This past week we had an important tradition to observe. Namely, Remembrance Assembly. On the actual day, last Thursday, ceremonies were held around the country, to commemorate the signing of the armistice that ended the First World War, at 11:00am on the 11th day of the 11th month. We always hold our Remembrance Assembly on the Friday before Remembrance Sunday.
Understandably, some of our students may wonder why we bother. Most of them will know the day commemorates those who lost their lives in war, predominantly the two World Wars of the last century. Commemorates, not celebrates. Remembrance Day does not glorify war. Far from it. It is intended as a time for us all to call to mind the great tragedy of war, and to pay our respects to those who perished, and to all whose lives were impacted. Neither is it some kind of historic taunt about winners and losers. All sides lose when nations take up arms against each other.

Simply put, Remembrance Day is, as the name suggests, a moment to remember. Indeed, one of central elements of any Remembrance Day service is the Ode that is read out, taken from a poem called “For The Fallen”. During the service, someone will recite:

“They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old;
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.”
At which point, all those who gathered (which will be you this week) should repeat the final line together:
“We will remember them.”

Which is easy to say but, as the years go by, increasingly harder to do. Because in order to remember something, you need to know about it in the first place. And even if you do know about it, it needs to have relevance to remain stuck in your memory.

Not that many years ago, both those things were true for most people. In the years that followed the Second World War, most people had their own personal, usually painful, first-hand experiences to recall. Even in the later decades of the 20th Century, most of us had parents or grandparents who had been directly involved.

But in the past twenty years, those connections have faded. Today, very few of you will have a direct living connection with anyone who was touched by either of the World Wars. In my lifetime, the last veteran of World War One has died. In your lifetime, the last of those who fought in World War Two will also pass away. Who, then, are you supposed to remember? And why?

The why is fairly easy. As a great philosopher once said,

“Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it”.

All well and good. You can learn about dates and battles. Death tolls and casualty figures. But how are those numbers relevant to you personally, in 2021? How can you make this week’s acts of remembrance mean more? That’s what HGS’s observances are about.

An Assembly has been held at this School every November for the past 103 years, partly to help each new generation of students understand why we should never be in a hurry to start another war. However, our commemoration is more than just a history lesson. It is more personal than that. It is also a tribute to those lost from our own School family. Realise that each name on the memorial plaques in Big School was a young man, not very much different in age or aspiration than our students today.

That connection is there for us all. Not a single nation amongst the many that are represented in the School today was untouched by the two World Wars. On Remembrance Assembly, we remember not just the fallen English soldiers, but the toll that was taken on young men in every country.

But not just young men. Overwhelmingly, it was them who paid with their lives in war. Yet women were not immune. Some fought, many others suffered the loss of their sons, husbands, brothers, fathers. Often barely out of school, little more than boys. When we read out the names of the fallen, I often wonder how it must have been for the mother who first heard that awful news.

I picture the Telegram boy turning into her street, that dreaded War Office message in hand. Imagine her silently praying that he would walk past her gate, deposit his grievous news at any other house but hers.
See her reading the first few words of that single stark line “The War Office deeply regrets to inform you…” Literally, a death sentence. Even now, a century on, how uncomfortable to picture any mother being told her son has been killed. Fathers grieve too of course. But each of us knows the special bond we have with our mother.

“We will remember them.”

So, if we wonder what all the fuss is about, I invite you to call to mind an image of a mother receiving the news that her son or husband has fallen as a casualty of war. I know it is harder for our and younger generations to repeat that line “We will remember them” with conviction. But that shouldn’t stop us from taking a moment to learn a little about what was sacrificed in the name of war. Not just by those who died, but also by those who had to go on living without them.

Stay well and safe.

Be kind to yourself and others.

Best wishes,

Dr Bird

King Edward VI Handsworth Grammar School for Boys held its annual Remembrance Assembly in Big School on Friday 12^th November 2021. We were able to hold the Assembly with social distancing so that Year 7 attended in person whilst the remainder of school had an extended Form time and we all observed a 2-minute silence at the same time. The Reverend Dr Bob Stephen who is Chair of the Governing Body and Rector of Handsworth led the act of Remembrance. The Headmaster delivered a very timely and thought-provoking introduction which highlighted the necessity to work towards peace in all we do. He highlighted that important facets of life such as showing respect and tolerance of each other, being kind and compassionate and celebrating our differences are all highly significant steps on the road to peace. He emphasised the need for the values of peace, freedom and hope in all we do as well as focusing upon the themes of unity and compassion.

