forth might call ‘coming a cropper’, or the process of going ‘goose over stumps’… Namely, boys in a solo performance situation who hit considerable difficulties, make a series of errors, fluff their notes or who even have to stop, and then have to pick themselves back up to complete the piece.

Words: That words matter is a truism. Words matter in terms of our labelling and deciphering of the world. (To what extent something actually exists to us, if there is no word for it, is an interesting point of reflection with which to challenge the thinking of some of our older boys.)

As I sit down to write my piece for this week’s newsletter, I find my situation acting as a microcosm of what happens in the national press on a daily, sometimes hourly basis; holding a mirror to two things which are at the root of so many problems within the national discourse.