We are pleased to share with you the recent addresses given in Chapel by our Chaplain, Ed Barker (Hon.), based on the five principles of education identified by Hely Hutchinson Almond – the Headmaster who created the ethos of our School.

Character

I’m going to read out a list of countries, and while I do so, I want you to think about what connects them. Australia, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, China, Colombia, the Falkland Islands, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, Italy, Lebanon, Malaysia, New Zealand, Nigeria, Poland, South Africa, Spain, the United States, the United Kingdom, Sweden and Zimbabwe. Now I know the brains of my Politics pupils will be going into overdrive to work out the answer but let me put you out of your misery. It’s not the UN, it’s not the Commonwealth, it is in fact a list of all the different nationalities that exist at this school. We are a British school in Scotland, but we are truly a global and cosmopolitan community. However, despite the vast array of nations represented in our student body, we all have one thing that unites us; and that is our place in the rich history of the magnificent school known as Loretto. 

I’m going to borrow a phrase from the founder of the scout movement Robert Baden-Powell, and say that as Lorettonians, you have won first prize in the lottery of life. As Lorettonians, you have won first prize in the lottery of life. Why? Well, let us consider our reading from Isaiah. All you who light fires and provide yourselves with flaming torches, go, walk in the light of your fires and of the torches you have set ablaze. The kind of torch that to which the reading refers is a wooden staff, topped by a cloth material dipped in flammable liquid and then set alight. You will have seen them at the opening ceremonies of the Olympic and Commonwealth Games. In these, the best athletes carry the torch through their country, until it has travelled around the world, bearing its light to all the nations who are participating. Lorettonians, you carry such a torch yourself. What is this torch? It is the light of the Loretto ethos. Of what it means to be a Lorettonian. Hely Hutchinson Almond, the Headmaster who created the ethos of our school – he’s the one who’s portrait hangs in the dining room – identified 5 principles of education, of what makes a good Lorettonian. They are, in order, 1. character, 2. physical fitness, 3. intelligence, 4. manners and 5. information. I’m going to address them all in separate sermons, starting today with number one. Character. Lorettonians carry the torch by having character.

Because character is such a difficult attribute to pin down, I am simply going to tell you of a Lorettonian I know who carries the torch by having character. I did my first degree at St Andrews; it was the first time I’d really been to Scotland, and it was the first time I came across Lorettonians. I am not going to talk down our rival schools here, but simply mention an observation I had as an 18 year old student. Often you can tell if a person went to Merchiston, Fettes or St Georges just by talking to them. One of the things that struck me about Lorettonians was how incredibly different they were from one another. They were different, yet they all had that intangible quality which I now know to be character. One of my best friends was a man called Will McCarthy. You will see his and his brothers names up in the Pinkie pavilion, as they were all captains of cricket. He was and is one of the fittest people I know, a keen cricketer, an excellent runner; he and I once cycled from Rome to London. We joined the Army together, he won the sword of honour at Sandhurst, meaning that he was the best cadet in the year. He joined the parachute regiment, a notoriously difficult and elite regiment to get into. He served alongside the SAS as part of the special forces support group in Afghanistan. Today he is a major in charge of hundreds of men and women. You might expect such a man to be ruthless and cold, a bit of a hard-hearted robot. On the contrary, despite being an outstanding sportsman and military leader, McCarthy also was a first class actor, and performed in all the school and university plays that he could, often in lead roles. He was seriously into acapella, a type of singing-only music. He was actually the president of the Alleycats, the St Andrews Acapella group. He was not afraid to pursue interests that society tells us are incompatible. A hardcore military career in the world’s toughest warzones, alongside musical theatre! He excels at what he does, yet he is kind, compassionate, caring and selfless. He is confident enough to pursue all his interests with equal vigour, and yet still maintain his humanity, humour and personality. In short, he has character, and the torch that he carries is one that was lit here, at Loretto. How am I certain? He told me. 

It is all very well for me to stand here and tell you to develop character. How do you do that? Well firstly, by listening carefully to what I have to say in Chapel about what it means to be a Lorettonian; remember this is a series! Secondly, excel at the interests you have, even if society tells you that they don’t fit. If you want to be a rugby player and be the lead in the school play, then do it. If you want a golf handicap index of +9, and to sing a solo in the choir, then do it! This is the essence of mind, body, spirit. Thirdly, something struck me while I was pondering the concept of character. Many of the attributes that make up the Lorettonian character –  kindness, humility, a willingness to use your gifts for the benefit of others – are in fact the attributes of a Christian character. And I should know, I was a Christian before I was a Lorettonian. So as Lorettonians we are called to carry a torch, to develop our character to be a light in the dark places of the world. But the Headmasters who built this school – Langhorne, Almond, Tristam, Greenlees and Mackintosh –  were Christians, and the Lorettonian character is simply the Christian character in note form. We are called to carry a brighter torch, the one in Isaiah, one that shines the light of the Gospel of Christ in the dark places of the soul. As I will continue to say with the Christian message, awesome if true. 

