Aquila | 2015-2016

AQUILA 2 0 15 - 2 0 1 6 1

CON CO NTENTS Note from the Headmistress

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Girls got to stick together, right?

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Note from the Editor

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Head Girls Report

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Hidden Gems: Discovering the Radio Times Festival

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Heaven

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The Biggest Card Trice of All

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House Reports

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Discovering the never ending struggle against poaching

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Squares

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The action behind the action

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The Hidden World of the Nacirema

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The truth about plastics in our lives

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Discovering Switzerland

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Breakthrough discoveries in cancer

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Self-Discovery

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The Importance of being Gerhard Domagk

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Self-Deception

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Hacking out the truth

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The deception of the Enigma machine and the discovery one cracked

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Milgram and the Psychological Scam

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The Deceptive Genius

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We are all Human. But are we all Humane?

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Sleepwalking straight to jail...

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Book Reviews

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Discovery and deception in Design Technology

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Banning Books - Our Freedom Deceived

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What the food companies forgot to mention

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The Deception of the Treaty of Versailles

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Food unwrapped

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Hidden Gems: Discovering the Spitfire

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Superfoods: The truth behind the trend

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The Mystery of the Klu Klux Klan

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The Fairytale Uncloaked

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Deception of Dairy Farming Finding the true realities

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Discovery and Deception in the field of Nutrition

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Discovering Auschwitz and the deception that lies beneath it

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The Olympics: Revelations and Ruses

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A Façade of Reality

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Advances in Sport

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Discovery of Artaud and Brecht

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Valete

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Deception of Mental Illness

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Upper Sixth leavers

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FROM THE HEADMISTRESS

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Each year I am enormously proud of the girls and the effort they put into the creation of “Aquila”. Since the very first year when we handed over the editorial responsibility of the annual school magazine to the girls themselves, their enthusiasm, dedication and determination has been impressive to witness.

I was a little unsure as to how they would pull their articles together into a coherent and balanced publication.

However, as I am sure you will agree when you read through the pages that follow, they have yet again managed to produce a magazine which is engaging and ambitious in terms of the huge variety of content.

This year, when I heard the girls had chosen “discovery and deception” as their theme, I have to confess that

At Pipers we encourage the girls to explore, question and discover their own voices - this magazine is a

true reflection of that aspiration. So please read on and perhaps the girls’ words will inspire you to make new discoveries of your own.

Mrs Ness-Gifford, Headmistress

FRONT COVER RE-DRAWN BY ALICE W (UPPER SIXTH) FROM THE ORIGINAL ILLUSTRATION BY PAUL AGULE.

NOTE

FROM THE EDITOR

In a world where we are continually seeking knowledge but constantly wondering what to trust, we thought there would be nothing better than to choose “Discovery and Deception” as our theme for the magazine this year.

It evolved from a range of ideas, influenced by the media and school life, especially what we discover through our education. Because this is such a prominent theme in our habitual lives - ranging from Edward Snowden’s CIA secrets to someone’s social network page - we thought it would prompt an array of informative, insightful and engaging articles from the girls. And we have not been disappointed.

I am thrilled with the work girls have sent in over the year. It’s so interesting to see what has come to their minds when they have thought about this year's theme. From fairytales to sport, I’m sure the articles will keep you glued to the page.

One exciting aspect in the creation of the magazine was the design.

We hope you like the striking black front cover. We chose this optical illusion to challenge you right from the beginning. You may have found the "Face” - but here’s the big question: can you see the “Liar”? Inside the magazine, we wanted lots of colour to represent the bursts of discovery.

The merging colours were felt to incorporate both Discovery and Deception - the colour was the Discovery, and yet it creeps onto the page like a deceptive spy.

As the Editor, I have learnt that unity is key in order to work efficiently, which is why I would like to thankDeputy Editor, Hannah W, and Alice W, the Design Editor, for their enormous effort and dedication. Without them I don’t

think we would have achieved so much! For the rest of the Committee members, I thank you too. Sophie B, Oonagh O, Bethan T, Bethan R, Imogen S, Ruby B, Maddy S, Poppy N and Kirsty J have attended every week and have provided plenty of fantastic ideas. For the Lower Sixth members who will continue the magazine next year I would like to say that running a magazine takes a lot of hard work but with a lot of communication and effort, it all works out in the end.

Additionally, I don’t think I can express in words how much help Miss Conroy has been to the magazine. From the very beginning she has aided and guided us, and put up with my many emails. And suffice to say she kept us sane too! I thank Dr Smith as well, for his perceptive contributions and calm attitude which has always helped enormously when deadlines were looming. This was his first year working with the Committee and he has shown that he is here to stay.

her opinions because it is important, something which should be upheld and treasured in every school.

When I was first told that I was Editor, I didn’t know where to begin.

I had seen the previous Editors work tirelessly over their magazines and wondered how I would ever match their work. But this position, both stressful and rewarding, has taught me so much. Now it will be handed over to another student next year, and - although it will be hard to give it up - I am sure they will continue to do great work for the magazine.

So, dear reader, sit back, get comfy and prepare to discover and to be deceived…

Lydia B (Upper Sixth) Editor

Last, but by no means least, I thank the writers who have contributed to this magazine. Girls from all years have provided the thought-provoking and awe-inspiring articles. I hope you will agree that this magazine is testament to the fact that there is no typical Pipers girl. Each girl here is an individual and wants to share

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HEAD GIRL'S REPORT

Stressful, hard work, absolutely brilliant. Three things which are apparent in every year at Pipers, though I must admit they are compatible to Art coursework as well!

If someone told the ten year old girl sitting on one of the comfy sofas in the Conference Room just before her first day at Pipers that she would one day be Head Girl, that girl would splutter out a sound of disbelief.

However, the moment I entered school life after that day I recognised Pipers as my home. I can’t quite believe eight years have gone by since then, I still remember like it was yesterday co-operating in a serious sticker trading system in Year 7 and grumbling about having to walk all the way up to Languages in Year 9 for registration each day.

The year I arrived at Pipers, a new segment of the school - the Lady Buckinghamshire Studios - was being built, and now in my final year at Pipers the Arts Centre is being created. Each year something is improved, and this year has been the all-time high. By the end of this year we will have had an AstroTurf, the new Arts Centre, Dance Studio, a new cafe, a new Library and a new Sixth Form Centre complete with deck chairs, a flashy pool table and let’s not forget the object which keeps every Sixth Former going… the toaster. This continual drive to improve the school is further shown in the introduction of the new Student Voice this year. They have managed to set up a Food

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Committee, are investigating a possible new school coat and got a table tennis table in the grounds. The Upper Sixth’s final year at Pipers has also been a transition year; from the dreaded personal statement for the UCAS application to the introduction of the new Sixth Form Centre.

However, some of my best memories took place this year, from winning a Staff vs. Sixth Form pool match with Vicky H to taking part in the Hampden Talent Show where the Upper Sixth tried our hardest to show off our best cheerleading moves, as choreographed by Leah E. Saturday 4 July 2015 is a date I will never forget. I was genuinely humbled and surprised to be given the position of Head Girl. Through my many years at Pipers I have taken part in a club or activity in nearly every Department, from Lacrosse to Senior Debating.

Being Head Girl has been a privilege, a once in a lifetime experience which pushed me into new situations, enabling me to gain new skills in the process. I will honestly miss the role next year and the lack of a gown at university will be very disconcerting.

Leadership only leads to success if there is a fully functioning team in place and I would like to take this opportunity to thank my brilliant deputies, Georgina H and Hannah W, and my dedicated Sports Captain, Vicky H. Without Georgina’s strongminded views, Hannah’s efficiency and Vicky’s organisational skills my time as Head Girl would have been very difficult. The rest of the team also needs a mention due to their hard work and support throughout the whole year, Leah E, Ella S, Nia T, Maddy S, Pamela N, Kirsty J, Lizzy P, Millie F. Leadership is greatly encouraged at Pipers as shown by

the leadership dinner which took place in September where we invited 30 Head Boys and Girls to Pipers and had a brilliant talk by psychologist, Adie Shariff.

Two years ago Aquila changed from a magazine dedicated to Pipers life to a magazine questioning what is learnt in the classroom and using current affairs to influence opinions. This year with the theme of “Discovery and Deception” we are continuing this idea of questioning what we know and what we don’t.

The reason we arrive at school each day, is not just to pass exams or have a social life, but to discover and learn new ideas.. These new ideas could spark a passion which could develop into a career.

As many Head Girls have said before me, I would like to wish the new Head Girl and her team good luck. This year has gone by ridiculously quickly, faster than any other year I am sure!

Therefore my best advice is to start thinking of ideas straight away, use the time to your advantage and accomplish as much as possible.

Alice W (Upper Sixth)

“One of the advantages of being disorganised is that one is always having surprising discoveries.”

- A. A. Milne

HEAVEN HEAVE N As I scarcely tremble through the freezing, cold graveyard I can’t help but to think I’m being followed.

It’s the feeling of someone watching your every move.

Staring right into your soul.

Relentless to run around, I keep walking.

Fearful that I will eventually force myself to look, I take a quick glance.

Blinded with light, I feel my body tingle And turn numb.

I feel myself falling to the ground.

Thump!

Darkness, as I see is darkness.

Then suddenly light, I awaken to a world where everything is bright and beautiful.

Trees are greener and the sky bluer.

I sit up with an aching head.

Yet only to see a vision of pure excellence.

A creature never to have walked on earth.

It had a horn on its head and what seemed to be wings.

I try to think of a name but nothing comes to mind.

I stand up and start to walk away, I drag my sore feet through a stream as clear as a shard of ice.

And as cold as the Antarctic.

I start to wonder where I am, Confused, as I perch on a rough dark brown piece of rock.

I look around and wonder if the beliefs may be true, The thought of ghosts, heaven and hell bewilder me.

As I stand up once more to see a lady with a clipboard.

She’s wearing a pure white dress and dazzling white heels.

I know staring is rude but I couldn’t help myself, She greets me with a “Hello, welcome to Heaven.”

Frozen and crippled with emotion I fall to the ground.

Amber J (Year 9)

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HOUSE H OUSE REPORTS RTS HAMPDEN This year has been fantastic for Hampden House.

We kicked off the New Year with a huge amount of House Spirit when the House generously donated items of clothes and food to the Wycombe Homeless Connection. This organisation is a local charity which helps to give people a fresh start and to rebuild their lives by providing support all year round.

I was amazed by all the House Spirit the girls continued to show throughout the year, from the huge amount of cakes made for our annual bonfire cake sale through which we raised over £200 for St Mark’s School in Uganda, a school Pipers has been supporting for many years. And despite not winning at Inter-House Netball, I was very proud that every

girl turned up and played her best until the end of every match.

I would like say a massive “well done” to Romilly J (Lower Sixth) for being awarded best speaker in the Senior Inter-House Debating and to Ellen P (Year 11) for coming second!

Congratulations are also in order for Sofia R and Lucy H (both Year 9) for winning the Junior Inter-House Debating. All the girls worked very hard and their performances were fantastic!

I must mention the Hampden Talent Show. This has been a prized event at Pipers for as long as I can remember and I must commend all the girls who auditioned and took part. As is tradition the Upper Sixth performed a routine, this year choreographed by our lovable if slightly scary coach, Leah E - we had a lot of fun doing our army themed dance!

Along with all of these big events, the House had fun participating in the new House Challenge Point System, which

have added a competitive edge to our weekly assemblies. Challenges included a dress-up relay and a “cover a friend in newspaper” game.

I could not have succeeded this year without the support from my team and the other Upper Sixth girls, so I thank Bea A, Charlie W, Jenner C, Hannah W and Gee H. Fern R (Year 6) has been an amazing as the Junior House Captain, as has the House Co-ordinator, Mrs Orr, who has been so supportive! I am so proud of this House and of the enthusiasm and spirit of all the girls. So I would like to say a final big “thank you” to every member of Hampden House for making this year so fun, exciting and rewarding! And just as a final message of good luck for next year: please all remember that a quitter never wins.

Emilia F (Head of Hampden House)

MANDEVILLE I have been lucky enough to have had the opportunity to lead Mandeville as they thrived in another successful year.

The House’s generosity to charities have been made clear through our hugely successful cake sale, along with the girls’ astounding commitment to supporting Nancy Hall Court, an organisation offering housing to the elderly, through their loving donation of wonderful harvest baskets. This is a longstanding Mandeville tradition in which the girls had the opportunity to personally

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deliver the baskets, which was a great privilege.

