Considering that public speaking heads the list of all phobias, the reasons people register for a course is usually out of necessity, i.e. they have been promoted at work and now have to chair meetings and deliver speeches, or they might just wish to improve their self-confidence in public, which is, after all, the purpose of such courses.
One student at a night school, in Sydney, revealed in the first lesson of a 6 week course that he was to be married in two months' time, and he didn't want to disappoint his bride and the wedding guests by delivering a poor groom's speech.  He also said that he felt obliged to deliver a funny speech despite the fact that he wasn't a funny man.  My advice to him, as usual, was to forget being funny and to speak from the heart.  He spent every lesson perfecting his speech.
In the last lesson he delivered the speech he intended to give two weeks later.  His opening remark was quite funny:
"I looked up books of quotations on marriage, but I couldn't find any that were in favour of it!"
The rest of his speech was deeply touching and earned him a standing ovation from the class.
I said to him after the class:
"You really must tell your bride about doing this course."
He insisted that she must 'never know', to which I said:
"I can't think of a more thoughtful compliment to pay a bride than her nervous husband-to-be attending a public speaking course, to give him the confidence not to disappoint her at the reception."
He shook his head, but I urged him to tell her, if not on their honeymoon, then in the near future.

"The only questions asked in school should be by the pupils", some wise person said.
Testing and exams reveal almost nothing about intelligence, merely memory.
We had so much testing at one school I taught at, that a teacher remarked, in a staff meeting:
"Do you pull up a flower every week to see how it's growing?"
Of course, his comment was ignored by management, all of whom were scrupulously  following the government's instructions on window-dressing.
Schools should be places where an insatiable curiosity about everything in life is the natural ethos.
Instead, our schools are busy ramming home the cerebral syllabuses of a very narrow range of subjects.  It is anti-educational.
"How is it that American education turns a torrent into a trickle?" John Holt asked decades ago.
Schools are becoming more and more anti-educational all the time.
Most people refuse or are too lazy to think for themselves.  'Received wisdom' is often exposed as a sham in many cases.  The nonsense so many believe is the only way covers a range of issues, education being one of them.  I laugh out loud when I hear someone say that British education is the finest in the world.  Wrong on so many levels.
Intelligent employers tend to place CVs, qualifications etc. further down the scale than careful questioning in an interview and reading the prospective employee's body language.
One last quotation, linked very much to the opening quotation:
"To give children answers to questions that they have not asked, is to make profound cynics of them."

This week I would like to pay tribute to one of the finest teachers and human beings it has been my good fortune to know.
Harold Glasby was one of my history teachers at my secondary school in Sydney in the 1960s.  He was also the deputy head of the school.
He was, as history teachers should be - very knowledgeable and a passionate storyteller.  His rendition of the French National Assembly after the revolution is still vivid in my memory.
In my last year, an incident occurred which said a lot about him.  A teacher had accused and punished a boy in our year, for writing insults about the teacher on a classroom board, without a shred of evidence that the boy was guilty.  This particular teacher was well known for having his favourites and his pet hates. 
So we, as a year (150 or so boys), decided one breaktime to go on strike and refuse to attend lessons until the teacher in question apologised to the boy and to us as a body of students.  At the end of break we all sat on the grassy embankment at the East side of the school.
It didn't take long for windows to be flung open and then hundreds of pupils, yelling, cheering, whistling their approval while their class teachers tried in vain to continue the lesson.
After ten minutes or so, Harold Glasby suddenly appeared from nowhere, brandishing two canes in his hands as he shouted:
"Get to class NOW!"
We didn't actually fear Harold Glasby, but such was our respect and liking for him, we rose as one and made our way to our classrooms.
Near the end of the lesson, Harold Glasby arrived and wanted to know why we had gone on strike.  We told him our grievance and the very next day, after thoroughly examining the evidence, the teacher our grievance was against apologised to the boy he had wrongfully accused and punished.  He then apologised to us as a year.  So good for Harry!
His speech to our farewell dinner was a masterpiece of hilarity and wisdom, earning him a standing ovation from us.
I had cause to speak to him a few years later, when he was head of The Conscientious Objectors' Committee against the Vietnam War and conscription.  A brave stance to take for a civil servant, but then he was a State civil servant, not a Federal one, which would have put him at odds with the Australian Government's shameful policy on the war, making it impossible for him to be a teacher.
I count myself very lucky to have known such a man.

With a general election imminent, I was reminded the other day of one of the United States of America's most brilliant and humane politicians, Adlai Stevenson, the type of politician who wouldn't get far today.




