Enrich young minds with classic values

By Paul Bray

Those of us who can still sing our old school song in Latin but have forgotten every detail of differential calculus may wonder whether our alma mater had the right priorities. 

Even in the digital age, however, traditional things still count — from handwriting and hymn singing to tidiness and table manners. 

“A school is a world in microcosm, and we are responsible for shaping the adults of the future,” says Alison Tremewan, headmistress of Knighton House, a girls’ prep school in Dorset. 

“They need to be taught to value other human beings, and to behave accordingly. The school also places great emphasis on discipline, how children respond in class and how they learn.” 

Good manners are the foundation of everything, adds Tremewan — saying please and thank you, making eye contact, or standing when someone enters the room, whether it’s the headmistress or a cleaner. 

If pupils at Dodderhill School, an independent girls’ school in Worcestershire, thank their teacher, you know the message has got through. “It’s unprompted,” says headmistress Cate Mawston“They just know it’s a nice thing to do.” 

The dining hall is an ideal training ground, believes Mawston. “Right from kindergarten we have a formal, sit-down lunch, where the girls have to display good table manners, say grace and wait to be served. It’s a big part of our ethos and we deliberately mix up the pupils so they have to learn how to talk to people they don’t particularly know.” 

Interpersonal skills have always been important, but in today’s electronic age they need to be taught a little more actively, according to Nigel Lashbrook, headmaster of Oakham School, a coeducational boarding and day establishment in Rutland. 

As well as traditional ways of learning to interact, such as showing visitors around or teaching etiquette to younger pupils, Oakham has adopted a more targeted approach. Third-formers attend workshops in personal and presentation skills, while new prefects receive formal leadership training. 

Public speaking and debating are good ways for children to develop selfconfidence, and may yield surprising results. “Years five and six had a very interesting debate about mobile phones,” says David Cobb, headmaster of Collingwood School, a mixed prep school in Surrey. “They recognised that phones could be a distraction and didn’t really see the need for them in school.” 

Just as well, because Collingwood — like many other schools — while valuing new technology, bans the use of mobiles during school hours. Technology is thus kept in its place and traditional skills, such as handwriting, spelling and multiplication tables, are still cultivated. 

Today’s iPad generation can be disarmingly traditional. “They all treasure their coloured pencils and crayons, and when we recently entered a short story competition and the girls could choose whether to handwrite or type their entries, they were split 50/50,” says Tremewan. 

Latin remains on some of Collingwood’s curricula. Cobb teaches it to all classes from age seven upwards, although he uses an online tool, since ancient and modern are not mutually exclusive. 

A general “outdoorsiness” is an abiding characteristic of many schools. In the playground, children may still skip or play hopscotch, but such activities are becoming increasingly less common — so much so that some schools have chosen to teach them in PE lessons. 

Pride in one’s appearance is considered important across the board — having shiny shoes and properly done ties, for example — and a fairly strict uniform code remains the norm. 

“We have a very old uniform supplier and the children can’t wait to be kitted out,” says Cobb. “The boys wear caps and doff them when I greet them at the gate. You can see how much the parents like this kind of attitude; good manners still matter a great deal.” 

Culture is important, too. “The school has an annual poetry-reading competition,” says Richard Brown, headmaster of West Sussex prep school Dorset House. “Everyone learns a poem and the top two or three pupils in each class go to the finals, which are adjudicated by an external head of English.” 

Church services often retain a key role — “Religion is part of our culture and heritage, and through church attendance it becomes ‘embedded’,” says Cobb — and hymn singing is also surprisingly popular. 

At Oakham, long-standing tradition sees half the school at a time meet in chapel for weekly hymn practice. “The students feel very good about it," says Lashbrook. “It’s not really music practice but a community activity. For those 40 minutes they feel part of something.” 

Community — in the widest sense — is a vital concept in many schools, with charity fundraising and volunteering widely encouraged. “Service to others is top of our list of desirable behaviours,” says Lashbrook. “From the fourth form, everyone does some kind of service, whether it’s via the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award scheme or voluntary action in the local community or the CCF [Combined Cadet Force]. The school was formed to be part of the community from the outset, and we want to keep it that way.” 

Sometimes, old traditions can go hand in hand with new ones. “Last year was the 40th anniversary of moving to our current site, so I started a Founder’s Day,” says Mawston. “Many old girls attended and they were delighted to find that our traditional values haven’t changed. Dodderhill is still recognisable as the school they knew.” /Telegraph