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Headmaster's Lessons 

In this week’s Headmaster’s Lessons we have been considering the question of existence. At this time, when we are not seeing so much of each other and are knee deep in the surreal experience of teaching screens and images, I have found my mind drifting. I wonder, is there really anybody out there?

To begin this discussion, I have told each of my classes the story of Zhuangzi and the butterfly:

Once upon a time a Chinese philosopher called Zhuangzi tired out from all his thinking, sat down in his garden in the warm sun and started to doze. Soon he was fast asleep and dreaming.

He dreamed he was a beautiful butterfly, visiting flowers in the sunlit garden and sucking their nectar. Eventually, he grew tired from all his flying, so he settled down on a nice green leaf in the warm sun and started to doze.

Soon he was fast asleep and dreaming. He dreamed he was a human philosopher called Zhuangzi, sitting in his garden.

Zhuangzi woke up feeling really confused. He did not know who he was! Was he really the human philosopher who had dreamed of being a butterfly? Or was he really a butterfly dreaming about being Zhuangzi?

Which do you think it is?

Students expressed a variety of reasons for believing they are not living a dream, most commonly thought, they cited experiences due to their senses: sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell. Many students expressed the belief that you cannot experience pain in dreams, and as they have hurt themselves at some point, they know they are awake.

To counter this belief, I shared the following picture by M S Escher.

It is an optical illusion. As if you walk either up or down the stairs, after four turns, you are back where you started. Clearly you couldn’t be on the same level as when you started – our eyes are playing tricks on us.

If our eyes can deceive us, what about our other senses?

I asked the older students, and I suspect this will resonate with parents, but how often do you think your phone has buzzed or pinged, only to find it has not? Phantom vibration syndrome is a real thing…If anything is real that is.

It is certainly possible that our senses can deceive us, so should we fully trust them? If not, you have to conclude that life could be one big dream.

Students have argued that dreams are vague, but life is clear. Details are fuzzy in dreams, but life is so random and complicated that who could imagine such a construction? We cannot remember our dreams, but our memories of life extend for years.

Philosopher Rene Descartes famously resolved this issue with his statement, “I think, therefore I am”, or was it “I’m pink, therefore I’m Spam”? His belief was, that either dreaming or awake, because he could think about the issue, he was something, somewhere. He was real.

To close the lesson, I posed one further question…

“If you were born blind, would you still dream in pictures?”

by Richard Murray

For quite some years now, my wonderful mum has got into the habit of sending me, on a daily basis, a set of two quotes. Initially, I read these without paying much attention to them. But, as time went on, I became aware that these quotes had a bigger impact on my everyday life than I would have ever expected. Not only did they pick me up or make me reflect on my path of life but ultimately they changed my outlook on life.

Somehow, when my daily quotes reach my email box and I open them (this has now become a ritual!), what I read always seems pertinent to where I am at any given moment of my life. I find these quotes comforting, particularly in these hard times we are all going through. I have found these small, but powerful, sentences almost as good as a medicine. A medicine which I am happy to share, both on Facebook with my friends but also in class with my pupils.

I am forever amazed by the fact that a few words put together can create such an impact (and a positive one) on my outlook to life.

Being fed on my daily quotes also means I have become a strong believer. A belief I regularly pass on to people around me and indeed my pupils. Although I may not use a quote, I will nevertheless pass on its meaning and as my belief is so strong, it becomes more plausible to the listener. I researched this topic and came across an interesting article “The Science Behind Why Inspirational Quotes Motivate Us”. Psychologist and motivation expert Jonathan Fader, PhD in New York City says “…the message that someone else believes you can achieve what you want to achieve can be a powerful incentive to try harder. If your teacher, believes you can do something, you’re more likely to do it”. Fader also says that “For people open to their message, quotes appeal to our aspirational nature, they can be meaningful and powerful in changing our thinking and helping us see something in ourselves that we want to change or overcome”.

I am not sure if there is indeed a science, but given the positive affect these quotes have on me, I am happy to share them in the hope that they too will work their magic with people around me.

In History, Year 8 have been learning about Medieval crime and punishment. This is a fantastic piece of poetry by Addien Murray we would like to share. 

I Didn’t Mean To

Not tactfully nor sympathetically, the executioner says to me,

“Are you ready?”

As if a person would ever be ready to meet their death or to say goodbye or to take one final breath.

It really doesn’t matter to me though.

I say I’m fine to seem strong, but inside, I’ve already crumbled away.

I’ve already left myself to lie on the floor with my blood spilling because they didn’t think I deserved it.

They don’t think I deserve food to eat or water to drink or air to breathe.

I had to rob them, though they robbed me, and somehow, I get the blame?

I’m just a person with a family who’s about to lose everything.

And then it happens.

Everything hurts and my vision tumbles into bleak darkness.

I’m now so weak and I can feel it all crashing to an end.

Stopping like the turning of the final page in a book, and you wish you had more time.

But these stupid laws, rules made to be broken cannot lean or bend or break just for me?

Just for the thousands of us in need of homes and food and love.

Why not?

It isn’t fair, but now I’m gone and I cannot change.

No more wishing in bed at night, hoping that I can make a difference for us.

No more daydreaming about that day when we’ll all be free.

No more religion we have to follow, or rules that say we can’t be so.

But for now, I’m going away.

Never to return,

So, for all of you that care.

I didn’t mean to.