I’m out of rehab, as is the rest of the year­group (the merit of this is some­what dubi­ous, you can form your own opin­ions of us).  It was… bet­ter than antic­i­pated (which is not say­ing much in and of itself) — possibly even bet­ter than that.  Con­trary to the gen­eral bitch­ing about it, the venue was great, the food was edi­ble and even the house ses­sions weren’t that bad.

Out­door activ­i­ties were gen­er­ally acknowl­edged to have been good, some­thing which I agree with — we were really blessed with the weather we got — whilst it rained a bit, it didn’t affect the activ­i­ties much at all (excep­tion of per­haps peo­ple doing ropes courses, which aren’t always that great in the wet due to the whole slip­page (and sub­se­quent rope­burn) fac­tor — lowropes would have been okay, but I didn’t get to try high­ropes), which was very cool indeed.

It wasn’t long enough, and now I feel like another week­end, but hey, life goes on (albeit some­what more tiredly).

In terms of the actual “lead­er­ship” side of reha­bilit… err… the retreat, the house ses­sions were IMHO far bet­ter struc­tured than peer sup­port train­ing ever was — it was more directed (if a lit­tle more repet­i­tive), and gen­er­ally flowed bet­ter.  So yeah, was fairly happy with that… of course, it’s kind of depress­ing, think­ing that a house is (going to be) depen­dent on my year­group for lead­er­ship and direc­tion — that’s not me being elit­ist or any­thing, I con­sider myself included fully in that statement.

Which brings me to another point, I sup­pose.  On Mon­day evening (well, there was only one evening, it only went overnight), our year was addressed by the chap­lain, Tim Bow­den and head­mas­ter, Mr. Heath.  I’ve already whinged to a few peo­ple about this, with mixed responses, but for the sake of per­ma­nency (haha, such as my web­sites have been in the past, I sup­pose) and acces­si­bil­ity, I shall write here regardless.

Tim Bow­dens talk (yes, there was only ONE talk — appar­ently very dif­fer­ent to last years’ Retreat) was solid, if a lit­tle full of rhetoric (but that is just his means of com­mu­ni­cat­ing and get­ting the point accross, I think), how­ever I took issue with some­thing Mr. Heath has said in the past, and again, using the Retreat as an oppor­tu­nity, repeat­edly rammed this down our ears:

The school can­not sur­pass Year 12.  Year 12 set the tone for the school.

Which is some­thing that I believe to be one of the big­ger lies I’ve ever heard from our head­mas­ter.  Prior to my entry into the senior school, my con­tact with ANYONE in year 12 was restricted to that which occurred through the house sys­tem (and look what has hap­pened there — split tuto­ri­als, chapel and var­i­ous other means of fur­ther seg­re­gat­ing the house).  I sim­ply did not know any­one in years above me — until year 8, I did not have any friends in years senior to my own, and even then, this only extended to the year imme­di­ately above me.

Later that year, by an extra-curricular pro­gramme con­ducted by the school, I came to know Justin Sweet­ing and Greg Lock­wood (Class of ’03), and through other extra-curricular activ­i­ties in Year 10, I came to know Katy Crack­nell, of the same year group.  Thus, I’d say that if there were to be ANY influ­ence on my activ­ity within the school (as well as over­all opin­ions, beliefs, behav­iours, man­ner­isms, and any­thing else that shapes me as a per­son) imparted by the senior year of SACS, the FIRST year in which this may have occurred was last year.

Some may argue that atti­tudes shall per­me­ate down­wards through the year­groups, thus affect­ing the atti­tudes (and there­fore achieve­ments) of the entire school.  Okay, so I’ll admit — I do know peo­ple in the year below me.  What I won’t admit to, how­ever, is shar­ing atti­tudes (or even dis­cussing more than in pass­ing) regard­ing the school, or activ­i­ties within this.  IMHO, school assem­blies more effec­tively demon­strate how peo­ple are (and can be) involved in school life than any­thing spo­ken in pass­ing by yours truly.  This is not because I actively avoid talk­ing of such things — it just never arises.

So, if I do know peo­ple in years below me, what of peo­ple who do not?  A dead end in this the­o­ret­i­cal prop­a­ga­tion of ide­olo­gies, assum­ing, of course, that peo­ple who do com­mu­ni­cate with those younger than them redis­trib­ute such ideas anyway.

I spoke this after­noon to two peo­ple on the cur­rent stu­dent lead­er­ship team (briefly) about their response to this idea, and received a response which affirmed Mr. Heaths state­ment — at first glance.

No direct quotes, because I wasn’t tak­ing notes whilst talk­ing, but some­thing I remem­ber with clar­ity sim­ply by its oppo­si­tion to what I’d been told for the past two days is this — the actions of the lead­er­ship team do not go un-noticed by the younger years… because they are impor­tant.  Not nec­ces­sar­ily a state­ment of arro­gance, how­ever this was said not of the year­group as a whole, but of the lead­er­ship team (i.e. school offi­cers, etc.) as a sep­a­rate entity.  Maybe a slipup, maybe a gen­uine belief — some­thing that I’d cer­tainly say is more true, at any rate.  Not to say that Year 12 gen­er­ally can­not assume a ROLE of lead­er­ship — of course it can — lead­er­ship is not solely about influ­ence, which seems to be the core qual­ity behind set­ting a “stan­dard” which can­not be surpassed.

But if a stan­dard were to be set, surely this stan­dard would need to be evi­dent to the rest of the school!  My prob­lem is not “does this stan­dard exist?” but rather “how do these influ­ence the rest of the school?”.  By the lead­er­ship team, cer­tainly — they are in the pub­lic view of the school, and if any­one is to have con­tact with peo­ple in younger years, then it is them.  How­ever, the unques­tioned impor­tance (i.e. with­out excep­tion) of the senior year­group as a whole in terms of the influ­ence their atti­tudes hold upon the rest of the school is some­thing which I don’t believe in.

The school CAN rise above its senior year.  It can even rise above its lead­er­ship team — although not nec­ces­sar­ily in the capac­ity of lead­er­ship itself.  Involve­ment within the school is not fos­tered by year 12 as a whole, but by the addresses and pub­licly viewed behav­iours of the school offi­cers.  Most of year 12 isn’t involved in sport — yet this year St. Andrews has seen a supris­ing improve­ment not only in sport itself, but also in the sup­port of this — the lat­ter of which is not nec­ces­sar­ily some­thing facil­i­tated by the sup­port of year 12 as a whole, either — rather, by a select num­ber of stu­dents who CHOOSE to attend such things and encour­age oth­ers to do the same!  This sup­port does not come from the whole of year 12, and any asser­ta­tions sug­gest­ing that atti­tudes held by the school can­not sur­pass that of that senior year are plainly incorrect.

p.s. sorry about the size of this rant — I’ve actu­ally cut it back a bit, it was a rant-inspiring topic ;)