Mandeville’s overwhelming House Spirit has once again shone through in all Inter-House events. The girls’ commitment in supporting their House in activities such as InterHouse Netball and Swimming is something I will be forever proud of, as it is clear that their House Spirit alone can result in such success.

Our annual Quiz Night in aid of the “Make A Wish Foundation” was once again a delight. With help from the Mandeville Lower Sixth and Upper Sixth team, the outcome of the night was very rewarding and I know the charity is hugely grateful for all the

generous donations. Everyone had a lot of fun and some even said it was the best Quiz Night to date! Well done, ladies!

I would like to give a special thanks to my Deputy Head of House, Harriet L, who kept me sane throughout a very hectic year whilst retaining the organisation and efficiency needed to run the House and enable all of its wonderful successes.

Whilst I’m sad that my time as Head of Mandeville has come to an end, I can leave with the reassurance that it is in good hands with the next leadership team who will rise to the challenge and achieve even more next year.

Pamela N (Head of Mandeville House)

MILTON I could not be prouder of the girls of Milton House. We have had an amazing year with truly admirable House Spirit. We started the year as we meant to go on, firstly by winning Sports Day for the first time in 18 years! We came second in Inter-House Netball and put up a good fight in Inter-House Debating.

We have excelled through our charity initiatives: for Harvest, every girl donated an item for One Can Trust.

We then raised £85 selling glow sticks on Bonfire Night and £329 at the Christmas Fair by selling cakes. I must mention that I was totally blown away by the standard of cakes that the Milton girls made. We even won the prize for the best stall. In February we

also raised £186 through our Valentine’s Day Cake Sale.

This year, Milton decided to host a Barn Dance in aid of Guide Dogs for the Blind as our main charity initiative, and we raised an astonishing £453.

This took a great deal of planning but I will always remember the evening of the barn dance; everyone had fun and there was a great community atmosphere. I would particularly like to thank Orlea M, Eloise G, Georgia P and Rosie O in the Barn Dance Committee for their work.

We also introduced Milton the House Point Bear, he went home with the Prep girl who had received the most House Points each week. I would like to say a massive “well done” to everyone who has taken him home this year.

I would also like to thank my Upper Sixth team of Leah E, Nia T, Maddy S and Poppy N - who have been an

amazing support. Moreover, I would like to thank Mrs Tebb, who has been so helpful. I would also like to mention three girls in particular who have shown extraordinary dedication to Milton: Polly M (Year 10), Charlotte H (Year 11) and Sophie C (Year 12) have helped at every Milton event, from decorating our harvest baskets and manning the cake sales, to helping at the Barn Dance. Thank you girls, you have been inspirational and a real pleasure to work with.

I have really enjoyed my time as Head of House and I am very sad to be saying goodbye to Milton at the end of this year. I’d like to thank every Milton girl and I wish you all the best in your futures. Once a Miltoner, always a Miltoner.

Kirsty J (Head of Milton House)

PENN This year has been incredibly successful for Penn House. We have achieved a great deal from winning InterHouse Netball to Inter-House Debating. None of this could have been done without the amazing girls in Penn. Each and every one of them have contributed in every way they could. The girls continue to have an unstoppable amount of energy and House Spirit, which is most evident by the sound they made on Sports Day!

I would like to give a special mention to Molly H (Lower Sixth) and Ella H (Year 11) for winning Senior Inter-House Debating and Helena R (Year 9) and Emily F (Year 9) for coming second in the Junior Debating. This is an amazing achievement meaning that Penn has won three years in a row!

None of this would have been possible without the support of the Sixth Form girls and my team: Joanne B (Deputy), Ella S and Chloe W. They have been the most fantastic team, enabling Penn to have such a fantastic year.

Lastly, I must thank Miss Carwardine.

She has been phenomenal, a supportive friend and an inspirational leader. I know that every past Penn

Head of House has been grateful to have her helping them every step of the way. It is very sad that she is leaving at the end of this year, though I am glad to be her last Head of House. I would like to wish her, on behalf of the House, good luck in her next adventure.

So as this year’s Upper Sixth prepare to move on, we would like to thank everyone who have been a part of the special memories that we made this year and in the years before.

Finally, I wish next year’s team the best of luck and congratulations for being the leaders of the best House at Pipers: Penn!

Lizzy P (Head of Penn House)

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“SQ “S QUARES” QUARES” As people, especially girls, our life processes are often the same – we are born, we grow up, we go to school, we live through an awkward phase which we prefer not to look back on, and then it happens.

We are boxed up, stamped and sent to Normalville. I wish I was joking.

It happens at different times for different girls, but usually around the tween years, when a child is just about to become, or has recently become, a teenager. In the height of puberty, something clicks in our pretty little brains and tells us that in order to be both loveable and loved, we must squash our personalities into little “squares”. We must stop being interesting, colourful people and start trying to fit in. We must go from huge, vibrant personalities to “squares.”

Rows upon rows of uniform, orderly “squares.” I’m risking my “square” simply by typing these words.

At this current time, 2016, for me to fit in with the rest of my year, I must wear black leggings and crop tops.

My designer school bag must swing casually from my tanned shoulder.

My lashes must be thick with mascara, my Instagram feed filled with selfies, and my mouth constantly

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occupied with gum. I must date a boy immediately. I must constantly smell like Lush bath products and Jack Wills perfume. I must not read books or study in my spare time. My family must be happy, our house huge and our bank account happily full. Those are some of the rules. There are many more.

When I was younger I always, always wanted to fit in. And who could blame me? I was the quiet, curlyhaired Jewish girl who wore glasses and didn’t like PE. I wasn’t anything like the tall, loud, blonde girls that the boys drooled over. I didn’t have many friends. Of course, I never did fit in I’m a human being, so the chances are low. But as I got older, and I watched my previously interesting, funny friends carefully close themselves up into little “squares”, I was very confused. Why did they want to be like everyone else?

Now, of course, I can readily tell you the answer. They savour something rare, delicate and lusted after within any school: Popularity.

These girls may not even like the members of the so-called “popular group,” but they desire their place.

There’s a clear hierarchy within any school and no matter how hard you try to wipe it out, well, it will always be there. Sorry.

The fear of being disliked by said “popular group” keeps girls from dressing and acting how they like.

Girls who want to be popular will change their tastes in music and dress, their attitude, among countless other things.

I don’t fit in, and I have no desire to.

Perhaps the reason I don’t fit in is because I paint my nails any colour I like during the summer holidays, burn candles that most definitely aren’t Yankee, and wear lipstick colours that aren’t just nude or pink. Maybe it’s because I have no interest in purchasing anything from Topshop or drinking a pumpkin spice latte but this isn’t about me, it’s about you.

Deep down, no matter where you sit on the social ladder, you probably don’t fit in completely either, do you?

And guess what - here comes a huge piece of news - that’s okay!

The conclusion? That no one really fits in. The only advice I can give you is that you don’t need to fold yourself up into a tiny square. It’s unnecessary. And the next time you walk into Starbucks, don’t order the same drink that your friends are having. Order the drink that you like best. As one of my friends so kindly put it, “pumpkin spice lattes taste like milk and curry powder.”

Emilie E (Year 9)

“The man who lies to the world, is the world’s slave from then on.”

- Ayn Rand

THE WO WORLD OF

HIDDEN NACIREMA Did you know that there are tribes of people out there completely disconnected from the modern world?

In 1956 Horace Mitchell Miner wrote an article about one such tribe: the Nacirema. This article was an observation of the tribe and some of their peculiar customs. In 1972 Neil B Thompson revisited the tribe and told the rest of the world about more of their unusual customs.

Perhaps I should enlighten you on some of the customs of the Nacirema tribe and the extreme controversy regarding whether we should introduce them to our far more developed society.

The Nacirema tribe have a strange custom which revolves around a building called the Latipso where strange ceremonies occur. Milner wrote “The Latipso ceremonies are so harsh that it is phenomenal that a fair proportion of the really sick natives who enter the temple ever recover.” This shows that the people of this remote tribe are causing one another pain

within their temple in order to complete some sort of ritual. It is also mentioned in the article that the children who are forced by their parents to go near the Latipso temple are terrified that they wouldn’t survive the trip.

Another strange custom of the Nacirema is their desire to change the landscape and environment in and near their main villages. The tribe had a few main methods of doing this which included the Elibomotua cult. This group were the most successful in their goal to recreate the environment as wherever they were found the air changed to a foggy colour almost permanently.

It is thought that the Nacirema tribe, most particularly those involved with the Elibomotua cult, will be responsible for their own destruction due to their desire to change their surroundings and their bodies not being able to adapt to the changes they are making.

ART WORK BY OONAGH O (LOWER SIXTH)

Should we allow these backwards, selfdestructive Naciremas into our far more developed, civilised society?

But before you turn the page, go back and read the words in bold again to discover the deception.

I suppose that’s your decision to make.

Elise W (Year 11)

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PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN BY HEATHER L (YEAR 8)

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HIDDEN GEMS

DISCOVERING

SWITZERLAND WITZERLAND During our summer holiday last year I had the opportunity to go camping in Kandersteg, Switzerland, along with some other friends from Scouts. To be honest, at the start of the holidays I was dreading it, as it was a 24 hour drive to Switzerland. Furthermore, I wasn’t exactly thrilled at the idea of camping for a week, without heating, in the pouring rain.

The trip did not start off too well.

There were strikes in Dover, we got caught in really bad traffic, we missed our ferry and arrived five hours late to the campsite. But then the trip took a completely different turn. The campsite was beautiful, with the Alps in the

background and the weather was lovely too – unlike the predicted forecast. The site was also only a short walk away from Kandersteg village, a quiet and peaceful place, which included some great shops – my favourite sold Swiss chocolate ice cream!

On Monday, the first full day of our trip, we took a cable car up one of the mountains and hiked to Oeschinensee, a stunning glacier lake. We went swimming in the freezing water, which was refreshing after walking in the hot weather. We then ate our packed lunches and went rowing, before returning back down the mountain.

One of my favourite parts of the visit was all the free time we had to ourselves, which enabled us to explore the village and local surroundings, not to mention brush up on some Swiss-German! Whilst we were in the village my friends and I played crazy golf and went swimming in the outdoor pool

which was an amazing lagoon style pool with water slides and diving boards.

We also travelled up the Alps above the snowline where we went for a hike and had a huge snowball fight. We went white-water rafting, did a high wire course and went Trotti-biking down a mountain.

Then after a week in Switzerland we returned back to the rather chilly UK! One thing I learnt from this trip is that many things can deceive us and turn out to be completely different to what we first expected.

I loved my trip to Switzerland and I now have some great memories from it. I think it is important to grasp opportunities, despite what we first think about them, as you never know, you could miss out on a fantastic experience.

Heather L (Year 8)

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THE PATH TO

SELF-DISCOVERY SELF-DISCOVER Y “I think Lili's thoughts, I dream her dreams.

She was always there.”

We are faced with plenty of selfdiscovery when we come of age.

We find that we change our mind and develop our tastes. Peer pressure and social expectations can affect how we go about handling these discoveries. But it is how we deal with them that makes us who we are. We can either run away from it or we can embrace it.

“Man is not what he thinks he is, he is what he hides.”

- André Malraux

This is dealt with beautifully in “The Danish Girl”, a film based on the real life of Lili Elbe, born Einar Wegener.

She was the one of the first persons known to have undergone gender reassignment surgery, transforming from a man into a woman. Einar had the surgery in 1930, but had taken on the persona of Lili publicly in around 1912. At the time, this sort of behaviour was unacceptable and shocking - in the film, Einar is beaten up by strangers once they realise the woman before them is really a man.

Einar sat for his wife’s paintings as Lili, he went out to parties as Lili and formally changed his name to Lili Ilse Elvenes (but more commonly known as Lili Elbe) in 1930.

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Although the film is historically inaccurate, its emotional content is immense. Einar’s confusion is heartbreaking when he first feels that he shouldn’t have been born as a man.

His wife, Gerda - played by Alicia Vikander, who won an Oscar for her portrayal - also suffered from this journey at the thought of losing her husband. After much torment and self-loathing, Einar eventually realised he had to do whatever it took to make him feel truly like himself.

When I hear “self-discovery” and “finding yourself,” it sometimes makes me cringe. I imagine someone sweeping through India and speaking about ditching all types of technology in a breathy voice. But it’s much closer to home. You can be in a lesson, at a concert, with a friend, in a park, anywhere. The epiphany can be lifechanging, like Einar’s, or just heartwarming, like performing a speech in front of your peers that initially seemed impossible.