Mrs Harvey delivered the address and the text is included here:

Year 7 Remembrance Assembly Address, 2021

Good Morning.

As you sit here today, Year 7, in this Remembrance Day assembly, you could be forgiven for thinking that the First World War is merely an episode in history for you; an episode almost as remote as the Romans, or the Six Wives of Henry VIII. Interesting to learn about, but somehow nothing directly to do with you. It took place over a hundred years ago- no one is alive today who took part in it, and even the oldest super-centenarians in our society weren’t even born when it ended.

Equally, the numbers often quoted might seem unimaginable, and therefore unreal: over 700,000 British soldiers died between 1914 and 1918. The sheer size of the number somehow takes some of the significance away from it. It’s hard to imagine 8 Wembley Stadiums filled to capacity, but that’s how many people 700,000 is. Or, to put it another way, it’s nearly 5,000-year groups of Year 7s. It’s so big it becomes a blur.

But now I want us to focus in a little more, to close the distance and bring a human face to what happened over a 100 years ago. As you sit here in Big School, in a room where the young men from this school who fought from the fields of  Passchendale and  the Somme to the shores of Gallipoli off Turkey sat before you, as you look at the beautiful stained glass window, built in 1921 as a memorial to the Handsworth Grammar School boys who died in the conflict, I want to tell you a story about a young man who left for France in 1914, and came back in 1919- but more of that later.

My grandfather was called Albert William Durrant. He was born in 1895 while Queen Victoria was still on the throne, and lived with his family not very far from here in West Bromwich, in Ault Street, which still exists today. He had 4 brothers and a sister, and took his role as the big brother very seriously. You all wear the Staffordshire knot with pride on your blazer badge, and my grandpa was a proud Staffordshire lad as West Bromwich was located in Staffordshire in those days as the county called the West Midlands hadn’t been created. He had relatives who lived in Birmingham, and would have travelled up and down the Soho Road frequently, passing many of the same old buildings you pass today.  His favourite hobby was football and he loved to watch his beloved West Brom at the Hawthorns just up the road, which was opened in 1900. Footballers in those days were all amateurs and he dreamt of joining them, but unfortunately, in 1906, disaster struck. Both of his parents died within a year from consumption, a disease of the lungs which we now call tuberculosis. My grandpa and his brothers and sister had to go and live with the other orphans in the workhouse on Hallam Street, which is on the site of Sandwell Hospital today. It was a difficult time for the family, but when he was 13 he was able to leave school and go to work in a factory. The small wage that he earned enabled the brothers and sisters to leave the workhouse and go and live with an auntie, and the factory he worked in, Kenrick’s, still exists today, the old red brick building amongst the warehouses just off the M5 up the road from here.

But he needed a better job as the main breadwinner so that his brothers and sisters could carry on at school, and in 1913 he joined the army. He was a good soldier by all accounts, although his army records show that he was sometimes fined for swearing, or for being late back to barracks after a weekend’s leave. A normal 18 year old, the same age as the Year 13s you see in school. His regiment, The South Staffordshire regiment, was deployed to France in 1914, and was sent to the Western front. My grandpa was soon transferred to the Royal Army Medical Corps and spent the next 4 years as a medical orderly, helping to care for the constant stream of young men disastrously injured by the brutal fighting.

They say that army medics are especially brave as they are the only people on the battlefield with their backs to the enemy. The technological advances in weapons such as tanks, machine guns, aeroplanes and chemical warfare meant that the injuries seen in the Great War were new and terrible. Albert worked at casualty clearing stations just behind the front line where the injured were triaged and assessed. The shells rained down around him, and he worked in the most basic of conditions in a tent with no electricity or water to provide emergency medicine. They had basic drugs, had to wash and re-use bandages, and antibiotics wouldn’t be invented for at least another 30 years. He learnt how to dress wounds, to put splints on broken limbs, and as the fighting intensified, to amputate arms and legs and deal with the shell shocked.