So, finally, your takeaway from this address is that you as a Lorettonian have won first prize in the lottery of life; like the writers of the Bible, you have been handed a torch to light the dark places, and in order to do this you must develop your character. Go, walk in the light of your fires and of the torches you have set ablaze. Carry your torch. Amen.

Physical Fitness

This is the second in the series of addresses on what Hely Hutchinson Almond, our famous past Headmaster, felt were the five key characteristics of a Lorretonian. His stated aim was to form ‘robust and hardy students, with firm wills, strong characters, humour, influence and enthusiasm for good.’ To do this a Lorettonian must develop character, physical fitness, intelligence, manners and information. Last week we looked at the most important; character. This week, we are going to explore the second. Physical fitness. I am going to give you two reasons why you should be physically fit. 1. Because it’s good for the mind. And 2, because it is good for the spirit. Let us consider first, the mind.

I wonder how many of you have fallen prey to the idea that is so often depicted in American films; that school, and life beyond school is divided into two camps. One for people who are sporty, physically fit and do lots of exercise, but aren’t that bright. The other camp is for people who are intelligent and hard working in an academic sense, but otherwise weak, and somewhat pitiful. Hollywood has a great number of insulting nicknames for these people. Well, I am here to tell you that this is some of the most damaging nonsense that has ever been fed to young adults. That you have to be one or the other. Here is the good news: you can be both! You can and should excel in matters of the mind and the body. And what is more, as Almond knew, and the Bible tells us, the one feeds into the other. 

The fact that the best approach to life is one that gives equal weight to the honing of the mind and the training of the body is one that has been accepted wisdom since ancient times. Thucydides, a Greek intellectual and military commander said that "The society that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting by fools". A famous quote by the Roman poet Juvenal is “you should pray for a healthy mind in a healthy body” “mens sana in corpore sano” in Latin. Scientific studies have proven time and time again that there is a clear link between physical fitness and sharpness of mind; the ability to concentrate, to think clearly. If History and Science aren’t enough to convince you, there are examples closer to home in your teachers. Mrs Paterson, Miss Tattersal, Mr Stewardson and Mr Shanks all ran in the Scottish Half marathon festival at the weekend. They are no strangers to physical fitness. But they would all confess to being passionate about their chosen subjects, which they have all pursued to a very high level. I run every day before breakfast – except on a Sunday. I had to reach very high standards of fitness in the Army, but I could quite happily talk to you for over an hour about my collection of pre-decimal coinage, or whether the divine right of kings has any place in a modern constitutional monarchy. The either/or choice of being academic or sporty is nonsense, and should be rejected by every Lorettonian! So physical fitness improves the mind, and vice versa. 

What about number 2. the spirit? Again, scientific studies tell us that exercise improves mood and mental health. But let us look at the word of God. In our reading we heard another excellent reason for physical fitness. The book of Corinthians tells us that our bodies are not our own, they are just lent to us by God, as temples of the Holy Spirit. Because of this, we should honour God with our bodies by ensuring we maintain them properly through physical exercise. If that sounds like nonsense to you, remember it is precisely the same argument used for looking after the planet – it isn’t ours, it is just lent to us and so we should look after it. In the same way we care for the environment, we should strive to care for our bodies by “strengthening our feeble arms and weak knees”, as the Bible puts it. In this way the spirit benefits. One of my favourite films is Chariots of Fire. It is about a Scottish rugby player called Eric Liddel, who ended up representing Great Britain as a runner in the 1924 Olympic Games. He was also a Christian. In the film, his sister is concerned that his running is distracting him from worshiping God. He says “I believe God made me for a purpose - but He also made me fast. And when I run, I feel His pleasure.” This is something that resonates with me and my own experience. My commitment to physical fitness is also an act of the spirit, of worship to God. I spoke last week about the power of prayer; in my life, there has been no problem too great, that doesn’t seem lessened by a morning’s run and a prayer. When I run, I feel closer to God. But you don’t have to be religious to feel the uplifting effect of physical exercise on the spirit. You always feel better after a games lesson than before it, and it’s not just because it’s over. So running benefits the spirit. 

I’ll finish up by addressing a common concern about this message – “I’m just not very sporty”. Well, I would argue that’s like saying “I’m not good at anything at all”. There are so many different ways to take physical exercise, it is impossible to be bad at every single one of them. I’m not the best at ball sports like rugby or tennis. That is why I run. You could do anything; from ultimate frisbee, to karate to simply hiking in the countryside. Look up Kyle Maynard on YouTube. This is a man who climbed Mount Kilimanjaro having been born with no arms and no legs. Lorettonians, what is your excuse for physical inactivity?