Sometimes when we discover parts of ourselves that we have never known before it is frightening and hard to adjust. Sometimes we want it to be kept a secret. But we can’t live like this. We have to accept ourselves for who we really are. If we don’t we are imprisoning ourselves. Like Einar, we can feel trapped. It might feel like we have no one to talk to about it for fear of bragging or fear of being treated differently. Einar, in the film, hides this self-discovery from the people he loves, which is understandable when you consider how society at the time was so abhorred by such a discovery.

But discovery can be a great thing.

Even today, there has been so much more coverage on topics like transgenderism, feminism and social equality, so we shouldn’t be scared to hide ourselves away. Discovery has helped us with so much throughout history, as this magazine has shown us. Like Einar, we can do so much with what we have discovered - it can even lead us to change our whole lives.

What I’m going to do when I leave school is completely different to what I had imagined myself doing when I was 11. I realised I could push myself physically with Duke of Edinburgh, Sports Day and preparation for my World Challenge trek to Ecuador this summer. I found more self-confidence after learning I could defend myself thanks to the self-defence lessons we took in the Lower Sixth. After reading “Self-Reliance” by Ralph Waldo Emerson, an essay which everyone should read, I wanted to change the way I led my life in order to follow his advice. He advocated the need for each individual to avoid conformity and false consistency, and follow their own instincts and ideas. He wrote this in 1841, and its messages are still prevalent today. Only with all the celebrity magazines and the social media we can forget to focus on ourselves and find out what we truly want.

But at secondary school I always felt so pressured to hide. I couldn’t be myself until the very last few years, which is a shame, because if I had been myself much earlier I would have been comfortable with myself earlier. It doesn’t matter what other people think of you, no matter how much easier that is to say than do.

The bravest thing we can do is put down our barriers and allow ourselves to breathe. In this world we feel so pressured to be like everyone else.

It seems that the people who stand out are too different. Like Einar, we have to listen to our heart and accept the new discoveries, letting ourselves do what is right. It was so painful to watch him in the film as he struggled with his torment following his discovery and I rooted for him when he started his surgeries. And although his life ended too soon, at least he ended it knowing who he was and felt much more human by following his heart.

Lydia B (Upper Sixth)

THE PATH TO

SELF-DECEPTIO SEL SELF F-DECEPTION N We’ve all done it. There’s been the odd day where we’ve convinced ourselves that we’ve done hours of work, when really we’ve spent a bit too long watching videos online.

There’s been the casual pudding we’ve secretly scoffed because we’ve cut back our sugar intake all week and so deserve a reward, when actually we have had the casual pudding twice a day every day that week. These examples of self-deception are common, but what’s worse is the kind in which we pretend there is nothing wrong.

But we have to remember that pretending will get us nowhere.

Take global warming. This problem has led to a lot of sleepless nights for me. When I discovered that the world’s temperature has increased by 10.7 degrees Celsius I considered going green completely and living in a shack in which I made my own electricity with an exercise bike. This problem terrifies me, and it should terrify everyone else, because this is our home. We have mistreated it - and I don’t speak solely for the students or the country, I speak for the whole world. Today everyone thinks they have a right to own a car, a house, a mobile and go on great holidays abroad. Unfortunately, this lifestyle has

grave consequences. Every litre of fuel your car uses, every minute your laptop is charging, every plane journey leads to more carbon dioxide slowly killing us and the planet.

And this is a truth no one wants to hear. Some are scared to face it because there appears to be very few solutions. There are energy alternatives, especially wind and tidal, that would bring great benefits if we only put more money into the initiatives. I would even support using nuclear fuel, because a kilogram of uranium produces 40,000 kWh, whereas one kilogram of oil gives you 3.8 kWh. Scientists have also toyed with the idea of hydrogen-fuelled cars, in which the only waste product is water. But finding enough pure hydrogen to power a car is very expensive.

There are people who do not worry.

They shrug their shoulders at the issue, saying there will be scientists who will work out a solution, or the media is just dramatising the situation. Whether the media is scaremongering or not, it is still something we need to care about. We have to act now before it is too late.

Now take the distribution of wealth.

There has always been a massive divide between the richest and the poorest. Did you know that the top 25 richest families in Mexico earn more money than the 25 million poorest families combined? It’s shocking.

There are families without food, water, shelter, education and medical

assistance. Globally, 795 million people face chronic hunger every day.

This leads to severe desperation. We are well aware of the migrant crisis.

There are people waiting in little communities they’ve set up in Calais, waiting for the right moment to run through the tunnel and ultimately risk their lives for a better future. Thousands have perished in the sea after spending all they have on a boat trip to Europe in death-traps. But it is so easy to pretend it isn’t there. As soon as the news switches onto another story, it’s as if there aren’t people drowning or waking up at midnight in order to get water from a well miles away.

Thankfully there are some who will not deceive themselves, but instead tackle this situation. CARE is a charity set up to make lives better for millions and to strengthen the capacity for self-help within these developing countries. In 2015, they worked in 95 countries to support 890 projects and their work reached 65 million people. By 2020, they aim to have economically empowered 30 million women. They also provide relief to countries which have been devastated by war or natural disasters.

We can help by making more of our resources. If we don’t change our behaviour, by 2050 1.4 billion of us will be “food insecure” - we won’t have a fixed source of food. We waste a third of our food production, and out of the 30,000 edible plants in the world, the majority of our diets consists of four of them. Yes, four. Rice, corn, wheat and potato. We need to increase diet diversity in order to not only enrich ourselves, but also to help people who have nothing to eat.

I have often thought, “But what can I do? I am just a teenage girl with a little voice in a big world.” I have been stupid. We can do anything and everything we want. We are so fortunate to be born with the freedom of speech, when there are still people who do not. So don’t hide. Stand up, speak out and do not deceive yourself.

ARTWORK BY OONAGH O (LOWER SIXTH)

Lydia B (Upper Sixth)

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HACKING OUT THE TRUTH

“There’s never been a better time to be a woman,” affirms Hillary Clinton, moments before the announcement of her presidential candidacy.

However, for the gender seen as subordinate, the tiresome truth remains: it has always been a good time to be a man.

The 2014 Sony Pictures hack shed light on the static state of the wage gap. On 24 November, the computers of all employees in Sony’s offices were disabled. Seconds later, a red skull appeared on every screen, threatening Sony that “if you don't obey us, we'll release data shown below to the world." Sony’s Twitter account was also hacked, along with various emails between affiliates and private information about upcoming movies.

However, the most publicised hack revealed Jennifer Lawrence and Amy Adams were earning 2% less than their “American Hustle” male

counterparts. Guardians of Peace, the group who have taken responsibility for the hack, hinted “a sympathetic insider aided them in their operation in order to seek equality.” Though Lawrence earned $52 million last year, making her the highest paid actress in Hollywood, this was $28 million less than Robert Downey Jr., the highest paid male actor.

Ava DuVernay, director of the historical civil rights film "Selma", described the leaked information as “sickening and sad.” DuVernay became the first black female director to be nominated for a Golden Globe.

Lawrence expressed her discontent in an impassioned essay written for fellow actress Lena Dunham’s weekly newsletter. When discovering the information, she writes “I didn’t get mad at Sony. I got mad at myself.”

Though admitting that her situation isn’t “exactly relatable”, she states that she “failed as a negotiator” albeit over “a few million dollars that [she] didn’t need”. She questions, “could there still be a lingering habit of [women] trying to express our opinions in a certain way that doesn’t ‘offend’ or ‘scare’ men?”

In the upcoming film “Passengers”, due for release in late 2016, Lawrence has managed to negotiate an upfront $20 million dollar deal; her co-star Chris Pratt will be earning $12 million.

The entire situation begs the question: is inequality part of human existence?

Perhaps the main issue lies not with gender, but with race. The US population survey shows that whilst white women earn nearly 25% less than men, they earn 3% more than black men, and 14% more than black women.

Comedian and actor Chris Rock criticised Lawrence during an interview with the “New Yorker”, arguing that if Lawrence “were black, she’d really have something to complain about.”

Whilst gender and race pay in Hollywood are relevant, this is only impacting the 1% who earn over a million dollars a year. It leaves the situation in the same way it was before: unequal.

Sophie B (Lower Sixth)

“You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.”

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- Abraham Lincoln

MILGRAM AND THE

PSYCHOLOGICA CHOLOGICAL L SCAM

One of the most famous cases of deception in a psychology experiment was conducted by Stanley Milgram, a psychologist at Yale University, who focused on obedience to authority figures.

He examined justifications for the acts of genocide offered by those accused at the World War II Nuremberg Trials, in which the Allied forces prosecuted Nazi Party leaders.

Their defence was often that they were just obeying orders given to them by their superiors.

Milgram’s experiment consisted of a “teacher” and a “learner.” A participant was paired with another person and they drew lots to find out who would be the “learner” and who would be the “teacher.”

However, the draw was fixed, so that the participant was always the “teacher” and the “learner” was one of Milgram’s accomplices named Mr Wallace. Mr Wallace (the “learner”) was taken into a room and had electrodes attached to his arms. The “teacher” was taken into a room that contained an electric shock generator and a row of switches marked from 15 volts to 450 volts. Mr Wallace was then asked to learn a list of words and the “teacher” then tested him. The “teacher” was told to administer an electric shock every time the “learner” made a mistake, increasing the voltage each time.

The “learner” mainly gave wrong answers on purpose and for each of these, the “teacher” gave him

an electric shock. If the “teacher” refused to administer a shock, the researcher would read out an order.

Each time they refused, a different order was read out: Order 1: “Please continue.”

Order 2: “The experiment requires you to continue.”

Order 3: “It is absolutely essential that you continue.”

Order 4: “You have no other choice but to continue.”

The results of this experiment showed that 65% of participants (the “teachers”) continued to the highest level of 450 volts. All the other participants continued to 300 volts.

However, what the participants didn’t know was that they were not actually shocking Mr Wallace. They had been deceived.

The question that arises from this experiment is whether or not it is acceptable to allow this kind of deception if it is for the benefit of understanding obedience. From this experiment, we have learned that people tend to obey a person of higher authority. So, in this case, deception was necessary in order to avoid demand characteristics - which are the results of an experiment that are biased because the participants have completed the task the way they think the researchers want them to.

The debate of whether it is morally acceptable to deceive participants in a study is ongoing. Some researchers argue that deception can never be justified. They object to the practice as it violates an individual’s right to choose to

participate, leading to the distrust of psychology in the community.

The ethics of psychology state that participants must be deceived as little as possible as to avoid distress, no matter how important the issue under investigation is. In the case of Milgram’s experiment, many participants were severely distressed after the experiment, having genuinely thought that they had shocked another person, and they started to question whether they had acted normally. So, it can be questioned whether it is ethically acceptable to put someone through a harmful research study. Can we knowingly conduct an experiment in which the participants don’t truly know the reason for conducting the study? One could argue that if the investigation leads to discoveries that better humanity, then it could be considered morally acceptable to deceive participants. Studies now must undergo an extensive review by an ethics committee before they are put into action. All UK research requires ethical approval before it is allowed to be conducted and therefore, deception could be seen to be morally acceptable within psychology now as it is less likely to cause harm. This is unlike the study carried out by Milgram, where there were very few strict ethical rules that one must follow. But, however unethical Milgram’s study was, his findings revealed more about human nature, stating: “It may be that we are puppets - puppets controlled by the strings of society.

But at least we are puppets with perception, with awareness. And perhaps our awareness is the first step to our liberation.”

Harriet L (Upper Sixth)

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ARTWORK BY REBECCA B (UPPER SIXTH)

16

WE ARE ALL HUMAN, BUT ARE WE ALL

HUMAN HUMA NE?

When flicking through the Metro whilst on the train, or scrolling through the BBC News app on your way to school, it can often be difficult to remember that only a minority of the seven billion people in the world would wish to inflict harm or pain on another human being.

Especially with heart-crushing headlines becoming more prominent: “Paris attacks live: Death toll rises to 130 after victim dies of injuries.” It is these headlines that raise the thought in my mind: we are all human but are we all humane?

This question replayed in my mind on Friday 13 November 2015. I was sitting with friends enjoying my Friday night when I heard the breaking news: the Paris terrorist attacks at the Eagles of Death Metal concert were happening.

Even though the event was very distressing, the next morning I was filled with hope as I saw the tributes to the victims filing my social media.

The Paris flag filled my social media page and the world mourned for all the countries which had experienced the horrifying scenes. But this is what reminds us, these events are so rare which is why they are so shocking.

As a majority, we are humane.

