Outward Bound Trust
Emily Horton
Editor, Sheengate Publishing
Kurt Hahn
Outward Bound Trust
Editor Emily's hello – Surrey Downs Magazine, October 2016
In pondering this month's theme – education – I refer to a recent speech by Peter Clague, headmaster of my alma mater, Bromsgrove School. For a man who grew up in the great wilds of New Zealand, Peter has an unsurprising hero: Kurt Hahn, the man who founded Outward Bound and inspired the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award.
For Hahn, a German who settled in the UK after fleeing the Nazis, teaching should be less about regurgitation of facts and stats in the pursuit of top grades, and more about helping youngsters develop the mental resilience needed to realise their potential.
Hahn set up the first Outward Bound centre in 1941 after noting that young, fit sailors were succumbing in greater numbers than their older colleagues when pitched into freezing waters after enemy attack.
Hahn believed that the survival of the old sea dogs was thanks to their greater life experience, which gave them an added tenacity during desperate times.
One of Hahn’s key phrases was: “There is more in you than you think.” As Peter Clague also affirmed in his speech, we have more courage, strength and compassion within us than we can ever grasp – we just need to develop a greater belief in ourselves.
In addition to the first UK Outward Bound centres, Hahn also established Gordonstoun school in Scotland. Here too his principles were put into practice: students were encouraged to be active participants in life, rather than merely read about it in books.
As part of this, Hahn stressed the need to foster the innate co-operative spirit of the young through community service. One student was duly inspired – and in 1956, HRH The Duke of Edinburgh launched his famous Award, still one of the most respected accolades today.
I leave you with Hahn’s own words.
“There are three ways of trying to win the young: persuasion, compulsion and attraction.
Preaching is a hook without a worm; ordering, ‘You must volunteer,’ is the devil.
Tell them: ‘You are needed.’ That appeal hardly ever fails.”
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Get dressed!
Earlier this year, a Durham head teacher wrote to parents spelling out that it wasn’t only kids who were expected to get dressed in the morning – it was them too.
In the face of a mounting pyjama brigade at the school gates, Kate Chisholm of Skerne Park Academy in Darlington sent a letter home reminding parents that pjs are generally seen as dress for the bedroom, not the optimum attire for the street.
Teachers turn up for the day expecting to educate the children in their care – not their parents. Well done to Mrs C for reminding the recalcitrant folks up north that presentability begins at home – not once you’ve dropped your kid off in the playground.
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Finally, win a family half-term trip to Portsmouth and its historic dockyard and discover how Nelson triumphed at Trafalgar. T&Cs apply. Visit the competition page here
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