Mental health was poorly understood in those days, but he spent long nights comforting the terrified and broken, wrote letters to their families in his beautiful handwriting, and cheered them up with silly jokes and talent competitions.  Sometimes the stretcher bearers would bring in badly injured enemy soldiers, and they were cared for too. He was barely 20 years old and yet he had seen so much death and destruction. But he carried on, doing his best to be a good medic and a good comrade. On one occasion, he even managed to meet up with all of his brothers, who were also serving in France by then.  He borrowed an ambulance and it was the only time in his life he ever drove a vehicle. Like all good brothers, they managed to have an argument during that meeting, but they made up after an impromptu kickabout. Football was still important! Amazingly, he and all of his brothers survived the war, although none of them would ever return to France. When the war ended in 1918 he had been away from home for 4 years already, but he was not allowed back straightaway.

Before he could come home, he had to work through the Spanish flu, the pandemic which swept through the world at the end of the Great War, causing 500 million cases and possibly up to 100 million deaths throughout the globe by 1920. Its lessons never left him; I was only 6 when he died, but I have a strong memory of him showing me how to wash my hands, and insisting they were clean before tea. He had seen first hand the horrors of unchecked infection, and he was a stickler for cleanliness.

He finally came home in 1918, married my granny who wrote to him every week during the war, and led a quiet life. He lived until the ripe old age of 80, and enjoyed smoking his pipe to the end. As a family, we have the cards and letters they wrote to each other during their 4 years of separation, and what stands out, in the most amazing way, as well as the details of the war – apparently my great granny was terrified of Zeppelins over west Brom- is the delicious ordinariness of my grandpa. Sometimes he’d send a thank you for the scarf or cake he’d received, other times he would send a picture postcard or a hand-drawn picture. His letters were filled with the things he missed- he dreamt of a day at the seaside or a trip to Kinver Edge. He was no superhero in a cape, but an example of how an ordinary lad can do amazing things when he puts one foot in front of another and commits to doing something well. To me he was just grandpa, who used to take me to see the horses in the field, or practise tying bows with the laces of his boots, but I see now that the lessons he learned informed every aspect of his life: he tried his best at everything he did.

This is something we can all learn; not all of us, thankfully, will be called to give service in the theatre of war, but make no mistake, the service we can offer is just as important. Being the best members of our families, school and community we can be is so important. Living our lives with the values of community, aspiration, respect, endeavour and service, not only here in school, but as we get older, will enable us to have a positive impact on everyone we meet and everything we do. Our remembrance should be active not passive; the best way for us to honour the fallen is to do something positive with our lives and to be the examples of the future.

The Senior Prefects all attended and Harikesh, Rohit, Cameron and Nyrun took an active part in the Assembly by reading poems and reflections and laying a wreath at the stained-glass window to commemorate the School alongside Mr Farrell who was representing the Bridge Trust Society. It was a very special event and a fitting tribute to the Old Boys whose names are listed on the memorial plaques in Big School.

The loss of life in war is often hard to comprehend, yet we still witness bitter disagreements and conflicts, often on a much smaller scale, in our own communities and lives. I doubt many of us like conflict, although we sometimes need to take a courageous stand for what we believe is right; we can, of course, disagree graciously and we can be the first to seek reconciliation. I hope that, as adults, we can lead by example and teach our children to be at peace with themselves and with others, and to forge a more peaceful world.

Haec Olim Meminisse Iuvabit

“Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts, as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, to absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags. It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex.” From Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte.

Given that she died over 100 years before we were born, I am pretty sure that the great English novelist Charlotte Bronte, who wrote those words, never met my first girlfriend or indeed my wife. But she certainly seemed to speak for her. That same sentiment in the reading, in which Jane Eyre expresses frustration about women lacking the position and privilege of men, was still in existence a century later, when I was growing up. Sadly, most would acknowledge it is still the case today. Of course, the concept of unequal privilege doesn’t stop with gender either. As the recent focus of Black History Month tells us, being born into uneven advantage arises just as often because of your race and ethnicity as well. Not to mention perhaps the most pervasive source of privilege of all, the distinctions created by differences in class or wealth.