To be humane is defined as “having or showing compassion or

benevolence.” Stanley Milgram was a psychologist who was particularly intrigued by the inhumane, despicable acts conducted by humans during the Holocaust. The popular psychologist and illusionist Derren Brown focused on social compliance as he too wanted to have a better understanding of why terrorism was still a prominent issue in 2015. Brown recently produced a television programme called “The Push”. In this programme Brown focused on the powers of social compliance. He tested how effective peer pressure, authority and ideology were at eventually leading to a normal British man to commit murder at a fake Charity Gala.

Brown spoke on his new programme, informing viewers that he believed "The world of social compliance is a deeply fascinating one and hopefully we will take the viewer on a journey that will be disturbing and entertaining in equal measure."

There was only one participant in Brown’s study, Chris, who did not know he was a part of the experiment. Everyone else who was involved endured months of training and rehearsals. The confederates were all actors who were under clear instructions of what they had to do. The authority figure, “Tom” was able to order Chris to carry out actions that he was not comfortable with - such as deceiving vegetarians to eat meat and not calling an ambulance when an elderly man had a (fake) heart attack. However, Chris was an exception out of all the repeats of this study that Brown

did. Chris was the only participant who did not inflict any physical harm on anyone; he defied the authority figure’s orders. He refused to kick the elderly man and eventually walked away when he was asked to murder the man. However, worryingly the majority of Brown’s participants were pushed by other people to commit what they believed to be a murder.

In reality, we cannot generalise a whole population as humane as there is a very small number of people in the world that do commit painful crimes. However, these people are often ill or have a mental illness such as schizophrenia or antisocial behaviour disorder. As Derren Brown and Stanley Milgram have highlighted, it is often the case that a humane person can be pushed so far and manipulated by an authority figure to do something they would never have dreamed of. So let us show the world that we are humane and let us override the despicable acts in the world with benevolence.

Oonagh O (Lower Sixth)

“The beginning of knowledge is the discovery of something we do not understand.”

- Frank Herbert 17

DISCOVERING THE

WORLD OF BOO BOOK KS NOUGHTS AND CROSSES "Noughts and Crosses" is a thrilling novel about a society divided. Callum (a Nought) and Sephy (a Cross) live in a world where the Crosses rule and the Noughts are perceived as inferior. They find each other and become friends, making life hard for themselves because Noughts and Crosses aren’t meant to be friends.

When their friendship grows into something larger than life, treacherous things begin to happen to them, their families, and their difficult relationship.

What will Callum do when their lives are turned upside down? And how will he overcome them?

I think that the book is incredible and Malorie Blackman’s descriptions and storytelling is amazing. The way in which it is written is interesting and

the perspectives are realistic and show initiative. The characters are well written in the book and they are all different in their own ways, which makes them more creative. I love the way this book has been written and would recommend it to anyone who likes books that have suspense in them, because this book has a lot of that in it.

I would rate this book a five out of five because it is an epic invention and has stolen me – I don’t think I will ever read a better book in my life. Every word is gripping and it makes you want to read on. I can’t wait to discover the next four books in the series!

Sophia T (Year 9)

MURDER MOST UNLADYLIKE "Murder Most Unladylike" is about two girls who set up their own detective agency at school and find their science mistress, Miss Bell, dead on the floor of the Sports Hall. But when they leave the body for just a moment, it disappears.

They begin their first mystery. As expected, it takes the girls a while to work out who the murderer is, but they find out in the end. The book is exciting, funny and good fun to

read, especially if you don’t read often. There is also a romance on the side, which made the book even more enjoyable as it had something for everyone. The series is gripping and you can’t put any of the books down. You just get swept up discovering the world of Daisy Wells and Hazel Wong.

Maya M (Year 8)

NOUGHTS AND CROSSES From the moment I first picked up this book, I knew that I wouldn’t be putting it down until I was finished. This young, romantic, Shakespearean-themed book really catches the light of how two people will push the boundaries to have a forbidden love that there family and friends disagree with.

I usually prefer books based around a horror or adventure genre but this story made me realise that books aren’t all about the adventure but also about slowing down and seeing the greater parts of life.

This book really gets to the point, and helps all younger readers and myself to understand the basic concept of racism. Of course this book will never fully bring to light the horrors of life when dark coloured skin was seen as a weakness, but thankfully the world has now moved on from this and has finally accepted that everyone should be treated equally.

This book describes a beautiful friendship between a Cross (Sephy) and a Nought (Callum). In this wonderfully set up fictional world crosses are seen as more important than the noughts. This is because the crosses are dark and the noughts are white. Malorie Blackman has really thought about this book because instead of the noughts dominating she has decided to allow the crosses to have the importance here.

Rebecca A (Year 9)

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ARTWORK BY REBECCA B (UPPER SIXTH)

19

BANNING BOOK BOOKS OUR FREEDOM DECEIVED

In the democratic safety of the United Kingdom, we are promised boundless freedom of speech, including writing and publishing without restrictions.

The libraries that surround us are rich, prosperous and thriving in colour and dimension - in the Pipers Library we have titles ranging from “Brave New World” to “The Elegant Universe”. We do not appear to be restrained or deceived; we can find information on anything, access any source we so wish, discover the world around us.

But is this really the case?

The power of words is undeniable: they can unite and separate people, enhance and diminish beliefs and allow influence to remain unchallenged. Words can and do deceive us. Diane Setterfield quite rightly said, “There is something about words. In expert hands, manipulated deftly, they take you prisoner… they pierce your skin, enter your blood, numb your thoughts.” Legally, the UK National Secrets Act can prevent the publication of a book if it is thought to clash with governmental beliefs, so although we are currently “unrestricted,” the banning of certain books is a real possibility. In other parts of the world, there are currently dozens of books prohibited and censored in so-called democratic regions and throughout history many titles have been forcefully taken out of print.

Such was the case from 1974-83 under the state terrorism of the Argentine Military Government, in which perverted deception was unmistakable. Children’s books were most heavily monitored. Picture books and short stories were restricted and made to go through a rigorous publication process. It was under such terms that the previously popular picture book "La Planta de Bartolo" was banned. The rightwing government insisted that the story “criticised the organisation of work and the principle of authority.”

How can the banning of a book that focuses entirely on children

20

writing down what they learn, dream and discover be justifiable?

Surely, such action emphasises the deception that lies in such a task: with limitations on words and books, individuals can be exploited and their ideas controlled and narrowed.

Of course, a similar technique was adopted in Nazi Germany.

Pamphlets, leaflets, novels, poetry… all brutally destroyed at book burnings. Literature that did not explicitly agree with Nazi ideals was banned. “All Quiet on the Western Front” was prohibited due to the anti-war feelings it portrayed. The novel presented a picture of war that was not glossily coated in glory and heroism - Remarque’s bleak reality evoked fear of revolts and disagreement towards the government. Jewish literature was further banned to remove the influence that this group had upon the public. The Nazi Party refused contrasting views and the exposition of new ideas and aimed to seal a traditional, nationalistic Germany.

It is probably not too shocking to be told that Orwell’s allegorical, political novella “Animal Farm” was banned in Communist Russia. This “ambush” of the political system of the USSR simply couldn’t have been released to the public, with the actuality of the regime made evident. Once again, the government disagreed with the public being exposed to ideas that contradicted the main aims of the state. However, “Animal Farm” wasn’t only banned in Russia. The UK refused to publish Orwell’s work since the criticism of such a powerful nation was seen as moronic. The USSR was a strong British ally and therefore could not be contradicted, so the “democratic” United Kingdom refused a citizen to be heard and instead the public was deceived into a state of limited questionability.

In many cases, books have been banned because a presented idea is seen as unacceptable. Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland” was banned in

Hunan, China in 1931 due to the fact that it ambiguously placed animals on an equal level with humans.

Cats, rabbits and mice understood and adopted human language and such was said to be “disastrous” as it promoted animal rights. Furthermore, I am sure that many have read, or at least heard of, Chbosky’s coming of age novel, “The Perks of Being a Wallflower”. The book explores concepts including depression and homosexuality and I was shocked to find that references to the latter meant that the reading of the novel was restricted. Schools all over the USA were not allowed to stock the novel in their libraries and last April, a school in Connecticut took it off their library shelves after complaints from parents. Homosexuality was not seen to be appropriate for young people and schools feared that it would encourage students to “copy” the characters. As a result, students were given limited contact with such themes.

The success of banning literature is debatable - some dictators such as Stalin, Hitler and Pol Pot have used a lack of books to come to power and present an idealistic image of themselves and their government without the threats of contradicting beliefs; however, the injustice and deceptive attitude that sheltered knowledge brings denies this as justification. If literature continues to be censored, the future that lies ahead is destined to devolve into a dystopian society indifferent to that presented in “Fahrenheit 451” and “1984”.

I do not wish to be restricted in what I am allowed to know and believe and books can be the difference between this and prosperity. Novels can permit beliefs and discourage outlooks - the words they contain are powerful. Orwell quite rightly said, “If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.”

Ruby B (Year 11)

ARTWORK BY REBECCA B (UPPER SIXTH)

21

THE DECEPTION OF THE

TREAT Y OF TREATY VERSAILLES The Treaty of Versailles is a widely known agreement in our history, supposedly causing untold devastation to the German society, industry and economy.

After surrendering to a cataclysmic war, Germany was subjected to a treaty in which they had no say.

But was it the source of the many problems as we have been led to believe or was it in fact considerate and fair?

The Treaty of Versailles was a compromise. After years of unforgiving and devastating war, Germany faced their enemies and forged peace negotiations.

Considerations within the treaty had to be taken carefully as each country wished for something different. France, after facing brutal battle and bloodshed on their own land, wanted to receive the funding they needed to repair the damage. Britain had not experienced fighting on their soil but had sustained a heavy loss of 826,746 men, but their largest concern was making Germany admit to being the cause of the war.

The US had only been involved in the war for a short amount of time, but it was recognised that their world importance was enough to grant them a significant seat in the negotiations and the US favoured a softer punishment for Germany.

President Wilson issued a 14-point programme. These 14 points favoured Germany and recognised them to be the victim of the war, whether they started it or not.

Germany was excluded from the

22

negotiations but were compelled to sign the terms to avoid further conflict; they had nothing with which to negotiate. However, the terms of the treaty are deceptive.

Whilst it may be true that some aspects were harsh, it is also key to remember that Germany had not experienced fighting on their own soil to an extent that would be devastating. This placed them in a better position than France.

The consensus within France was that the outcome of the treaty was too lenient. According to them, Germany should have paid more money. Britain had concerns in the Middle East and were therefore not disposed to leave Germany in a position that could threaten their interests. However, elements of the treaty, such as the return of AlsaceLorraine to France, was a matter that would have been resolved the same way simply through a referendum. Versailles was exceedingly lenient when the treaty of Brest-Litovsk in 1918 is taken into account. This treaty was signed by the Russians after their withdrawal from the war because of the Russian Revolution and Germany had made them pay so much that it nearly crippled their economy - especially considering the extensive changes to their political framework. In this respect the Germans received better than they gave.

Classrooms and historians have often over-dramatised the issue of reparations. Pre-war Germany was one of the most affluent and economically strong countries in the world. Whilst the war had been costly for Germany it had also not experienced fighting within its borders and therefore much

of the industry and agriculture was untouched, unlike France.

They had to pay £6,600,000 for the damage they caused. After the treaty was signed, Germany suffered from inflation, which meant that prices rose dramatically, leading to widespread poverty. It also weakened the government. It is arguable that if Germany had a political structure strong enough to deal with inflation at the beginning it is unlikely the reparations would have been as significant a factor in harming Germany’s development.

The illusion that right-wing German political parties had pushed for after the war, was that the Treaty of Versailles was exceedingly harsh and was the cause of Germany’s problems to come. These rightwing politicians claimed that Germany had been “stabbed in the back.” However, it was a device to gain voter popularity. Germany was not stabbed in the back, nor were they subjected to a peace negotiation that crippled them.

Politically, Germany was unable to cope under the pressure because their new government was neither experienced nor established enough to stay afloat under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles.

We can conclude that society has been deceived into thinking that this slice in history was the cause of a complete government collapse, when a single signature was the reason a dictatorship of the most tyrannical kind was born. The truth is that Germany was unable to politically organise themselves in a way to handle the terms, and this was their downfall.

Maddy S (Upper Sixth)

HIDDEN GEMS

DISCOVERIN ISCOVERING G THE SPITFIRE For the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Britain last year I spent the summer holidays working in Cornwall helping the team build a full-size replica model Spitfire which was displayed at various shows across the country.

I spent a week getting pretty dirty but learning how to “lay-up” composite materials including making moulds, using resins and working with fibres. It was a really great experience to work in a team and see the parts I made come out of the moulds.

