200 years!
You survived two Boer Wars (there are even remnants of a concentration camp around the corner), two world wars, and Jacob Gedleyihlekisa Zuma! That is no mean feat. Congratulations, Muir College, the oldest boys’ school in SA (sorry, SACS).
Stand up and tell the person next to you: ‘we are amazing!’ You have come a long way since July 12 1822. From this huge celebration wall of all-white male achievers from another century to this day where the old boy organising this celebration is a black dude called Terblanche! That’s progress, man.
I changed my speech. When I arrived here early this morning and climbed out of the kombi, a young boy was hurrying on his way to the classroom.
Then he saw me, the stranger on the school grounds. He stopped instantly, waved to me, and said ‘good morning, sir.’
Now I don’t know the little grade 4 fellow from a bar of soap but he saw a huge, overweight black man and stopped to greet. I have visited hundreds of schools around the country; this kind of basic human decency seldom happens.
The nine-year-old Aidan was not born this way; he was taught this way, probably at home and definitely at this school.
Just like no child is born a racist, as Nelson Mandela reminded us, every child learns the kinds of values that make them decent or deplorable human beings.
In the few hours I was here on the grounds of your beautiful school it soon became clear that you do two things well: you provide high quality education and you produce top quality boys.
One of the reasons SA has not collapsed under the twin evils of corruption and incompetence is because we inherited strong institutions from our past.
Among those institutions (media, judiciary, universities and so on), one of the strongest is our schools.
Muir College built its reputation over two centuries and throughout stayed true to its Latin motto, Nec Pluribus Impar, meaning Second to None.
No doubt, there were challenging times over the course of time. When a school survives this long, you produce your fair share of saints and criminals.
To illustrate, when an old and prominent school in Bloemfontein invited me to speak to their boys at assembly, I asked for a list of prominent old boys to weave into my speech to inspire the pupils.
The principal promptly gave me three names: Glen Agliotti, Lolly Jackson and Brett Kebble.
And yet Muir College remained strong through adversity and today stands as one of the great schools of postapartheid SA. Well done.
I listened-in to some classes and even taught a short lesson in one of them. No doubt, you have among the best teachers in our country.
Your boys will do well in science and math and languages. What I am not always sure about is whether our top schools give equal attention to common decency.
A school that invests equally in producing top marks in matric as it does in generating decent citizens would have made a huge difference to a country falling apart.
Unfortunately, the report on schools — and boys’ schools in particular — does not look very good when it comes to tests of character and integrity.
Hardly a week goes by without another report on racism, bullying, fighting, sexual assault and attacks on teachers in schools.
It really does not matter how many distinctions you obtain in matric if you struggle to accept fellow human beings regardless of what they look like, how they pray, where they come from and how they love.
A narrow competence in the subject is an empty shell without the capacity for decency.
The stakes are high.
After all, schools produce the graduates who qualify for university and then take up vital jobs that can secure the future of our country by fixing Eskom, mitigating the effects of climate change, feeding the poor, distributing justice and reconciling our people.
For these kinds of life-changing commitments, you need knowledge as well as values, and skills as well as conscience.
And so, I encourage you at Muir College on the occasion of this glorious anniversary to continue to teach the boys the power of respect, teach them to embrace difference, and teach them that it is better to give than to receive.
For it is only when you can combine excellence in academic results with distinction in human decency that you can truly claim to live up to that glorious motto, Second to None.
• An elaboration on the basic speech delivered at one of the celebratory events of Muir College’s 200th Anniversary, August 4 2022
Great job, Muir, keep teaching your boys about decency
Columnist
Image: EUGENE COETZEE
200 years!
You survived two Boer Wars (there are even remnants of a concentration camp around the corner), two world wars, and Jacob Gedleyihlekisa Zuma! That is no mean feat. Congratulations, Muir College, the oldest boys’ school in SA (sorry, SACS).
Stand up and tell the person next to you: ‘we are amazing!’ You have come a long way since July 12 1822. From this huge celebration wall of all-white male achievers from another century to this day where the old boy organising this celebration is a black dude called Terblanche! That’s progress, man.
I changed my speech. When I arrived here early this morning and climbed out of the kombi, a young boy was hurrying on his way to the classroom.
Then he saw me, the stranger on the school grounds. He stopped instantly, waved to me, and said ‘good morning, sir.’
Now I don’t know the little grade 4 fellow from a bar of soap but he saw a huge, overweight black man and stopped to greet. I have visited hundreds of schools around the country; this kind of basic human decency seldom happens.
The nine-year-old Aidan was not born this way; he was taught this way, probably at home and definitely at this school.
Just like no child is born a racist, as Nelson Mandela reminded us, every child learns the kinds of values that make them decent or deplorable human beings.
In the few hours I was here on the grounds of your beautiful school it soon became clear that you do two things well: you provide high quality education and you produce top quality boys.
One of the reasons SA has not collapsed under the twin evils of corruption and incompetence is because we inherited strong institutions from our past.
Among those institutions (media, judiciary, universities and so on), one of the strongest is our schools.
Muir College built its reputation over two centuries and throughout stayed true to its Latin motto, Nec Pluribus Impar, meaning Second to None.
No doubt, there were challenging times over the course of time. When a school survives this long, you produce your fair share of saints and criminals.
To illustrate, when an old and prominent school in Bloemfontein invited me to speak to their boys at assembly, I asked for a list of prominent old boys to weave into my speech to inspire the pupils.
The principal promptly gave me three names: Glen Agliotti, Lolly Jackson and Brett Kebble.
And yet Muir College remained strong through adversity and today stands as one of the great schools of postapartheid SA. Well done.
I listened-in to some classes and even taught a short lesson in one of them. No doubt, you have among the best teachers in our country.
Your boys will do well in science and math and languages. What I am not always sure about is whether our top schools give equal attention to common decency.
A school that invests equally in producing top marks in matric as it does in generating decent citizens would have made a huge difference to a country falling apart.
Unfortunately, the report on schools — and boys’ schools in particular — does not look very good when it comes to tests of character and integrity.
Hardly a week goes by without another report on racism, bullying, fighting, sexual assault and attacks on teachers in schools.
It really does not matter how many distinctions you obtain in matric if you struggle to accept fellow human beings regardless of what they look like, how they pray, where they come from and how they love.
A narrow competence in the subject is an empty shell without the capacity for decency.
The stakes are high.
After all, schools produce the graduates who qualify for university and then take up vital jobs that can secure the future of our country by fixing Eskom, mitigating the effects of climate change, feeding the poor, distributing justice and reconciling our people.
For these kinds of life-changing commitments, you need knowledge as well as values, and skills as well as conscience.
And so, I encourage you at Muir College on the occasion of this glorious anniversary to continue to teach the boys the power of respect, teach them to embrace difference, and teach them that it is better to give than to receive.
For it is only when you can combine excellence in academic results with distinction in human decency that you can truly claim to live up to that glorious motto, Second to None.
• An elaboration on the basic speech delivered at one of the celebratory events of Muir College’s 200th Anniversary, August 4 2022
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