I was explaining in our Senior School assembly recently that whereas many countries will only define a civilised environment after analysing moral, intellectual and artistic advancement, the British do it on the spot by watching how a child behaves in the vicinity of a door. Open a door and let others through, and you are a Renaissance youth, beloved of adults and numbered among the blessed. Try to go through a door before an adult, however, and you a reprehensible Visigoth, toppling the towers of empire and determining in three second that visitors will choose another “more civilised” School for their child. Never mind examination results: British Schools are really all about what happens near doors.
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International parents may not know that we have a chain of fitness centres in the UK called David Lloyd. (David was a great British tennis player. That’s not the same as a great German or Russian tennis player, I admit, but David got the ball back over the net sometimes and is subsequently a national treasure. He is now a hugely successful businessman and discerning art collector). In the Bromsgrove branch of David Lloyd there is, understandably, much talk of Bromsgrove School. My gym-based Stasi (when they are not working the School car parks in trenchcoats and walky-talkies) duly keep me informed. This week, for example, I was given a peculiarly (and, I pray, untypically) David Lloyd take on the number of pupils supposedly doing a certain course in the Lower Sixth. It was wrong by a factor of ten. A factor of ten! When exasperated, the Cherokee Indians famously declared: svgi inageehi giniyaluga. It means Let's go hunt for some wild onions.
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I always thought Aristotle tutoring Alexander the Great was the coolest teacher/pupil combo I had ever come across. However, I had the good fortune to sit next to Sir Eric Anderson at a lunch this week. Sir Eric has been Headmaster of three Schools, Provost of Eton and Rector of Lincoln College Oxford. He is an expert on Walter Scott and a hundred things besides. And he has also given Aristotle a run for his money, for in his time, Sir Eric has taught: Prince Charles, Tony Blair and David Cameron. Who knows if right now, in Bromsgrove, a young teacher is inspiring a trio of future Titans.
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Anyway, back to the door thing. For the days immediately following my announcement, I witnessed moments of bewilderment and terror as pupils neared these oblong arbiters of human decency. Even with no adult in sight, Bromsgrovians were scanning the horizon to ensure that by no conceivable means could they be accused of letting a door close on someone. Pupils were hesitating before open doors even when no one was coming the other way, fearing the threshold as one might a portal to the planet Tharg. I saw one pupil hold the door open at lunch only to find hoards of pupils filing through and setting him back a hundred places in the queue. Indeed, had I not relieved him, he’d still be there now. Thinner, but with his skeletal fingers clutching the handle. “After you” has become as common a phrase as “Any chance of some more chips, please?” We are in a golden age –the Athens of Pericles – and it may even last to the end of the week.