I discovered much about the original design by R J Mitchell and some of the changes that would be needed to produce a modern “next generation” flying aircraft. In particular, which old marks the features would be based on and the new ideas to be used in its design. We tried to keep it as true to an original model with the exception of the need for a modern engine to replace the well-known Rolls Royce Merlin and new carbon

composite materials. Replicating the original look and feel would pose the greatest challenge but tremendous support was provided through working very closely with the Spitfire Heritage Trust.

This project was one of great personal interest to me; not only have I always been very interested in World War II, and in particular the Battle of Britain, but my great uncle flew Spitfires with 303 squadron from RAF Northolt. This was a great opportunity to be a part of something significant to commemorate the Battle of Britain.

I do many extra-curricular activities outside of school which mainly include playing the violin, viola and piano and performing in shows with my local theatre group. I loved taking part in the Duke of Edinburgh Scheme, and I am an active air cadet. Whether it’s the holidays, school time or extra-curricular activities I think it is definitely important to go out there, explore, get stuck in and get experience. It’s not only good for your CV, it provides a great deal of outside experience in a broad range of areas. Doing lots of other things besides school is definitely important.

With the completion of the full scale replica, as a way of proving the way forward, the team focused on a full size composite Spitfire using modern technology – the next generation Spitfire - the design for which is in progress.

Take a look at the following website (http://www.spitfireheritagetrust. com/) which has details about the Spitfire Heritage Trust, including another project to be completed this summer: to build a full scale replica Spitfire for Lesotho.

Charlotte M (Lower Sixth)

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THE MYSTERY OF THE KU KLUX KLAN

We may know what the Ku Klux Klan is, but will we ever know who the Ku Klux Klan are?

Their white cloaks, masked faces and burning crosses have become some of the most iconic images in history, and yet so much is still unknown about the Ku Klux Klan. With 2015 marking the 150th anniversary of the KKK’s creation and murders of predominantly young black people in the southern states of America constantly littering our news feeds, the Ku Klux Klan has managed to seep its way back into the current day whilst remaining the “Invisible Empire of the South.”

The organisation was started as a social and political group by several ex-confederate officers on Christmas Eve 1865 in Tennessee.

These confederate officers created a circle or band of brothers hoping for free voting in the South. The white cloaks were worn at first, not in the deceptive way of hiding their identities that we know today, but as a way of representing the ghosts of confederate soldiers who had died during the recent Civil War with both non-violent intentions and actions. However, by the 1870s the originally small and harmless group had escalated to Klan members trying to reinstate white supremacy

24

in southern US states targeting and attacking anyone who didn’t fall within their white, Anglo-Saxon and Protestant guidelines.

Today the KKK have at least one active group in 41 states across the US with between 5,000 to 8,000 members trying to spread their ideals across the whole country, and yet we are still no closer to taming their sudden increasing strength. The last hundred years has made way for increasing change in the way our society thinks and acts towards groups that had previously been unequally treated, most notably the treatment of black people.

When looking just at the USA it is noticeable that in 1910 laws were enforced to supposedly benefit black Americans, but had no effect on the extensive hatred Americans had towards them. Nearly 100 years later Barack Obama was elected President of the United States - a victory in America’s eyes as they broke down the racial barrier. However, Obama’s election caused uproar amongst those who supported the seemingly irrelevant KKK at the time of his election with national director of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan stating that the election of Obama “may be the best thing that has happened to us as it serves as a recruitment tool.”

The Ku Klux Klan speak so openly about their ideals which is why

we all know so much about them, but do we actually? Within hours of Obama’s victory online forums exploded with activity with “Obama assassination” being in the top 100 Google searches that day as a result of racists, including members of the KKK. So why could none of these people be recognised and why hasn’t there been a pressure to stop this racism? The use of technology has advanced dramatically in recent years, leaving people with the perfect opportunity to speak their minds whilst still concealing their identity - something the KKK has done exceedingly well over time. Furthermore, even when these people allow media into their lives they are protected and remain untouchable. A recent Channel 4 documentary gave viewers an insight into the lives of members of the Ku Klux Klan. However, the programme was simply a series of voices speaking behind white cloaks, highlighting not only the brainwashed views of the members but also the fact that no one can know who these people are. By day these people are the doctors, lawyers and police officers of the local community, yet in private they lead secret lives, with one Klan member stating the poignant truth that “your next door neighbour could be in the Klan and you’d never know it.”

Bethan T (Lower Sixth)

THE FAIRY FAIRYTALE, UNCLOAKED

When you’re a child, you can soak up everything like a sponge as you discover the world. However, you also learn that some things are not as they seem…

You’d be lying if you say you’ve never heard of “Little Red Riding Hood.” Red Riding Hood takes the picnic basket to her unwell grandmother and is strictly forbidden to stray from the path, although she ignores her mother’s instructions and soon meets a cunning wolf whom she directs to her grandmother’s house. When Red Riding Hood arrives at the house to find Grandma looking very strange, she realises the wolf has deceived her by wearing

Grandma’s clothes. Luckily, before she gets gobbled up she is rescued by the nearby Woodcutter.

Parents tell their children this story to frighten and warn them about the “Big Bad Wolves;” the people who initially seem ever so delightful and willing to help. Red Riding Hood is mesmerised by the charm of the sly wolf as he manipulates her with his fiendish philanthropy. He does not want to be her friend, he wants something else, and in this case it is to have her for dinner. But every child must learn and discover and, along the way, realise that nothing is as it seems. Obviously part of learning is making mistakes and knowing not to do it again.

Unfortunately some mistakes are too great and they can cost our lives – not in Red Riding Hood’s case,

though! She had the help of the Woodcutter, the lucky thing.

Another form of deception in this story is actually the fact that the parents are in a way deceiving their children. Could it be that if the children are always saved from these situations, they get used to being saved, and as a result they do not take care anymore? Surely in reality there is not always that charming fellow that rescues you and snaps his fingers to make it all perfect. I don’t think there is.

Hopefully Little Red Riding Hood never did stray from the path again or expose her grandmother’s address. And remember, in the real world there may not be a woodcutter to save you!

Daisy H (Year 9)

“Deception may give us what we want in the present, but it will always take away in the end.”

- Rachel Hawthorne 25

DISCOVERI ISCOVERIN NG AUSCHWITZ AND THE DECEPTION THAT LIES BEHIND IT What is the last thing you do when you leave your house? Put your shoes on, grab your coat, lock your door and pocket the key for your return.

This is what the millions of Jews, homosexuals, Gypsies and Slavs, to name a few, did when they were forced out of their houses and onto the waiting cattle trucks. They did exactly what every other person would do when they leave their house: keep hold of the key because you expect to be coming back.

However, roughly 11 million people did not return to unlock their doors and that’s what made looking at the pile of house keys in Auschwitz-Birkenau so unbearable. These keys represented a slither of hope that was stripped from the Holocaust victims along with their clothes, possessions and dignity.

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On what seemed an inappropriately nice day, along with roughly 200 other Sixth Form students, we made our way to Poland to visit the town of Oświęcim, which the Nazis called Auschwitz after their occupation in 1939. We had been told that there was nothing that could really prepare us for what we were about to experience, which was a huge understatement. We had the experience of visiting a Jewish cemetery in the town of Oświęcim. Not a cemetery for the victims of the Holocaust but for the Jewish community that lived within Oświęcim before the war.

The cemetery was the start of the clear destruction of Jewish life that occurred during the war. The ground was overgrown with tree roots clinging to the upturned stones.

The tombstones were not the stones that had stood there originally but remnants of the stones that had once stood; remnants of the stones the Nazis had ripped out and used

to form roads; remnants of the Jewish community which had once thrived and dominated the town of Oświęcim. It was here that the whole idea of deception seeped into the day. When asked before the trip what Auschwitz is, the same facts and statistics came to mind along with the image of the “Arbeit Macht Frei” sign looming above the entrance at Auschwitz I. But after the experience at the cemetery we found out that there is so much more than the statistics. There was life before Auschwitz, when Auschwitz was Oświęcim - when Jewish families ran the shops and Jewish children went to the schools there. However, now there is no Jewish population in Oświęcim and the whole sense of the town seems off-putting because you know what is concealed by the trees that surround it.

As we passed the houses and shops of the relatively busy town we reached Auschwitz I. As soon as we arrived there was something wrong. The sun was shining and the birds were singing. When preparing for the trip the only words that we assumed described Auschwitz were bleak and desolate and therefore the sun shining down on us seemed wrong, not quite right. However, it became apparent that it wouldn’t matter how much the sun shined - it would never change what we saw or the way we felt. As we walked around the barracks you forgot about the sun, as you become so consumed by what was in front of you. The cases of cut hair, along and children’s clothing. Piles of spectacles and prosthetic limbs, items that people relied on to live, stripped away from them in a moment.

was concealed and even when reports of the Final Solution came through to the Allies in 1942 no action was taken due to the efforts going towards winning the war.

What struck me the most was the endless mountains of shoes. Every time I have spoken and attempted to explain what Auschwitz is like the hardest aspect to convey is the scale. The shoes of the victims who entered Auschwitz fill two cases and are only a section of the 43,000 pairs of shoes found there by the Soviets in 1945. The shoes are all piled on top of one another and although all of them are worn with age, every now and then there would be a glimpse of coloured leather among the dull browns and greys. I remember seeing a heeled red leather shoe. Obviously we will never know to whom the shoe belonged, but the idea of a young women coming to Auschwitz in her rich and colourful shoes makes the victims of the Holocaust more human. It is very easy to become desensitised from the individuals of the Holocaust and see them as a statistic; however, seeing the individual shoes along with the suitcases with the luggage tags still on them brings the realisation that this happened to real people. Even after visiting Auschwitz the idea of the Holocaust is still unimaginable however, it helped us to attempt to understand even a small piece of what an individual person may have experienced.

replaced with striped pyjamas and, if you were lucky, some shoes. They had no voice and no power and therefore were forced to live their lives in silence. The idea of silence is something which is accentuated through the Nazi’s effective concealment and deception of the true intentions of Auschwitz. When you first walk into Auschwitz there is a picture of a band playing at the entrance. We found out that the picture depicts prisoners forced to play in a band when officials and guards came to inspect the camp. The idea of prisoners being forced to play for the people keeping them in this living hell adds to the incomprehensibility of the experience. One cannot imagine human beings to have the capability to conceal such atrocities and yet it happened. Auschwitz

One of the most frightening aspects for us, was once you re-humanise the victims, their abject fear becomes more apparent. I cannot comprehend being torn away from my family, and believing that perhaps the Nazis’ scheme may never be found out - perhaps the world may never know about the atrocities at Auschwitz-Birkenau, and the stories and struggles of the victims may disappear along with the smouldering rubble of the concentration camp. The Nazis tried so desperately to destroy the camps once their loss became inevitable, but thankfully the camp was liberated on 27 January 1945, four months before Germany’s surrender. The Allied troops became aware of the Holocaust and rescued the remaining 6000 prisoners.

The events of the Holocaust were transcribed in a diary by Zalman Gradowski, which he buried in the hope that one day, someone would discover it. Zalman perished in Auschwitz, but his haunting words serve as a reminder that we cannot repeat the atrocities experienced in Auschwitz-Birkenau: “We will bury our notebooks and diaries deep under the ashes; we have done as much as we could. And you? – searching for the truth. You who have lived to see justice and liberty.

What will you do?”

Bethan T and Imogen S (Lower Sixth)

Our visit to Auschwitz also highlighted the extent that the Nazis went to the take away a person’s sense of identity. Having your name replaced with a number and your clothes, your red leather shoes,

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A FAÇADE

OF REALITY Masks are worn by everyone. Not necessarily at all times, but we as humans all switch our character when approaching different people. In this article I shall be exploring the expansive development of mask work, it is important to note that masks do not only belong in Theatre.

Most profoundly in my learning, I have been interested by Hitler’s Third Reich, and the anti-Semitic horrors which were all devised through deceptive propaganda. Hitler, from his initial consolidation years in 1933, was able to put on a mask, and beguile the nation into believing he was Germany’s “saviour” through Goebbels’ craft and creation of the Hitler myth. Masks were worn by everyone in German society. Jews, were no longer Jews, and many tried to hide their identity by switching masks. Ordinary men, who enrolled to become part of the Gestapo, or Hitler’s personal bodyguard the SS, took off a mask of innocence and replaced it with a mask of terror.

Having visited Auschwitz last year, I realised the very nature of the National Socialist state was riddled in lies and deception. This was all caused by one man, with many masks: Adolf Hitler.

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In light of this comparison, it seems only just to explore the ways in which masks have developed.

