There was a fantastic hour last Saturday morning that chimed with so many things that I have become a huge advocate of in the last decade or so of my career. In the most recent of our Wellbeing Matters sessions, Mark Herbert (an ex independent school teacher, pastor, and now co-founder of ‘Salt and Light’ leadership coaching) came to talk to parents about developing leadership in our pupils.
In this day and age – with the posturing, virtue signalling and the easy politicising of public discourse on mass messaging and communication platforms – this question is perhaps being asked, if only implicitly, more than ever before. However, I would argue that the degree to which it is truly connected with and given proper thought is likely to be far less than ever before. In some part, this is because opportunities to be undistracted enough to search one’s mind, memory and morals are at risk of dwindling entirely.
At a school with as much music and sport as Pilgrims’, this does not come as a surprise. It is a familiar axiom. But what can be salutary is to remember in quite how many regards this is true. It is not just the realisation of the boy towards the top end of the school who starts to feel the burgeoning fruits of all that time spent on their instrument, refining their passing technique or, indeed, nuancing their brush work in art. Both physically and neurologically, repeated activity builds familiarity, strength and accuracy of action. Muscles strengthen, virtuous cycles build and health (in whatever holistic sense the word can be taken) improves.
Full disclosure: this piece involves me once again extolling the virtues of Pilgrims’ location and community. I’m sorry. Asking me not to extol the benefits of these cornerstones of my childhood is like asking Eric Cantona to stop peddling pop-philosophy, B.A. Baracus to embrace modern concepts of masculinity, or Mr Toad to tear his eyes and ego away from that bright new shining motor car. It’s just not going to happen.)
