Making a difference
It was a great pleasure to welcome our students to the new school year this week – it’s always a time of promise and optimism as we look forward to the coming months and all they have in store. We offered a particularly warm welcome to those joining Brentwood for the first time this week and encouraged everyone to get involved with as many aspects of school life as possible.
In our first assembly of the school year, we referenced a speech made in 2014 by Admiral William H. McRaven at the University of Texas. Admiral McRaven was speaking to students who were just about to graduate and, as is traditional on such occasions, he was tasked with providing some words of wisdom as the audience contemplated what life might have in store for them. His speech went viral and is one of the most viewed ever. Please find below a short adapted extract:
‘Your university’s slogan is ‘what starts here changes the world’. Tonight almost 8,000 students are graduating from the University of Texas and it’s estimated that the average person in America will meet 10,000 people in their lifetime – that’s a lot of folks. But if every one of you changes the lives of just 10 people and each one of those people changes the lives of another and if it goes on for five generations, within 100 years or so the people here today will have helped change the lives of 800 million people. That’s over twice the population of the United States, and go one more generation and it reaches 8 billion people – that’s the entire population of the world. If you think it’s hard to change the lives of 10 people you’re wrong. I saw it happen every day in Iraq and Afghanistan – a young officer senses something isn’t right and directs the platoon away from a 500-pound explosive, saving the lives of a dozen soldiers and, or course, the generations of their children and grandchildren who otherwise would never have lived. And while the lessons I learned were from my time in the military, changing the world can happen anywhere and anyone can do it. I can assure you, it matters not your social status, gender, ethnic or religious background or sexual orientation. The things we need to make a positive difference to the lives of others are the same the world over.’
Admiral McRaven went on to give 10 lessons he had learned from a 36-year career that he suggested would help everyone in the audience improve the lives of at least 10 others – and by following his advice they would also, he argued, lead successful and fulfilling lives. Over the first few weeks of term, we’re going to focus on these lessons in our whole school assemblies. To conclude our first, I referred to one of Anne Frank’s memorable diary entries:
‘How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.’
As we begin a new school year, with all the promise and opportunity it brings, we asked all our students – whether this is their first week at Brentwood or whether they’ve been here since they were three years old – to to consider the small, practical ways they might further improve our community – and therefore our world – over the next 12 months.
Have a great weekend
Best wishes
Michael Bond
