Valete
Mr John Owen-Barnett The following text is extracted from Paddy Stephen’s speech at the Leavers’ Drinks Party. It took some effort to get John here tonight, so I hope that we are still on speaking terms when I have finished! John, I promise that it will be brief and apposite. How can justice be done to John’s 37 years’ dedicated service in the Community of St Peter’s? Primarily John is a real educator, more concerned with inspiring and enthusing his charges than merely preparing them for exams, although at this more prosaic task he also has a fine record. He has his own completely individual style of teaching which suits him and his sets perfectly. He once described those to whom he taught English as, “The Chinese, assorted other foreigners, dyslexics and the Stephen boys”! He then looked at me with those piercing eyes and said, “I missed out on teaching Nick only because he inherited his mother’s brains and not yours”! The Biology and English departments will be much more politically correct without him - and much less fun. How can we replace a man capable of such wonderful statements as these : “Remove the cheat notes from your knee, Jibson; I am not as green as I am cabbage-looking.” On teaching the javelin to third-formers: “This is a weapon of war : if you kill each other I won’t mind, but mummy will.” At the start of his first biology department meeting with his new Head of Department (who had just shuffled John’s
18
The Peterite 2012-2013
new Filofax!)....”Remember, Marty boy, I was School Bully, and my speciality was dead-legs and you are heading for a real pearler!” John joined the school in 1976 to teach Physical Education. He was an outstanding rugby player who as a student was in the great London Welsh side of the early seventies which included Mervyn Davis, JPR, John Dawes and Gerald Davis. A knee cartilage operation ended his playing career much too early. Despite all the commitments he had with both family and the school, he studied successfully for an Open University degree in English. Because he had so much experience of different teaching environments (swimming pool to Biology, English class-room to the Sports Centre) his ability to read a teaching situation was unrivalled.
