Reflections on graduation
An ode to teachers
My son graduated from his prep school where he had spent his years from age 3 to 13. I am indebted to the school, its teachers and its staff for the impact they have had on our family. Here were my words of thanks to them:
There is a quote from one of my favourite poets, a celebrated Indian poet named Rabindranath Tagore. He says, “The roots below the earth claim no rewards for making the branches fruitful”.
But today, I think that it is worth looking towards the roots. Those roots are this school and its teachers.
I remember many of our Year 8 children here arriving for their first day at school. Most would not have reached my knees. They were so tiny. Their biggest challenge was finding their own shoes, which were no bigger than the size of my palm. I remember them painting in after school with careful strokes, planting seeds, learning to write, first scrawling their names, and then developing stories, learning to count and then doing times tables. I remember them toddling through their early years sports races and parents, also toddling, with sacks over our legs or balls between our knees, laughing and stumbling: reflections of our children. I remember them moving up – gosh, weren’t they big boys now – a full 7 or 8 years old. Huge. Practically grown up. Now they were doing History and Geography. Soon it would be Latin and Spanish, and experiments in a lab. I remember the number of times the school nurse would call me from first aid. First a bruise, then a sprain, then a scratch. I remember the canteen staff always smiling at me in the mornings as they made their way in to school and the grounds staff patiently opening the gates for our late children. I remember staff at reception cheerfully wishing my son the best of luck when I called in to say that he could not come to school that day because he had his senior school exams.
We, the parents, notice it all. We notice the beautifully kept fields, the smart sports hall and the clean dining room. We notice when teachers stay late for endless parents’ evenings and for endless parents’ questions. We notice when a teacher runs alongside a student who has fallen and picked himself up at sports day, so that our children understand that when they run the race of life, they will have to run it themselves but they will know that they will not run alone. We notice when our kids came back from school residential trips, bloodshot eyes and absolutely exhausted, but full of news on who snores and who takes ages in the shower and who was great at caving and who got tired on the mountains and we know from their happy, tired faces they have been looked after. We notice when they tell us about a campfire in their last few weeks at this school, when amongst the flames, it is obvious that there were also sparks of jokes, joy and laughter.
We will remember it all. I will remember the times when Dev would come back from school bringing a message from a teacher and he’d be amazed that he could be good at something. He could be a runner. Or a slam poet. Or a talented mathematician. Or a kind boy. And, through it all, we will remember how he learned to realise that he was deserving of respect and of the successes that came to him because of his hard work.
At this school, our children learned not just how to win a game but also how to lose one. Not just to hold a trophy high but to thank the team that lost for the glory of a good fight. Not just to understand science but to wonder about the world of matter. Not just to learn history but to have compassion for peoples that have suffered in the past. Not just to understand the stories of the greats but to understand that each of those stories is our own. Not just to conform to the rules of their world but also to hold on to the spirit in each of them that makes them unique. To learn their limits and also their limitlessness. This is what education is. This is what humanity is.
Not everything is perfect. If you were looking for perfection, you probably would not find it in any school or any home or any family. But, who wants perfection when you can have beauty? Real beauty is in the sweat on a sports day, or the mistakes in a maths test, or blots on a piece of art – that is where real beauty lies. It is the beauty of effort. Of aspiration. Of learning. I am conscious that this small school is surrounded by many longstanding and powerful schools. But the real power of any school is in these qualities: aspiration, effort, learning.
These reflections have come to me because of what I read every day in the news. Because the world is on fire. That is not a metaphor. It is actually on fire. We have set it on fire. This is the world that we are planning to hand over to our children. With every careless vote, with every wasteful act, with every selfish gesture, with silence in the face of injustice, we have been igniting fires. We can only hope that, with everything they have learned, our children will do better than we have. Seeds for the wisdom and kindness they will need to do that will have been planted here. So, I say today, thank you to all their teachers, thank you to the school, thank you to every one of its staff, thank you to its leaders.
As for the parents, well done you. Many years ago, long before I had kids, I climbed Mount Kilimanjaro. I remember getting caught in a thunderstorm. I slept in a wet sleeping bag. I got scorched by an unforgiving sun. Oxygen was thin, my head spun and my legs ached. I cannot say that I climbed or hiked. I just trudged.
And that is often what parenting is like. A hard trudge. All those days packing snack boxes, waiting at the gates, sending each other reminders, washing smelling kit, scrubbing mud off shoes, emptying endless deliveries when our boys lose the next thing, doing Christmas collections. All those scraped knees and sprained ankles. All the fees and the hard slog to make sure there is always enough to meet them. What a journey. What an adventure. What a mountain to have climbed. We’re at the top now. The view is so satisfying. We can stop and breathe. We can see for miles. And every bit of sleeplessness, sickness and fatigue – we can say that it was worth it. Only just worth it. But worth it all the same. We’ve got about five minutes of space to enjoy ourselves and then we’re going to have other mountains to climb. But for these five minutes, right here, right now, we’ve earned the sunshine.
As for our Year 8 children, my goodness, what a group you are! We absolutely loved your drum performances at the Leavers Celebration! The Woodroffe Hall was shaking with your drumbeats – it was full of energy and oh so full of humour. It represented who you are. Remember this moment when I tell you: please always make sure that you march to the beat of your own drum and keep those around you laughing until their bellies ache – that is the way to live. We want you to know that we adore you and, as we say farewell, we really wish those words to you: may you fare well in everything you do.
In my culture, there is a beautiful principle that says: see god in mother, father, teacher. Because, if you can’t see god there, there is no point in bothering to search elsewhere. The principle does not say see god in the billionaires, the tech bros, the movie stars, the prime ministers, the presidents, the priests. No, it is: mother, father, teacher. I feel privileged to be in a room full of them.
As Shakespeare says, “Parting is such sweet sorrow.” This is a bittersweet moment. But mostly, it is sweet. Thank you to a wonderful group of people.
Congratulations to Dev and to you!