Welcome to Harris Clapham Sixth Form. I’m Mr Handscombe and I’m about to share an assembly with you – this will be a mixture of new information, advice, and cultural allusions and we’ll go at a pace where you’ll have to concentrate to keep up. The first book I’m going to talk to you about is my favourite book in the world – The Lord of the Rings. If you’ve not read it then I strongly recommend it as an exploration of humanity through the lens of dwarves, elves and hobbits. I’ll return to hobbits in a minute, but first a few thoughts on sixth form.
Sixth Form is hard because there’s a bunch of stuff that you think you’ve got nailed that you just haven’t, ways in which you’ve been successful at Key Stage 4, that, we all hope, have got you GCSEs you’ll be rightly proud of, that are not going to work with you in Key Stage 5.
You are in the situation of Frodo and his friends at the beginning of chapter 9, as they arrive in Bree. You have had an adventure getting here from Hobbiton, you’ve faced scary farmers, hidden from mysterious riders, almost been eaten by trees and had all your clothes stolen by the spirits of the dead – just being here today is a massive success and nothing I say should be seen as underestimating how hard you’ve worked and how challenging your studies and social lives have been. However, the land between Hobbiton and Bree is fairly safe, reasonably peaceful – at least in comparison with the Wilderland you’re about to go into and you’re badly in need of a guide. Fortunately I am here, in fact the teachers are here, in the guise of Strider, we know the land, we’re on your side and if you stick with us then we’ll get you to where you need to go.
The first tricky thing is how hard sixth form study is – and this is something that cuts both ways: there are two groups of students and I want to emphasise that you can’t be in both. It’s possible, if you’re utterly brilliant, and I’m sure many of you are, not to be in either group – but you definitely can’t be in both. One group will have been working flat out to get everything done perfectly, have drafted and redrafted, have done without sleep to get schoolwork done. If you’re one of those then my message to you is that you need to get organized, place limits on how much time you can spend on each thing, make sure you sleep properly and accept that perfection is impossible. If you don’t take my advice on this one you’ll burn yourself to a crisp.
The other group will have done as little as possible until February, maybe even Easter of Year 11 and then decided to go to every intervention going and try to cram two years work into two months. If you’re one of this group then my message is that you need to get organized, get started from September of Year 12, keep on top of your studies and do the most you can with the time you have rather than the least you can get away with. If you don’t take my advice on this one you’ll find yourself in exams in Year 13 that you can’t hope to do well in.
Laziness and perfectionism are both human failings – both habits you need to get out of – and we’ll help: we’ll tell you how long to spend each week on each subject, we’ll set deadlines, give homework, advise you on how and what to read, how much of each holiday to spend studying. But you’ll have to do it.
And that’s the second really difficult thing – you’re making the step from being a child to being an adult – and that means taking responsibility for what you do: it means realizing that the choices you make affect your future. We’re not going to change your habits for you – we hope that the consequences we put in place might motivate you to do that, but the real consequence isn’t extra homework or detention or a stern conversation with your parents. The real consequence is that in two years time you’ll be disappointed in yourself and in seven years time twenty-three year old you will look back at seventeen year old you and think “That jerk wrecked my life.” Nobody ever looks back on their sixth form and wishes they’d spent more time on Snapchat or Tiktok, nobody ever thinks they should have spent more time on computer games or gossiping about the latest drama. Quite a lot of people look back and wish they’d worked a bit harder, started earlier, got better grades. I want the twenty three year old version of each one of you to look back and think “Good job, former me – you might have made some mistakes along the way [everyone does, the trick is to learn from them] – you might have made mistakes, but you listened, worked hard, took advice. Good job former me.”
The great thing about using The Lord of the Rings as a source for inspiration – apart from how amazing it is, did I mention that already? – is that you can rely on any sentence from it being principal-friendly. There is nothing to trouble my delicate ears. Rap music, on the other hand, is more tricksy – in past assemblies I’ve quoted Stormzy, Kenrick Lamar and Lil Baby and every time I’ve had to skip over words, avoid phrases that are just not appropriate for an assembly. Philip Larkin is just as bad, to be honest, and, in fact, it’s part of adult life that there are times and places for some turns of phrase and also occasions on which they should be avoided. I say this because I want to share some of what Akala has to say about learning, in a song where the title tells you much of the message: Get Educated.
“Geeks designed the system: Malthus and the Smiths were living in their vision so knowledge is power for devouring cowards that showered you with propaganda each and every hour, that’s why Malcolm never died as just another tug on the road a symbol over the globe, ‘cause did you know the most rebellious thing you can do is get educated.”
It’s an amazing song from the Knowledge is Power mixtape of 2012 and just this fragment has three references for us to follow up – so let’s do that before we get back to Akala and then to his message and then to you. Firstly, Thomas Robert Malthus was an early 19th century economist and scholar who put forward the thesis that populations use abundance, having more than enough to live on, to increase until the poorest suffer hardship. He built on the ideas of Adam Smith who was an economist in the 18th century who is said to be the father of capitalism and who argued that a country’s wealth is measured in available labour rather than precious metals. Malcolm X was an American civil rights activist and a vocal advocate for black empowerment and the promotion of Islam – he was assassinated in 1965. Akala is a Londoner, a journalist, author, activist, poet and, as we’ve seen, rapper.
The message of Get Educated is that there is a message that comes from popular culture – a message that he objects to - that learning is really only for certain groups in society – and that you probably don’t want to be part of those groups. Akala says that the world is structured to stop you understanding it, that the system wants to keep you ignorant and amused by selfies, celebrities and backflips. As part of the system, I think he’s wrong about this, but I agree that too many young people are not filling their lives with learning and I agree with him that the most rebellious thing you can do is get educated – the way you can maximise your power to change your future, to have control over your destiny, to be in charge of your life is to get educated.
And getting educated means making the most of your time, it means taking advice from those who know the terrain, it means recognising that just as 60 words of a song have given us three references to follow up, three philosophies to think about, to wrestle with, to challenge, so the world is filled with interesting ideas, each leading onto the next. The more you know, the more you realise you don’t know – so get educated.
There’s one more thing Akala says, in an interview rather than a song – he said “The earlier you're aware of the hurdles, the easier they are to jump over” – and again, I agree with that. Taking the step from where you are now to where you want to be means getting over a long series of hurdles – I suggest you start thinking about them now and follow up on the two ideas I’ve shared with you. Firstly – listen to Akala’s song “Get Educated”, and maybe some of his other songs, and maybe follow up the people he talks about, and maybe read his books. Secondly – go to your local library and borrow The Lord of the Rings and read it, or maybe borrow a different book that catches your eye and come back and tell me why it looked more interesting than my favourite book in the world. Because, actually, that’s also part of getting educated – following up on other people’s favourites whilst realizing that they don’t have to be yours – it’s ok for you to prefer a different book so long as you’ve got something to talk about. So, this summer, and next year, and for the rest of your life – get educated.
Footnotes:
1. Stormzy is quoted in Boot Confidence and Glee, Kendrick in Getting out of the Mood and Conversation, and Lil Baby in Start Here
2. The Lord of the Rings also inspired Sam, Frodo and Tagore
3. The difficulty of quoting Larkin is picked up (and dealt with) in Kindred Spirits