Born in1900, Stevenson challenged Eisenhower twice for the presidency, but lost out both times.  After losing in 1952, he remarked in his speech conceding defeat:
"I'm too old to cry and it hurts too much to laugh."
After failing again in 1956, he said:
"I think the American public suspect any politician who has a sense of humour".


He became a well respected man in Washington, and a great admirer of Eleanor Roosevelt, of whom he said:
"She prefers to light candles than curse the darkness."


He was one of the few reasonable voices in Kennedy's Cuban missile crisis, urging restraint when all the hawks were busy promoting military force.  How right Stevenson was.


He made many comments about society, two of which are my favourites - both profoundly true, in my opinion:
"My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular."
"Power corrupts, but lack of power corrupts absolutely."

Last week, I wrote about being human.  But that was looking at mostly positive aspects of our nature, as my friend Kent reminded me in an email.


The issue of whether we are born good or evil is a huge one, which has puzzled the minds of many.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau and others claim the former, i.e. we are born naturally good and it's only conditioning and  repression that warp our natures and create evil.
The Christian religion claims the opposite, that we are born with 'original sin', i.e. evil, and that only parents, teachers and priests can set us on the path of goodness. 
"But what about serial killers, child murderers, rapists, Hitler, Saddam Hussein ?  Surely they are proof that our human nature is evil?" 
"But what about Martin Luther King Jnr., Gandhi and most people?  They're good people."


If you examine the childhoods of serious criminals, Hitler, Saddam, and other monsters of history, you will find childhoods of immense cruelty, hate and neglect.  But if you study the childhoods of basically good people, you will find loads of love, support and freedom.  As a teacher, I have seen living proof of this - all the children I taught reflected their parents and upbringing, from the best to the worst.


I don't believe that there has ever been a 'born criminal'.  For good or evil, our childhoods are vital in establishing who we are for the rest of our lives.  Which is the best argument I can think of for giving new life the best chance possible in life.

Recently, I was involved in a discussion about what it means to be 'human', and it got me thinking about the subject.
The human race likes to think of itself as superior to other species and therefore the strongest.  Yes, we have developed sophisticated languages, are self-reflective, appreciate humour, build cities.  But the word 'human' is a synonym for 'weak' in most contexts, e.g.
"I know I shouldn't have eaten those chocolates, but I'm only human!"


The OED defines human as "showing the better qualities of humankind, such as sensitivity".
Human also means compassionate when used in the sense of reminding others why we should feel for a persecuted and unpopular person:
 "Because he's a human being!"


Diversity in the human race is vast, but we are still all connected through the experiences of human loss, joy, pain, love etc.  Unfortunately, many people look for the differences between groups of humans rather than the similarities.


We are all an extension of the animal race, but, as Toynbee pointed out, that tiny biological difference makes for a huge leap into another species.  Which is why the law of the jungle - 'survival of the fittest' - applies itself mercilessly in the jungle, but should not be applied in human society.  We are too human to revert to animal when it suits us. 
Bertrand Russell said of a good human society:
"Competition belongs solely on the sports' field".  It's worth contemplating the consequences of such a world.

A while back I wrote about Miss Enid Campbell, the mad but colourful head of my infants' school in the 1950s.
On the day before we broke up for the Easter holidays, Miss Campbell contrived a scenario that drove us wild with excitement.
The school had a broad front, with tall doors of wood from the floor to halfway up, and then glass panels to the ceiling.  At playtime, Miss Campbell would lock all these doors.  She had already enlisted some boys from the last year of the primary school, hoping that by the age of 11 or 12 they had learned the truth about the Easter Bunny.  Inside the school, one boy would hold up two giant, furry ears on sticks, visible through the glass and bouncing up and down like a giant rabbit.  The other boys would place an Easter egg in each of our desks.
At the end of playtime, Miss Campbell would rush into the playground, shouting:
"Children! Children!  I can't get into the school.  Someone has locked all the doors.  But who?"
Of course, we would all look towards the doors, see the bouncing ears, and shout:
"It's the Easter Bunny!"
Hysteria ensued, all of us convinced that the Easter Bunny was in our school.
Then Miss Campbell would say:
"My purse is inside.  Do you think he'll take it?"
Of course, we would answer as one:
"No! He's a good rabbit!"
When all the eggs were distributed, the doors were unlocked and the ears disappeared.
We would enter our classrooms, delighted to receive a chocolate egg each, and extra delighted that it had been given to us personally by the Easter Bunny.
Such an imaginative, generous act was typical of the extraordinary Miss Enid Campbell.