Finally then, here are your takeaway points. Like Almond, like me, reject the false choice of being sporty or academic. Have it all – be both and excel at both! Why? Number 1, because physical fitness benefits the mind, because, as our school motto states, we have inherited Sparta; we should be scholars as well as warriors. Number 2, because physical fitness honours God, enlarges the spirit and strengthens the soul. Amen.

Intelligence

This week we are going to talk about the third of Hely Hutchison Almond’s principles of education, of what makes a good Lorettonian. We have covered so far character and physical fitness. Almond was not one to shy away from controversy; remember, it was he who introduced the open necked shirt without a tie as school uniform at the height of the formal Victorian age. I think he was being deliberately provocative with his third principle, the one we are going to cover today: intelligence. Why is this a controversial characteristic? With a shallow reading of the principles, he is saying that a good Lorettonian is intelligent. However, that does not chime with what we know about Almond from his actions and writings. For one, Almond was very keen that Loretto was to be a place of academic inclusion; he wanted to be a place where people of all academic abilities could thrive, as indeed it is now. For instance, he didn’t have academic prize giving, and he famously said, “I don’t care for Loretto being the strongest or the cleverest school, I want it to be the most rational and the best.” So what did he mean by a Lorettonian should have intelligence? I put it to you that what he actually meant was wisdom. 

It turns out that God has an awful lot to say about wisdom. The word wisdom appears 227 times across 66 books in the Bible. There’s a very famous Old Testament king called Solomon. He was very intelligent. He made Israel mighty by marrying the daughter of the Egyptian Pharoah in order to have an alliance with the superpower of the time. He rebuilt the great temple of Jerusalem, the base wall of which still exists today 3000 years later; you may have seen pictures of devout Jews praying in front of it. Solomon was already intelligent. One night God appeared to him in a dream and said he could have anything he wanted. He could have asked for long life, for great wealth or power, or for death and destruction to be reigned down on his enemies. What would you wish for if you could have anything for yourself? Solomon asked for wisdom. He asked for wisdom, and became Israel’s greatest ruler, and the writer of the book of Proverbs in the Bible. As I’ve said, Solomon was already intelligent, so wisdom must be something different. So what is wisdom?

Well, in our reading it is described as, “first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy…impartial and sincere”. It’s also humble. This certainly sounds a lot like character. But I think there is another clue as to what wisdom is in Almond’s earlier quote, “I don’t care for Loretto being the strongest or the cleverest school, I want it to be the most rational and the best.”. Wisdom is reason. Today is our Harvest Festival service. Traditionally this is where communities thanked God for the gift of the harvest and therefore the food we eat. Now, as a Christian I believe that our harvest, our food, comes ultimately from the goodness of God. For me, He is the one who allows the precipitation cycle to happen, for seeds to gestate, for crops to grow free of disease. However, I also know the harvest doesn’t ‘just happen’. It comes from the God-given wisdom of the farmer. Many of you in this room are from farming families; you know more than anyone that the harvest would not happen, the country would not be fed without the rational decisions and ingenuity of the farmer – when and where to plant the crops, how to protect them against pests, how to ensure you get the biggest crop yield. Wisdom that has been passed down through the ages. Modern farmers couldn’t complete the harvest without great machines, combine harvesters, seed drills, tractors, and countless others. These could not be maintained without the rational know-how of the mechanics and farm hands. None of this functional, practical wisdom that provides our food at farming level is linked to academic intelligence. Instead, it is rational wisdom.

So where am I going with this? How, with the Bible’s help, can we apply Almond’s third principle of education to become better Lorettonians? I would suggest, that just as the farmers cultivate our food, you as Lorettonians need to cultivate wisdom. This is different and distinct from academic intelligence and is instead linked to your God given gift of reason, your ability to think and act in a rational way. It looks like striving to apply practical common sense to every situation. Think rationally, how would I like to be treated in this situation, and act accordingly. Think rationally, what do I need to do in this situation to secure the best possible outcome and avoid negative consequences. Be rational by thinking before you act. If you, like Solomon, seek wisdom first, then character will follow; you will be pure, peace-loving, considerate, humble, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere. As the reading said, peacemakers who sow in peace reap a harvest of righteousness, and what is more, you will be a better Lorettonian. Amen.