But then, so too did coming from a stable family and having parents who had unbounded praise and aspiration for their children. That was another privilege that I didn’t even recognise at the time. It is only as I have pursued a lifelong career in education that I have come to fully understand how big an initial advantage a young person gets from simply being born in a family that encourages, rather than limits, their belief in themselves.

In recent years, a number of global movements have challenged people in all nations to confront the notion of privilege and inherent unfairness in society. The Gender Pay and MeToo campaigns, that have drawn attention to women being marginalised or mistreated in the workplace. The Black Lives Matter protests, focussing on racial discrimination and inequity. Outcry against institutions that may have profited historically from slavery or other unfair and immoral practices in the past. One might even say that the climate change and sustainability campaigns of the current day are in part driven by unhappiness at the way that people today may be abusing the privilege of limited resources to the detriment of those who inhabit the Earth in the future.

Privilege is a tricky concept and has certainly become an emotionally charged word throughout those various campaigns. In its simplest terms, it means to have a special right or advantage that others do not have.

That sounds inherently bad, yet I often introduce myself by saying it is my privilege to be the Headmaster of HGS. That position is a special right, afforded only to me. I do consider it a privilege, but that doesn’t make it a bad thing. If I started to abuse the position, used it to make your lives worse, not better, that would be a different matter altogether.

However, I was granted that privilege through my own efforts and actions taken throughout my life. Perhaps it would be a different story if I had been born into the role. The difficulty many people have with privilege tends not to be about the advantages we earn throughout our lives by virtue of how hard we work or what kind of values we demonstrate. Most people accept that it is only fair to be judged and rewarded for the way you live your life.

What is more contentious is the idea that we might be born with an innate advantage over other people. We can have no influence over our race, gender, size, or shape when we come out of the womb. Those are the cards we are dealt. Likewise, we have no control over the family into which we are born; their relative level of wealth, their social station. In different countries and in different times, that set of traits we inherit can either prove to be an advantage or a disadvantage in life.

The question then, for those who are dealt favourable cards of gender or ethnicity or class at birth, is how to play them? The three choices seem fairly clear.

Firstly, you could decide to protect your privilege, and build a good life based on the advantage you have over others. Maybe even deny that your advantage exists. Perhaps try to make sure that you pass on your privilege to a few chosen others.

Secondly, you could spend your whole time apologising for those characteristics that you inherited and have no control over. Or try to give up the advantage. Or deliberately ignore it and live a life of self-deprecation or denial.

Or thirdly, and more sensibly, you can recognise the privilege you have been handed and, if it feels slightly unfair that you were luckier than others, try to leverage it for their benefit as well as your own. Live a life using your advantage for the benefit of all.

We don’t berate top athletes for their good luck in being born tall or strong or well-proportioned. We encourage them to use what nature’s lottery gave them to bring pleasure to us all, even if it is vicarious. Likewise, if we ourselves are born into some form of privilege. Surely, we should try and use it for the good of all?

There is an enormous amount of privilege right here in HGS. Most of you were born with some form of initial advantage, relative to other young people your age. Whether that is fair or not is a question for philosophers. My question, your challenge, is what are you going to do with that advantage?

If you are male, what will you do if you see women feeling as Jane Eyre did, “suffering from too rigid a restraint.”? If you are white, what will you do when you see others disadvantaged just because of the colour of their skin? You live and work amongst people from many different nations; you know they are equal in this place in terms of skill and ability. How will you ensure their opportunities match their talents beyond our gates? What will you do, when you leave this place, to share your advantage and offer others a leg up?

And whatever your gender, race, or relative wealth, I still hold that the greatest initial advantage that most of you have in life is the fact that you come from a loving family, with parents who value you enough to have sent you here. How will you leverage that privilege in the future? Not just for your own good, but for the benefit of others.

The thing about initial advantage is that it should be used with empathy by those fortuitous enough to have it, for the betterment of all people. Not to perpetuate inequality, but to eradicate it.
As Benjamin Franklin said, “Justice will not be served until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are”.

The system can be changed faster from within than without. That’s why I teach; it is the most powerful agency for social change on the planet. And one of the things that stops me feeling smug, or guilty, about whatever privilege I may have experienced in life is the opportunity I have to share my good fortune.

Stay well and safe.

Be kind to yourself and others.

Best wishes,

Dr Bird