CCCS prepares for exams success
This week has been an immensely studious few days in that all the Prep School have been doing exams. The Form Eights have been doing their Common Entrance, the final exam of their time at school - all boys at our School still do this exam even if very many senior schools no longer require it, though some still do, we feel strongly that practice of exams is an immensely important skill that we ought to be teaching our pupils. My firm belief, having spent most of my career in senior schools, is that those people who arrive at senior school knowing how to take exams tend to do much better in them at GCSE at a level. We all know that exams are not the be all and end all of education - very far from it, but it is important to have ways of testing people and of gauging how well they are performing.
Exams also teach people many important skills. As mentioned above, all our pupils will be taking important exams in the future. Exams also allow us to master knowledge, knowledge and skills which we have been learning over the past months or years. To be able to demonstrate that we can undertake these skills is an immensely satisfying experience. Mastering knowledge too is something which is vital and deeply pleasurable. But more widely we all, at certain times in our lives, have to rise to challenges or prepare carefully for experiences which are intense and which have real consequences. To learn how to do these things now in a benign environment, is very important. So I think it is entirely right that our pupils should be engaged in exams at the moment.
Indeed, our successes at senior school pre-tests are notable, partly because of the preparation that we have given our pupils. This is an important aspect of being a preparatory school. I mentioned above that I thought it was important that we acquire knowledge and skills. I think it is particularly important to insist upon this at the moment. Many people will argue that knowing things is an increasingly redundant thing and indeed that very many intellectual skills are increasingly redundant. The March of AI, which will of course transform very many jobs and the way we do all sorts of things perhaps argues for an education which no longer values knowledge or nature skills.
Personally, I would disagree strongly with this approach. As summer begins, I would recommend to you one of my favourite places, Kelmscott Manor near Lechlade. Kelmscott is a beautiful old house beside the River Thames. During the latter half of the 19th century, it was inhabited by the PreRaphaelite genius William Morris. He had seen the advance of machinery throughout the 19th century, an advance which led to the loss of many traditional skills. He believed that these skills were important and that it was a good thing to write, to draw, to work with the word and paint and he founded companies which still exist today, which champion crafts undertaken by people. He believed that it was essential to the happiness of human beings that they undertook such things and using one's hands in these ways was fundamental to what it was to be human. His house is a testament to this combination of beauty and practicality; do please take the opportunity to visit this wonderful old place.
In just the same way we are now faced with the prospect of our mental skills being made redundant by AI. Of course, AI is the most miraculous and powerful tool and it will lead us to be able to achieve so much, but we must always retain our mental faculties otherwise we will be rendered impotent and redundant by it. I’m certain that this is what William Morris would think were he alive today. So we will be encouraging our pupils to continue to think for themselves, to remember things and to take time to value knowledge. That way AI will remain a very powerful tool rather than become our replacement.
In the Cathedral today we were visited by the Revd Liz Boughton, Chaplain of St Edward’s. She had chosen as her reading a part of psalm 139 – a passage she claimed as one of her favourite parts of the
Old Testament.
She quoted the following lines:
“I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well”
As an illustration of this, she got three boys to look into a box and tell her what they saw. What they
saw in the box was a reflection of themselves in a mirror. “What can you see”, she asked. “A mirror!” they all replied in unison. What they had missed was the remarkable person they were looking at - had they looked beyond the mirror, they would have seen that they were “fearfully and wonderfully made. ” We are all, she said, unique and priceless people. And of course, it is this that we so cherish in our School.
