In praise of John Carpenter

On Tuesday 9 November, at Prize Day in the sumptuous surroundings of the Guildhall,
Edwin Thomas was the latest in a long line of Head Boys stretching back to 1837 to
present the traditional eulogy to the School’s founder, in this amusing and heartfelt
speech, reproduced here from City Lights (issue 5,Autumn 2004).
My first lesson at City was a disaster. As a class, we were going through the first
few pages of our new Latin textbook, Caecilius. One by one, the characters in the
book were presented to us alongside a small illustration. Caecilius, the master of
the house, was seated at the dining table; Servus, the slave, was depicted cleaning
the floor. Our Latin teacher went round the class asking different boys who each
character might be.Pretty bog standard stuff, you might think. Until he reached me.
Eyebrows were raised when the teacher’s question was followed by an odd
silence. Grumio was clearly the cook (you could tell by the frying pan he was
holding), and yet I hadn’t clocked on. I could not for the world work out what this
round object was.The teacher seemed alarmed, but kept on:‘Have a guess’, he said.
Trembling with apprehension, it was a full minute before I spoke up, meekly
suggesting that this man ‘was perhaps the tennis coach’. The teacher shrieked in
horror, my colleagues wet themselves with laughter, and the incident served to
really lighten the atmosphere on an inevitably tense first day.
When I sat down to begin planning this speech, I asked,‘What does City mean
to me?’ Cultural diversity, academic and sporting achievement – yes, but one of the
things I am keen to convey is a very simple idea: City is fun. For six years now,
people have reminded me of that first day, and it never ceases to amuse.When I
leave the Sports Entrance for the final time, I know that what I will miss most are
these tales of schoolboy fun – incidents dotted over the years that made us all
laugh on the coach to Grove Park.
But what else? All schools are ‘fun’.What sets City apart? The teaching does.
Rarely is there such a good opportunity to say a personal ‘thank you’ to the staff
for all the work that they do. Everybody remembers a good teacher and they are
certainly in abundance at CLS.
But does City have anything that other schools do not? We have a founder who
is actually mentioned in a Shakespeare play. On Henry V’s arrival back home, the
Chorus tells the audience:‘But now behold / In the quick forge and working-house
of thought, / How London cloth pour out her citizens, / The mayor and all his
brethren in best sort, / Like to the senators of th’antique Rome, / With plebeians
swarming at their heels, / Go forth and fetch their conquering Caesar in.’ Research
has led me to the discovery that Carpenter would have been among these
‘brethren’ at that time. Indeed, throughout the war in France, we know that John
Carpenter maintained steady contact with King Henry V. From his camp before the
battle of Rouen we have a letter to the Town Clerk in which Carpenter asks for
‘more drink’. In return, 30 butts of sweet wine (10 of Tyre, 10 of Romeney, 10 of
Malmesey), 1000 pipes of ale and 2500 cups were all sent to the King’s camp.
John Carpenter was also the Town Clerk under the mayoralty of Dick
Whittington, but never actually became Mayor himself. He has often been called
(or rather once, by my Dad) ‘the Gordon Brown to Dick Whittington’s Tony Blair’.
Most importantly, however, it was he, John Carpenter, who in 1442 founded our
school.
City places real emphasis on, and has enormous faith in, the ability of boys to
reach a point where they discover a respect for the process of learning. If the
majority of schools do this to an extent, City goes full throttle. It is a school that
believes in the notion that each boy has his
own way of learning. Hence a school
French essay does not become something
that is done parrot-fashion, a reproduction
or carbon copy of ‘what the teacher said’,
but instead something that takes the allimportant
risk of being individual. It is a
school where such individual ideas are
nurtured, and it is here that the legacy of
John Carpenter becomes apparent.
Carpenter had an idea, he took a risk, and
600 years on his idea is still developing.
Education is something more than
teaching, and it is this concept that I believe
City gets just right. As B F Skinner once
wrote: ‘Education is what survives when
what has been learnt has been forgotten.’