Hitler must owe much appreciation to the Ancient Greeks for their creation of exaggerated masks.

Grecian masks were integral to theatre, where playwrights: Euripides, Sophocles and Aristophanes all used the mask in theatrical festivals. Comedic masks took a grotesque form that parodied the normal human face.

Distortion of the human face would be seen within the eyes and mouth, where the mouth would be open wide, and the eyes bulging out in order to accentuate a comedic effect. The Ancient Greeks chose to use masks instead of faces in order to contain and formalise primal feelings, as sometimes intense emotions cannot be dealt with naturalistically. Alongside the use of masks to create comedy, tragic masks were also utilised - a very similar way that Hitler took to procure support from different regions of society. By tailoring his mask to the appropriate genre, like the Greeks, the Fuhrer successfully attracted multiple support from both the left and right wing of politics.

Tragic masks were not as deceptive, but a realistic portrayal of anguish or suffering. Thus, raw emotion of an actor was stripped back, and instead the all-male ensemble focused on hyperbolic, exaggeration of the body, much like we see with Hitler’s grand gestural oratory skills.

Whether designed to be deceptive, or for their sole purpose of identifying the characters ambition or motive, the mask was a key tool within Grecian theatre that deceived its audience.

The Grecian masks have since evolved as theatre has progressed.

Masks appeared throughout the Renaissance period, through Restoration, and are used in seemingly versatile ways in Modern immersive theatre. Perhaps the most deceiving mask can be found in the Elizabethan era, a time of masquerade and costume. During Elizabeth’s reign, a mask, usually elaborately decorated in lace was a symbol of wealth in upper class circles. The deceiving nature of the Elizabethan mask led playwright William Shakespeare to utilise this, where often characters within his plays are deceived, either by a literal disguise or metaphorically.

Shakespearean drama was written in a society full of expectations of propriety in society, where certain dress codes were enforced through Sumptuary Laws. Masquerade was a way in which Shakespeare mocked the frivolity of such laws, often through costume of the period.

Disguise and Deception is, however, a key theme that is littered through many of his literary writings. Within "The Tragedy of King Lear", Edgar, the Son of Gloucester, is deceived due to the manipulative nature of his illegitimate brother Edmond.

Thus, Edgar has to disguise himself

through the form of a Bedlam beggar, becoming an outcast of the extremely hierarchical society - much like the Jewish population in a seemingly hierarchical, social Darwinist society of the “Aryan race” from 1933. In a similar fashion, Kent (King Lear’s nobleman) physically puts on a hood to mask his character. Shakespeare also uses masquerade to disguise gender and social roles through the character of Viola in a “Twelfth Night”. Similarly, Iago within Shakespeare’s “Othello” utilises many different masks depending on his social situation and to reveal Othello’s true hamartia: jealousy. Thus, one can clearly see that Shakespeare relies on disguise as a main feature of his writing, a technique that the Third Reich relied on heavily too.

During what were perceived as the “Golden Years” of the Weimar Republic before Hitler was appointed as Chancellor in January 1933, practitioner Bertolt Brecht was influencing theatre profoundly.

Brecht’s somewhat Marxist vision of theatre, encouraging his audience to become detached from the action on stage and to merely observe as a spectator, was not a philosophy Hitler agreed with. Through Brecht’s use of mask in performance, the practitioner was not intent on

procuring a passionate association to the character; he did not want the audience to evoke sympathy.

Conversely, this was a tool Hitler relied on extensively, and seeking an audience that was infatuated and fully indoctrinated by Nazism’s ideology juxtaposed completely.

In Modern, contemporary theatre, several practitioners I have studied have evolved their own theory about deception of the mask.

Jacques Lecoq is famous for his use of the neutral mask, where he aims to explore the ideas of “neutrality” to demystify all that we know in order to put ourselves in a state of unknowing. This was a component essential to Goebbels’ propaganda machine: using what the people did know, and "Nazifying" this to a state of unknowing of old customs. In a similar stance, Jacques Copeau felt masks would help to rid performers of their own natural habits, thus removing the actors’ idiosyncratic way of acting or moving. Where masks were once highly over exaggerated, an element of disguise within modern theatre does not have to be so explicit.

Often, disguise includes no mask at all, but rather the actor, very much like the Nazi officials, embodies the “invisible” mask.

Perhaps therefore, modern practitioners’ methodologies of adopting a mask of invisibility have much more in common with the type of mask worn by Hitler. Millions of German citizens were innocently indoctrinated by Hitler’s use of the mask and Goebbels’ propaganda machine. So much so, that where many of us are led to believe that the Gestapo were responsible for imprisoning most of the political prisoners, Jews, or undesirables in concentration camps, modern historians, such as Robert Gellately, have since discovered that only 8% of prosecutions were as a result of Gestapo activities. Rather, many German citizens openly decided to put on the mask of a traitor, seen by the overwhelming amount of denunciations from jealous neighbours. Thus, it seems anyone has the ability to wear a mask. Through the development of mask work, I have been able to appreciate not only how mask work has affected theatre, but it has put into perspective how the lives of six million Jews were so horrifically lost all because of deception.

Hannah W (Upper Sixth)

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DISCOVER ISCOVERY Y OF

ARTAUD & BRECHT In the first term of our Year 9 GCSE Drama course, we explored the two different styles of Brecht and Artaud, dramatist who have shaped modern theatre into what it is today and thus made the world of drama rich with different styles and inputs.

Brecht was writing his plays and theories of drama during and after World War II. He decided that he wanted the audience to walk away thinking about the message that was portrayed in any given piece.

He created “Epic Theatre” and this was designed as a forum to express political views and make the audience question certain aspects of the play. As a post-war writer this provoked many questions about the state of Germany and the justification of the wars; this was along with many other views that were depicted in Brecht’s work. Epic Theatre wasn’t invented to make the audience develop emotional bonds with the characters, it was developed to make the audience question the meaning or deception of the play. This could be portrayed with a fragmented plot. This means that instead of a plot being in a chronological order, each scene is placed in a certain position to make the biggest possible effect on the audience. To understand this further we used Cheryl Cole’s life and transformed it into a Brechtian-

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style plot to make the biggest effect on the audience. Each scene of this “Life Story” had a placard that told the audience what was about to happen. This could be the place, date or event that was going to unfold in that scene, and what the audience were to discover. Thus the audience could focus more on the message than the storyline.

Placards are an iconic part of Brechtian Theatre because they make the performance seem less real and they can also express to the audience the character's emotions without the character actually sharing them with another character. Discovering these different techniques has opened my mind to the wonders of drama, and led me to discover how it became what it is today.

Brecht also created the Verfremdungseffekt Effect (or V. Effect). The actors use visual aids like placards which tell the audience where the scene is set or emotions that a charter is feeling. They also mix up the storyline to make it more interesting and break the fourth wall, such as by making eye-contact with the audience. We enjoyed performing the Brecht-style theatre as it is really fun to use placards and to change the plot order around because it involves the audience as they think about what has happened.

After learning about Brecht we discovered more about the practitioner Artaud, with his style of theatre being similar to Brecht’s.

Both wanted to use drama to change the way people viewed the world.

However, Artaud’s “Theory of Cruelty” used different techniques to “unleash man’s inner savage.” Artaud believed that deep down we were barbarians and to understand this we needed to face our fears. He portrayed this with the use of surrealism and Balinese dance. As civilised human beings, our instincts are often shut down because of the rules and laws that govern our society. Despite this, Artaud thought that our instincts were violent and controlled by our brains. He believed that to get closer to this stage you had to go through a shock and face your fears to finally be able to become what is inside every human being.

His audiences were surrounded by the actors in the centre of the room, thus his actors had to be fit to perform to the whole audience.

Throughout the performance the actors used different techniques to make the audience feel fear.

When we completed tasks in lessons using these techniques we were often incorporating the audiences into the performance.

This could be by making them complete a pattern or involving the

“The greatest discoveries have come from people who have looked at a standard situation and seen it differently.”

– Ira Erwin

THE MIDDLE SCHOOL THEATRE COMPANY PERFORMED EXTRACTS FROM BERKOFF'S PLAYS "METAMORPOSIS" AND "THE TRIAL". BERKOFF WAS HEAVILY INFLUENCED BY ARTAUD AND YEAR 9 DRAMA STUDENTS HAVE STUDIED ARTAUD AND HIS WORKS THIS YEAR. THEY INCORPORATED HIS “TOTAL THEATRE” STYLE OF USING NON-NATURALISTIC AND STYLISED TECHNIQUES FOR EFFECT IN THEIR PERFORMANCE OF THE TWO BERKOFF PLAYS.

movements. As an audience member it is scary to be involved in a performance if you are unaware what might happen when you are on stage. You feel alone and terrified because all the actors become fully immersed in their character and they do not feel like your classmates but deceptive actors.

Artaud’s Theatre is also a very stylised way of acting, but is extremely different to Brecht.

Artaud wanted to create a universal language. By doing this we had to make facial expressions and body language to express our feelings.

In a group we acted out a scene

which took place on the Titanic, but we were not allowed to use any dialogue. We discovered that it was a hard style of acting and you had to use a lot of other ways of communicating. Another exercise involved using musical instruments that we had made. We had to create a ritualist vibe to convey our story, again without saying full sentences.

We used the audience in our scene to make them feel involved, which in turn made them unsure of what was going to happen next and created more suspense as a result.

It has been really interesting to find out about different drama techniques

and styles employed by Brecht and Artaud. Brecht has been a fun topic to cover as you can put a twist on any story. Discovering these topics has been exciting, and we hope to make more discoveries in the future.

As a result of these two styles of drama, many of our performances have improved as we have the knowledge of where the styles have been devised and the thought processes behind them. It is therefore clear to us that the discovery of Brecht and Artaud has had a profound impact on theatre.

Sofia R, Sally O and Katie P (Year 9)

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DECEPTION OF

MENTAL ILLNESS Drama A Level practical performance by Poppy N, Hannah W, Charlotte W, Abbie V and Alice H. Mental health. A concept which is surrounded by an immense social stigma among adolescents. For our devised project this year, myself and four other girls studying A2 Theatre Studies were given the stimulus of mental illness, an entirely new concept to what we had previously explored in performance.

Discovery and deception are two apparent themes that arose during this process. The discovery of the vast spectrum of mental health disorders that pervade the UK, and the level of deception that patients often go to in order to hide their “invisible illnesses”. We studied deception surrounding Dissociative Identity Disorders, otherwise known as Multiple Identity, to bipolar disorder and Anorexia Nervosa.

Our main focus, however, narrowed to the condition of Schizophrenia, and the psychosis surrounding Anorexia. Initial research material was integral to the formation of our characterisation and structure of our piece. Studying practitioners such as Artaud and Brecht convinced us that we should construct this piece to be highly immersive in order to shock our audience.

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The tightly packed performance space made our audience feel “claustrophobic”, and continuously on edge - and this was the exact impact we had hoped to achieve.

The broad outline of our story, which we performed in a non-linear structure, took the concept of death within a family, and the associated trauma. Having a sister witness the fall and death of her younger sibling provoked voices to pervade her conscience, formulating into a Schizo-affective disorder.

severity of mental illnesses. Through our uplifting message that suicide can be averted by the help of a friend, we succeeded in helping the audience to gain an understanding of the intensity of suffering with an illness every day.

Afterwards members of the audience commented that they felt mentally exhausted by the continuous soundtrack, which increased tension and aided to the emotion. The fast pace of our often physical action created a completely immersive piece, and the illness of Schizophrenia no longer felt like a deceptive thought process, but a relief in self-discovery.

Alongside these characters, we looked at views from the mother, and how she dealt with losing a child, and a weirdly psychotic friend Hannah W (Upper Sixth) who aimed to help them. One of our main aims was to educate our audience, and allow “Seldom, them to discover the

very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human disclosure; seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised or a little mistaken.”

- Jane Austen

GIRLS GOTTA

STICK STICK TOGETHER, RIGHT?

On Wednesday 23 March, the Pipers Theatre Company recreated Evan Placey’s “Girls Like That”. The piece presents a shocking and honest realisation of feminism today.

In a time where feminism is no longer taboo but a familiar topic of conversation, it is not solely men that are preventing the social equality between the sexes. Despite the sense of girl power and strong message of equality that we see so often in modern society, girls still regard their peers not as support but as competition.

The play illustrates the contrast of acceptance between boys and girls - what they should do and what they shouldn’t. It introduces some thought-provoking questions.

Why do girls turn on each other and pull each other down, when nearly 100 years ago women fought together for the right to vote? Why is something socially acceptable for boys but not for women?

