There have many, many occasions in my office over the last few years when Wynberg Old Boys come to see me to chat about their University careers.‘I am thinking about a possible change to teaching,’ they say. The reasons they give are varied and interesting: ‘I really cannot see myself sitting at a desk checking figures for the rest of my life.’
‘I want to do something to improve the planet.’
‘I really enjoyed my schooldays. I would now like to make a difference to someone else’s life.’
I invariably smile to myself. Ask a hall full of schoolboys how many are thinking of a career in teaching – and there will be roars of laughter. Teaching? What are you smoking? There is an exciting world out there – don’t ruin it by suggesting that we come back to these hallways full of memories of exams, detentions, reams of homework.
And now some students are wanting to come back to teach. What has caused the change in thinking?
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| Dr Max Price |
Dr Max Price was the Guest Speaker at our 2012 Prizegiving and his speech gives us a clue. He told us that the adults on stage were on course to live to a hundred while modern medicine could well ensure that the majority of young men sitting in front of him would go well beyond that. He intimated that a second career would be almost essential for the modern teenager as no-one could contribute meaningfully in a sixty-year working life dedicated to one career.
To prove the point, Dr Price told the audience that he himself had done a BA Degree after his Medical Degree. I saw horror on the faces of the parents present and I could just see what was going through their minds ... What? Not another three years of tuition fees!
But in all seriousness, the pressure is now really on the Teachers of today to produce thoughtful and inquisitive young men who have a variety of interests and who are capable of switching to careers which in all probability haven’t even been thought of yet.
It reminded me of what one of our guest speakers at a Ten Club meeting last year, David Klatzow, forensic scientist and author of ‘Steeped in Blood’ told the boys: ‘Pick up every scrap of information you can – you never know when you may use it. Learning, in and out of the classroom, is never wasted.’ So true.
At the conclusion of Dr Price’s Prizegiving talk to the school, Deputy Head Prefect, Riaan O’Neil went up to thank him. ‘Does this really mean,’ he asked incredulously,‘that Wynberg could have Mr Richardson as Headmaster for the next twenty five years?’
With a wisecrack like that, Riaan will be lucky if he has his Matric in the next twenty five years.
To those eager young students coming to speak to me about their futures, I point out a few home truths. ‘You are destined to be driving a Honda not Porsche,’ I told the one soon-to-be-an-ex actuarial student, Anthony Selley, now on our staff.
The plusses I tell them? How does one communicate the joy of a coach when he sees a young batsmen finally play the shot which they have been practicing for weeks in the nets together? Or the pleasure of a teacher when a pupil pulls off a 76% in Maths when he had barely passed it in Grade 9 – as happened to Michael Moffett in Matric last year?
How do you put a price on this email which came in on Wednesday last week: You have probably been wondering what happened to me for the past two years. I want to thank you for everything you have done for me but I just don't know where to begin ...
He didn’t know when to end either – because in heartfelt fashion it went on for some pages. It ended like this:
In the past two years I have been places but there is no place like Wynberg. I guess its true, when you are a school boy, you don't realize how privileged and lucky you are until you leave. Being at Wynberg was a privilege that I would never forget. I'll always be a proud Wynberg man.
Is it not all worth it when, as a teacher, you sit in the stand at the Wanderers as an invited guest to watch India play South Africa – and two Wynberg Old Boys, Jacques Kallis and Richard Levi, are opening the batting for South Africa? A normal human rib cage is not capable of containing that pride!
It happened again at 8:00 am on Sunday morning (6 May) when the cameras panned on the four Wynberg Hockey Old Boys singing the National Anthem with gusto before their crucial cup final game in Japan to decide on that last place for the London Olympics.
How do you describe, to a non-teacher, that feeling of absolute delight and sheer pleasure when one of ‘your’ boys does well? When Lloyd Norris-Jones scored the goal which eventually decided the match? No Porsche, no bank account can replace that.
Thank you Rhett, Ian, Jonty and Lloyd. You reminded me of why I am in teaching. Good luck in London. Enjoy being Olympians.
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