Manners

(An address given to both the Junior and Senior School)

You may have heard of Hely Hutchinson Almond. He was one of our famous founding Headmasters, and he actually lived in the building that is now the Junior School. Here at the Senior School we have been working through the 5 things that he felt were really important for all Lorettonians. We have done character, physical fitness and wisdom. This week we are looking at manners. It is important for all Lorettonians to have manners. But what are manners? Now, who can tell me what is the magic word that everyone is always telling you to say when you ask something? That’s right, please. What about when someone gives you something, or does something for you? Thank you. These are the basics of manners, the foundations. But there’s more isn’t there? What about when you go through a door? Hold the door open. What are you supposed to do when you pass someone about the school? Say hello. How about in lessons? I’m going to go down, to my second form now, because sometimes, they forget this!

Don't shout out, put your hand up
Don't talk over the teacher or each other
Email ahead if you haven't done your prep

What about on a higher level, there are things that we know are the right things to do. 

Don't exclude people
Don't allow bullying
Don't say hurtful things
Apologise

These are manners, but they are beginning to look a lot like character, which is why Hely Hutchinson Almond put that first! But all manners can be summed up in a single phrase of wisdom, and as I hope you are picking up, it comes from the Bible:

DO TO OTHERS AS YOU WOULD HAVE THEM DO TO YOU.

In essence, how would I like to be treated in this situation? So, if you sometimes struggle with remembering all the other things that are to do with good manners, remember, as a good Lorettonian, you are to do to others as you would have them to you. Amen.

Information

We have reached the final part of our series on the characteristics of a Lorettonian. This week we are talking about the last of Hely Hutchinson Almond’s principles of education: information. Information. This is another puzzling one, what does information mean? As ever with Almond, you have to read into what he is saying in context. You remember that the third principle was intelligence, but I argued that what he meant was ‘wisdom’. Likewise, ‘information’ only really makes sense if you put it within the principles as distinct, different, from intelligence. 

If intelligence, wisdom, is something you have – an ability like being good at sport or being a fast reader – then information is something you get. Wisdom is something you have, information is something you get. Information is the ‘stuff’ we learn in lessons. The content, the knowledge, that you are taught. There was an English statesman and philosopher in the 16th century called Sir Francis Bacon. The Loretto connection is that he served as Lord Chancellor (basically Prime Minister back then) to King James I. He is the king who left his infant son Charles in the care of Alexander Seton of Pinkie House for three years. That’s why we have a ‘king’s room’ in Pinkie. Well Francis Bacon is accredited with the saying ‘knowledge is power’. Knowledge is power. Knowledge is good for its own sake. You may have also heard of the Greek philosopher Plato. He is very famous for his philosophical idea of the allegory of the cave. In it, he describes a group of people who have lived chained to the wall of a cave all their lives, facing a blank wall. The people have a fire behind them and watch shadows projected on the wall from objects passing by the fire. The shadows are the prisoners' reality, but are not accurate representations of the real world. The one with knowledge is the philosopher who crawls out of the cave and sees life for what it really is. 

But even further back is our Bible Reading. It was taken from the book of proverbs written by King Solomon. Remember him? He is the one who was given one wish for himself by God, and he chose wisdom. At the very beginning of his book he says that the wise should listen and add to their learning. That only fools despise wisdom and instruction. You should listen to your father’s instruction and do not forsake your mother’s teaching. They are a garland to grace your head and a chain to adorn your neck. You might sit there in lessons thinking, why on earth do I need to know that? I’m not interested! But the Bible says that knowledge is a crown on your head! So listen to the knowledge you are given in lessons, because knowledge for its own sake is one of the most valuable commodities on planet earth. See it as a gift and not a burden. The majority of society are like the people in Plato’s cave; they see only shadows and do not understand the things that happen all around them. You must be like the philosopher – climb out of the cave, take the knowledge that is being laid in front of you every single lesson and use it for good!

So firstly, knowledge is good for its own sake. Secondly remember when Almond said “I don’t care for Loretto being the strongest or the cleverest school, I want it to be the most rational and the best.”. Well in making information his final point he was being rational. As Lorettonians you have won first prize in life. However, Almond accepted that in order to open the next door after school, you would need information, you need knowledge. You need knowledge to pass your GCSEs so that you can take the A Levels you want. You need knowledge to get good enough grades in your A Levels to go to the university you want, and ultimately, to have the career you desire. It can’t happen without that one vital ingredient; knowledge. There is a reason Almond put it last; he felt that character, fitness, wisdom and manners were all much more important that knowing ‘stuff’. But as a rational man, he knew that you also had to have knowledge to progress to the next level: knowledge is power. 

So what do I want you to take away from the final point? Well, firstly that the information you learn in class is not as important as your character. But it is still important. You need it, at least temporarily. That is the rational way of looking at it. But, what is more, you should desire knowledge as a highly prized commodity, as it is knowledge that allows you to crawl out of the cave of ignorance, it is knowledge that gives you power and it is knowledge that ultimately will be a crown to grace your head and a chain to adorn your neck. Amen.