“Girls Like That” follows Scarlet who is abandoned by those around her after her naked photos find their way onto every pupils’ phone.

Shocked at the response of her classmates she is forced out of the school through the tormenting and bullying that ensues. She is ripped apart by the historic expectations of a young girl to be demure and disregard her sense of sexuality.

Scarlet experiences the full wrath

of the girls’ actions and words.

However, despite her turbulent and horrific experience she learns that her self-value does not lie in the eyes of her peers. Nor does her life lie in the photo on their phones.

Touching on topics of physical abuse, abortion and suicide, the play also depicts the battles that Scarlet’s female ancestors fought including the right to vote, sexual harassment and gaining the respect of men. In contrast to this is Scarlet’s modern day battle not for the respect of other women. “Girls Like That” explicitly portrays the struggles and extremity that girls today fight for the respect of one another and the need for girls to stick together.

Romilly J (Lower Sixth)

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HIDDEN GEMS

DISCOVERIN ISCOVERING G THE RADIO TIMES FESTIVAL

In September 2015 I went to the Radio Times Festival at the Green at Hampton Court Palace. It was an unexpected trip, but one I will remember for the rest of my life.

The festival itself took place over four days, running from 24-27 September and was the first of its kind. There were numerous events and lectures for all different ages and tastes ranging from family friendly activities, such as Morph Model Making and a chance to meet the likes of David Walliams, Julian Clary and Tony Ross; to more adult events such as an audience with the stars, directors and producers of hit dramas like “Silent Witness”, “Wolf Hall” and “Peaky Blinders”. All events took place in marquees, there were also stalls selling various merchandise, a food village featuring flavours from across the globe and extra event tents like the ITV tent and the BBC

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igloo. Passers-by were lured into ITV by offers of free pick-and-mix. Once inside, visitors could watch snippet previews of new shows, like “Jekyll and Hyde”.

One of the main highlights of my trip was experiencing an interview with Sir David Attenborough, detailing his six decades in broadcasting. We all know him as the national treasure and worldwide wildlife expert, but that evening we saw another side of him. During the evening he shared a number of personal memories about his life that I had never heard before.

I found it particularly touching to discover that the Attenborough family had rescued two German Jewish refugee girls from the Nazis during the Second World War and taken them into their home. He described how they had become “like sisters” to him and they have remained firm friends for the rest of their lives.

The following day I attended an interview with screenwriter Russell T Davies who is responsible for cutting-edge dramas such as Channel 4’s “Queer as Folk” and

“Cucumber” as well as the reboot of “Doctor Who”. I have personally found Davies very inspirational and had the opportunity to meet him after the interview. I believe he pushes the boundaries of modern television and challenges the public’s views of social norms. I was particularly impressed that he stayed well over his allotted hour to answer questions and took the time to meet with anyone who wanted to see him afterwards.

I could go on to enthuse about other events such as “Doctor Who”, “Women of Sherlock” and the numerous brilliant screenwriters, directors, authors and countless actors such as Peter Capaldi, Emilia Fox and Amanda Abbington.

But really there is nothing like experiencing it for yourself. I would definitely recommend this festival to any Pipers girl whether they’re interested in broadcasting, writing, science or sport, since it was such a wonderful experience to enjoy and learn from. I will never forget it.

Bethan R (Lower Sixth)

THE

BIGGEST

CARD TRICK OF ALL Pick a card, any card. Now pick another. Now put the cards you have just chosen back in the deck.

Your cards were the Six of Hearts and the Seven of Diamonds.

Remember that. Now, I’ll just give these cards a shuffle and pick two at random and they will be your cards. Now… is this your card? No? How about this one? No? Really? Are you sure? I’d like you to help me out

here - could you please check your back pocket. Wait - what’s that?

The Six of Hearts and the Seven of Diamonds were in your pocket?

You’re probably wondering how I did that. It's simple. When you first walked in, I slipped the cards into your back pocket. The only reason you thought you had the Six of Hearts and the Seven of Diamonds was because I told you so. You see the mind is easily deceived.

There are simple card games, such as Trumps, Rummy and Pontoon, which have simple rules to follow. But card tricks are different. There is only one winner, and it is rarely the participant.

In order to be tricked you have to be deceived. The biggest trick up the magician’s sleeve is to make you think you make the decisions and you are in control, when really you are just a pawn in their game.

Deception boggles the mind. When you were young you may have had that one friend or relative who could do a magic trick, whether it was with cards or with money. It probably blew your mind. My parents had a friend

who would put a coin under a drinks mat and move several around. The coin would disappear from under the mat and reappear behind your ear. Ten years later, and I still don't understand it.

Card tricks are quite straightforward, really. They're just a straightforward form of deception. Deception, to me, is that thing that puts the question “What if?" into your mind: “What if space is a lie?” “What if the world is a figment of our imagination?”

“What if we are all in hyper-sleep?”

Those “What if?” questions are formed because of the deception.

Whether it is something you read in the news, something online or something said to you, these questions float around, occasionally resurfacing.

This raises the question, “How do they do it?”

A Canadian researcher who moonlights as a magician has revealed the secret tricks used to sway people's decisions in card tricks. The study reveals how certain contextual factors can sway the decisions people make, even though they may feel that they are choosing freely. Researchers say the finding could even affect daily decision-making.

So, card tricks thrive off deception.

I still don’t understand it and I don’t think I ever will.

Emily F (Year 9)

ARTWORK BY ALICIA W (YEAR 9)

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DISCOVER THE NEVER-ENDING STRUGGLE

AGAINST POACHIN POACHI NG:

THIS MAY BE OUR FINAL CHANCE. Two years ago I wrote an article for Aquila entitled “The Ivory Trade: Sacrifice or Slaughter?” Now I am saddened to relay the message that the situation has not improved.

Two years ago I was passionate to solve this issue. Two years ago I thought the situation couldn’t have got any worse. Two years ago I thought I could help. Now in 2016, I realise and discover fully how distressing the situation is. No matter how many articles published or appeals people like the Duke of Cambridge makes, the numbers keep increasing. Soon there will be no more rhinos and elephants left.

Rory Young, a long-time ranger and conservationist, declares, given the current rate of slaughter, he’s “absolutely convinced” that African elephants could indeed be annihilated by 2020 in the wild.

Over the last few years the crisis has spread to neighbouring countries in Southern Africa; Namibia, Botswana and Zimbabwe to name a few. Namibia reported 80 rhinos lost to poaching in 2015, which is an increase from 25 in 2014. Furthermore, the amount of

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rhinos which has been poached in Zimbabwe have doubled in the last year. These figures show an escalation beyond anything Africa has ever seen. Looking at the whole of Africa the number of rhinos murdered is at its highest in two decades.

In the early twentieth century the approximated worldwide population of the Western Black Rhinoceros was 850,000. In 2011, it was declared extinct by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. The primary cause? Poaching. Now all the remaining five breeds of rhinos are on the “red list” of threatened species with three out of the five species classified as “critically endangered.”

But why is there a need for poaching? This need for ivory centres around China and Vietnam? There are no scientific medical benefits to the rhino horn but it is still used to treat a wide range of illnesses. It is also used to reveal a person’s high status as they are very expensive.

This amount of money thrown into the trade encourages poachers to hunt down and kill the rhinos. Also due to the increase in money, the poacher’s equipment has become more high-tech. Money increases greed and higher risks are taken.

Poachers are now more dangerous than ever. A range of equipment is used, tactics are unpredictable, and

the slaughter is brutal. Machine guns, snares, poison - all used to take down these mighty creatures.

In 2013, poachers in Zimbabwe killed more than 300 elephants in one week by lacing the waterholes in Hwange National Park with cyanide. This spurred me to write my first article about poaching for the magazine. Not only did this kill the elephants but it also caused the loss of other animals who drank at the waterholes, including buffalo and lions, causing a massive decrease in biodiversity.

Why do I want to conserve this mighty, fantastic species, you may ask? There is a huge debate between the ethical responsibility to have a right to survive and the money which fuels this whole trade.

In my mind there is only one real and honest opinion and answer to that question: “What if we didn’t conserve species?” At this rate, in the near future rhinos will only be seen in photographs and at the zoo.

The Disney classic, “Dumbo”, or old David Attenborough documentaries will only hold elephants, which will always be my favourite species, in the minds of children. They will never see them in the wild. What a sad day that will be.

Alice W (Upper Sixth)

ALL PHOTOGRAPHS TAKEN BY OLIVIA G (YEAR 9)

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THE LION LION KING: THE ACTION BEHIND THE ACTION

Until late November I could never have visualised the exotic African jungle in our Sports Hall for the performance of Josef Weinberger’s “The Lion King”.

Back when rehearsals first began in September, the walls of the Sports Hall were bare; tell-tale school clocks still showed, each girl was in a school jumper, solely dependent on their acting skills.

How our technical team, costume designers and design technology masters, were able to mould our Sports Hall into melting sun sets and skeleton bones is something I will never know. Girls were no longer in school jumpers and skirts, but were morphed to physically represent leaping antelopes, sprinting lionesses and even the full body of a warthog.

But is that not the beauty behind the creative minds of performing arts? To discover new ways to present entertainment? When you take away the shine and buzz of the four performances and look back at the blood and sweat of the rehearsal process and production week, I find it difficult to believe that this imagination and creativity in the form of dance, music and drama developed from one script.

To make “The Lion King” come alive to our audiences, talent sprung from all departments, especially from our team of stage make-up, who took up the difficult task of recreating the faces shown on the West End Stage, making the actresses more animalistic and the production more professional. Mr Carey and Mrs

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Nunnington spent long hours after rehearsals and during production week ensuring that Pumbaa’s tusk was super glued back on and the beads of the lions' dresses were sewed back to perfection; each tiny little detail to the masks and costumes brought the colourful jungle to life. Ms Duncan led the visionary masterminds in set building and designing the stunning costumes and tribal masks. One can therefore never assume that a production just includes the actors: we are creating it all as a team. Ms Spencer, Miss Snellgrove, Miss Edwards and Mr Woodhall encouraged girls to create visual displays of moment; from blended harmonies and creative blocking to build “The Lion King” picture. Aside from their invaluable choreography skills, girls found a great deal of independence in developing movement and ideas themselves. I would like to congratulate the talented colleagues

of mine, Zara McL as Nala, Hannah W as Scar, Emily and Chloe B as the fantastic duo of Pumbaa and Timon, Abbie V as Mufasa with Poppy N as Sarabi, the wonderful Mia G as Zazu, Imogen B as Rafiki, and Hannah E, Maddie J and Dandy-Day H on their outstanding performances as the Hyenas.

I personally will never be able to forget that heart pounding moment waiting behind the curtain; hands becoming clammy when going through all your lines and thinking you have forgotten the words to “Hakuna Matata.” The stage management team call five minutes to go and the yellow, warm amber tints and gleams of the lights come up.

It’s show time.

Ellie G (Year 11)

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THE TRUTH ABOUT

PLASTICS IN OUR LIVES

Here’s a challenge for you: how many plastic items do you think you have used today?

The likelihood is that it’s far more than you had realised. Humble plastics dominate our everyday Western lives. Whether you are complaining as a weary shop assistant charges you 5p as they hand you a bleached white carrier bag or dragging your fingertips across a keyboard as you type an essay on the school computers, plastics are a fundamental staple of 21st century life. With plastics weaved into everything we do, it’s hard to believe that the first polymer was only discovered 153 years ago.

Upper-class Victorian gentlemen were socially inclined to own and display a billiard table with billiard balls of the most perfect ivory; however, later, animal tusks were no longer readily available and so a popular manufacturer held a competition: who could find the best substitute? Wood, iron, bronze, each tested and proven to fail since ivory simply had the best roll, right weight and correct rebound. With a reward of an advertised $10,000, the equivalent of over £2.5 million today, the public was understandably intrigued - the prizewinner would never have to work a day again.

A printer, Mr J.W. Hyatt, stumbled across the advertisement and, although not a scientist, he thought that the nitrated cellulose, which was

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used to protect the hands of printers at the time, would be a worthy substitute. He tried creating a film using the syrupy liquid and putting it through a press. The result made history: the first plastic “celluloid” had been discovered. Although it wasn’t suitable for billiard balls, the substance would be used to make knife handles, combs and piano keys. Celluloid would also go on to be famously used as photographic film, albeit with one significant disadvantage - it was extremely flammable, resulting in a number of fatal fires in cinemas. Clearly a new alternative was needed.

