GALA CONCERT an - Reed's School

THE HEADMASTER praises the U.S. on theirradical thinking, charity, sense of pride and optimismwas lucky enough to be granted a Sabbatical term last autumn byI the Governors and spent the majority of it travelling over twentytwothousand miles around the United States of America. I visitedvarious schools, colleges and universities and met some former pupilsof Reed’s too. America is far from perfect but it has a lot of good aboutit. Educationally in terms of knowledge and ground covered at theSecondary or High School level they are about a year, if not more,behind the United Kingdom, some would say even one and a half totwo years behind. However, both at High School and University levelthey really push creative, independent and radical thinking. This iswhat many of our top Universities look for. I discussed this in Assemblyat the beginning of term with our pupils and asked them to take amoment to consider when was the last time they had an originalthought; composed something on their own; tried somethingintellectually new; wrote a poem or painted a picture which wasn’tbased on something else before. This world more than ever is goingto need creative, original, independent thinkers. The Americans –because of course they had a revolution against us not so long ago– actually prize freedom and radical, revolutionary thinkers muchhigher than we do. The idea of contributing to your communityis in-built in the American philosophy, psyche and culture. Manycontribute financially to their local library, museum, art gallery, schoolor church if they can afford to. Year groups at school and Universityget together before they leave to contribute financially to theirinstitution and will do so for the rest of their lives. If they can’t affordmoney then they will contribute to their community in other ways, forinstance by cooking for the elderly or sweeping the streets. They holdtheir soldiers and their veterans in high esteem and are proud to servetheir country and of the men and women who do so. The Americansare an optimistic people – in spite of some of the horrors their countryhas experienced – the destruction of the twin towers; high gun crime;frightening numbers of missing children. They are also a polite people– very friendly and chatty despite sometimes rightly being accused ofbeing rather inward-looking. Their service industries are exceptional;friendly and polite shop assistants, bank tellers, waiters and waitresses– even the customs police are getting friendlier. They will all say “havea nice day” and mean it.We can learn from these points and I would like those ideas oforiginal thinking, charity, community spirit, pride in one’s country andservicemen, politeness and optimism to be the aim of every singlepupil both this term and in the future.David JarrettTop: the Headmaster and O.R. Alex Wilton at Loyola Marymount University.Below: Harvard University, Massachusetts. Right: University of Southern California, L.A.4“We dare not forget that we are the heirs of that first revolution”John F. Kennedy