THE PETERITE Vol. LX
OCTOBER , 1974 Edited by
D. G. Cummin,
No. 391
J.P., M.A.
EDITORIAL As we enter the last quarter of the year, we might be forgiven if we felt that the sooner 1974 is finished the better. The year of confrontation; the year of the slag-heaps; the year of the assassin, of the kidnapper and the sneaking 'bomber% worst of all, the year of the 'expert': the one with instant comment on every ill; with wisdom after every event, and with ready prophecy of further gloom to come; like the American 'expert' who not only knows that we are destined to become the poorest country in Europe but pities us because we are not able to see it. One expert wrote 'considering the manifold complaints of men, touching the decay of this Commonwealth and Realm of England, that we now be in ...'. But that was in 1548, two generations before Englishmen were even interested in North America. We are a people familiar with crisis, but we don't always let our apprehension show. In schools, for various good reasons, the 'year' is not the calendar year; and our school year ended last July. How different its markers would be from those of the calendar year. For us it was perhaps the year of the trumpets, when, at the St. Peter's Day service the Minster rang with the splendid sound made by our trumpeters who, in their rehearsals among the endless tourists, had been proud to say where they came from. Or was it the year of the poets, when five among eighteen poems selected and broadcast by the BBC were by boys of our first year? The year of the House plays? when surely more boys than ever before found creative enjoyment in some varied and very good productions. And perhaps in the most obvious way it was the year of the Sports Centre, when the completion of the magnificent building made inevitable the massive act of faith to find the money for it by appeal. A very different scale of values between the year 1974 and the school year 1973-74. Does it mean that we are out of touch with the world of hard economics and of social problems? Does the stream of politics pass us by? Unfortunately there can be few communities more vulnerable to economic change and political puffing than the independent schools, and St. Peter's is no 'island, entire of itself'. But if education means anything at all, surely it must first be a demonstration of confidence in the future; otherwise it is worth nothing. And it is this underlying feeling of controlled hope that makes us look for the best that has happened in our year while at the same time learning from the things that have gone wrong. The difference between the school year and the calendar year seems to be that in schools we look back critically and forward with hope, while the modem 'expert' seems to look back with easy hindsight and forward with despair. Successful schools must depend for their prosperity on a good measure of faith, which St. Paul defined as 'the substance of things hoped for', 1