Baekeland, an inventor, was intent on making a contribution to science: a material that could be used for moulding. He began to experiment by altering his proportions, temperature and pressure of his materials until in early 1907 he produced a hard yet mouldable substance: the first synthetic polymer. The “Material of One Thousand Uses” would exceed celluloid due to its quick, cheap manufacture and its great number of desirable properties, including its high resistance and success as an insulator. As it so happens, Bakelite would also act as a worthy substitute in billiard balls and would even be used in jewellery.

In the present day, plastics are indispensable in our society with a towering list of advantages.

They were revolutionary in being lightweight but still being strong, meaning they could be used for

a variety of different products currently on the market. Plastics are water resistant, unlike steel and iron which rust. They do not corrode, which gives huge benefits since they last longer than metals and are much cheaper. Plastics have particularly become more prominent in the building industry - their uses include pipes, valves, fittings, heavy duty uses and decorative touches - plastics are a good choice due to their durability, aesthetics, easy handling and high performance.

However, even though this material appears to have all of the properties needed of a material with more uses than a machete in the iron age, it has many disadvantages.

Do you remember your favourite doll? Can you still picture your dad haphazardly hacking at the plastic packaging with a pair of kitchen scissors to remove the toy as soon as possible? Do you recall the discarded packaging in a bin bag amongst the wrapping paper?

Does your father, brother or uncle remember the set of 50 army figures he used to own, with one soldier lost in the chaos of Christmas morning? And, of course, the empty bottle of hand soap that you threw away last Wednesday. What do each of these have in common?

They’re all still sitting together in a landfill site.

The main issue is that plastic is not biodegradable but photodegradable.

This just means that it is broken down by sunlight, as opposed to decomposers. Most plastic doesn’t

“The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.”

- Leonardo da Vinci

ever fully disintegrate and just become “plastic dust.” When items like plastic bags break down, they release toxins that contaminate soil and water, resulting in animals consuming plastic fragments. Unfortunately, producing biodegradable plastics uses too much energy to make it worthwhile, leaving plastic to drift through the ocean and provide a danger to the aquatic life.

Not-so-fun fact: for every square mile of ocean, there are 46,000 pieces of plastic floating in it! Over a million sea birds, whales, seals, dolphins, sea turtles and countless others die as a result of these plastic remnants, damaging the ecosystem, the food chain, and ultimately the planet.

The production of plastics per annum in the US alone uses 331 billion barrels of petroleum, which would

fuel a million cars for a year! That’s equal to a staggering 5% of the national consumption of petroleum.

We all know that there is an increasing worry about the dwindling supplies of crude oil, and its danger as a pollutant.

Citizens are now becoming more educated on the drawbacks, with supermarkets having introduced the 5p charge for polythene bags.

Despite the initial opposition, the results do appear to be mostly positive, with a 79% decrease in plastics forecast over the first three years, and in Scotland the number of “Bags for Life” used has quadrupled.

Although this statistic appears to be reaffirming, plastic bags still came in second to cigarette butts in a study

by the Ocean Conservatory in 2015 measuring aquatic waste. So whilst our reduction in plastics is a big step forward, we still have the entire race to go.

Inscribed on the Apollo temple at Delphi are the words “μηδέν άγαν” meaning “nothing in excess.”

This could mean chocolate, wine, television… and convenience. Is it really worth your children’s future to wrap cling-film around the other half of the sandwich that you were never planning to eat anyway?

Considering this, maybe think twice before you criticise the 5p charge on your carrier bag - will it really cost the Earth?

Ruby B, Ella H and Emily H (Year 11)

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BREA BRE AKT KTH HROUGH DISCOVERIES IN

CANCER TREATMENT There are two key scientific discoveries without which the way we treat cancers today would be very different and most likely less effective.

The first discovery came in 1896, when a German physics professor, Wilhelm Röntgen, discovered x-rays. Within a few weeks a junior doctor used x-rays to treat cancer. However, this early form of radiotherapy consisted of a single large dose of radiation lasting around an hour and had many unpleasant side effects. In order to overcome this problem Claudius Regaud, a French doctor and biologist, proved that fractionated radiotherapy - radiotherapy given in smaller doses - was as effective as single-dose therapy but had fewer side effects.

Röntgen’s discovery was such a breakthrough in cancer treatment and it won him the Nobel Prize in 1901.

Radiotherapy means the use of radiation to treat illnesses, mainly cancer. Cancer is a disease where the growth of some cells becomes unregulated, leading to a lump or tumour. Today the main sources of radiation used in the treatment of cancers are high energy x-rays and photons. About 40% of cancer patients undergo radiotherapy and it can be administered externally using x-rays from linear accelerator machines, or internally by drinking a liquid which is taken up by cancer cells or putting radioactive materials in, or close to, the tumour. These methods work in treating the cancer

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cells by damaging the DNA within them, stopping them from growing and dividing, and often causing them to die.

However the new discovery of proton beam therapy has now been concluded in “The Lancet Oncology” (a scientific journal) to be as effective as conventional radiotherapy with the added benefit of causing even fewer side effects. A study was conducted by Dr Torunn Yock from the Massachusetts General Hospital in America on paediatric patients suffering from the most common type of childhood brain tumour - medulloblastoma. After five years of treatment, their survival rate was similar to that of patients treated with conventional x-ray radiotherapy, but “there were no side effects seen in the heart and lungs and gastrointestinal tract, which are almost always seen with x-rays, and no secondary cancers were seen at a time when we would have expected to see them in x-ray treated patients” (Professor Gillies McKenna, Head of Oncology at Oxford University).

But why does proton beam therapy have fewer side effects? Conventional radiotherapy uses x-rays which pass all the way through the body and therefore kills healthy cells as well as the cancer cells. This limits how much radiation one can safely administer to patients without damaging healthy body tissue and organs. This leads to side effects such as hair loss, tiredness, nausea, swelling of the throat making it hard to swallow, and breathlessness.

In contrast, in proton beam therapy, protons are used - these are the

positively charged particles in an atom.

They are raised to a high energy level by a particle accelerator machine and are like “little bullets that stop when they hit tumours” (Mayo Clinic, United States).

Instead of passing radiation through healthy tissue in front, in and behind the cancer cells, protons are aimed directly at the tumour in a process called pencil beam scanning. Therefore the radiation only affects the tumour, meaning there is a lower exposure to radiation on surrounding healthy tissues. This allows doctors to use higher doses of radiation.

Proton beam therapy is most effective in children because their organs are still developing so damaging healthy tissues would affect the organ’s development.

This discovery makes me excited for the future of treating tumours, in particular paediatric brain tumours. I also think it is amazing how science can progress over 100 years from the first discovery of x-rays to further discoveries building on the first.

Proton beam therapy is currently only available on the NHS to treat eye cancers, but patients with other forms of cancers can apply for NHS funding to have the therapy abroad. The Department of Health have also realised what a major discovery this is and have said that by 2018 the treatment will be offered to up to 1500 cancer patients in London and Manchester. I hope to go to University to study Biomedical Science in September. It is my aim to learn more about ways in which we can treat cancers and other diseases, and hopefully be involved in making new discoveries.

Kirsty J (Upper Sixth)

ARTWORK BY ALICIA W (YEAR 10)

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THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING

GERHARD DOMAGK DOMAG K

Discovery of medicines has a profound impact on society, and is ultimately crucial to the survival of the human race.

In 1932, the German scientist Gerhard Domagk discovered a substance, a sulphonamide (a type of drug) called Prontosil, which was able to kill bacteria. The drug was able to cure diseases such as pneumonia, meningitis and scarlet fever. Gerhard’s breakthrough saved thousands of lives and his innovative work laid the blueprint for the treatments of many other diseases.

So it came as no surprise when in 1939 Domagk received the Nobel Prize for medicine in recognition of his discovery of the first drug effective against bacterial infections.

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However, by this time Hitler and the Nazi party held a firm grip over Germany and all German citizens were forbidden by law to accept the Nobel Prize. This was because previously in 1935 the Nobel Committee had awarded the Nobel Peace prize to Carl von Ossietzky, a pacifist. The Nazis were angered because he had criticised the Nazis and consequently was a prisoner in a concentration camp, and the reason he won the award was for his work in exposing the recent, illegal German-rearmament. After Domagk accepted the prize he was arrested by the Gestapo and was forced to send a letter rejecting it. He was lucky to escape a worse punishment.

Sulphonamides became a revolutionary weapon at the time but were later replaced by penicillin.

Domagk’s work on sulphonamides eventually led to the development

of the anti-tuberculosis drugs which helped to control the epidemic that swarmed Europe after World War Two. In 1947, Domagk was finally able to receive his Nobel Prize but the prize money had long since been redistributed.

On 12 December 1947 Gerhard Domagk gave his acceptance speech during the Nobel Lecture, remarking: “Honoured colleagues, I am unable to express my profound gratitude for the high honour conferred upon me in the award of the Nobel Prize for medicine for 1939 which I was not allowed to accept at the time.” Gerhard Domagk later went on to discover Isoniazid, one of the strongest and most reliable antitubercular drugs. Gerhard Domagk died on 4 April 1964, but his discovery will continue to shape our modern medicines for years to come.

Phoebe R (Year 10)

DECEPTION OF THE

ENIGMA MACHINE, AND THE DISCOVERY ONCE CRACKED “Like all the best cryptography, the Enigma machine is simple to describe, but infuriating to break.” (Alex Hern, writer for The Guardian) Looking like an oversized typewriter from the outside, the Enigma machine was a fundamental piece of equipment in order to crack the Germans’ “indecipherable code” during World War Two. The Germans’ camouflage tactics were used primarily for diplomatic communications, a deceiving measure which initially saw great success for Hitler’s Third Reich in the early years of the war.

An Enigma machine can be primarily defined as an electromechanical rotor cipher used to encipher and decipher secret messages. The machine used for enciphering messages was an

increasingly complex system, with three rotors that had the ability to change and alter letters of the message. The once coded, unrecognisable messages went through the system, where the original letters were substituted by other letters in order to decipher the Germans’ tactics. The integrated “plugboard” within the machine switched letters around, leading to more than 17,000 different combinations tried before the encryption process repeated itself.

When the writer had typed each letter, a light would show up on the machine over a different letter, which they would write down, and once they had translated the Germans’ code, they sent their findings via Morse code.

Bletchley Park is synonymous with code-breaking glory in Britain during World War Two. Alan Turing and his team of mathematicians cracked the ciphers of the Enigma machine. The first break of Enigma was recorded on 23 January 1940, when the team working under Dilly Knox, with the mathematicians John Jeffreys, Peter Twinn and Alan Turing, unravelled the German

Army’s administrative key that became known at Bletchley Park as “The Green.” It has been claimed that as a result of the information gained through this device, the British codebreakers were responsible for shortening the war by two years, unravelling the Third Reich’s deceptive codes and war tactics.

For this discovery, Alan Turing is often remembered as the father of modern computing. His mathematical brilliance and tactical solutions as a logician allowed him to not only crack the Germans’ military codes and communications, but further allowed him to develop the idea of the modern computer and artificial intelligence. Churchill, who led Britain through World War Two hailed the team at Bletchley Park as a crucial factor in the final defeat of Germany: “It was thanks to [them] that we won the war.” Thus, one can clearly see that through deception often comes discovery and in this case the discovery allowed for the collapse of Nazi rule, and an Allied victory.

Kate R (Lower Sixth)

“Mistakes are the portals of discovery” - James Joyce

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THE

DECEP DECE PTIVE GENIUS

It is time for a Year 10 Maths GCSE class. Oh joy of joys. There is a steady hum of chatter cascading inside the classroom before the teacher arrives.

Unfortunately they have yet to realise the subject of today’s lesson…

Trigonometry. However, the moment the fateful words “cos,” “sin” or “tan” are scrawled onto the whiteboard, the electric signals in every student’s brain go haywire. This is because there is a common saying which is thrown around the brain of a student studying Maths for GCSE against their will. A saying which will eventually, to the teacher’s disgust and annoyance, be catapulted at them in the classroom. But who is going to say it? The whole class is in suspense, just waiting for the words which will change the atmosphere of the lesson. Heads turn to that one person - it is always the same person - who is just beginning to open their mouth. Here it comes…

“Miss, when will we ever need this in real life?”

There it is! A single phrase which, after it has been emitted, means that no learning will take place, instead an hour-long debate will occur.

Behind every concept is an equation: forces in nature, the length of a line, even the beginning of the universe itself. However, each of these equations were produced and formed by people, people who have been taught Mathematics in a similar way at school. Doing Trigonometry and other topics in

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Maths opens career opportunities, whether you want to go into them or not. At least now there is an option.

You can apply this dreaded saying to a huge amount of topics in school: “When will I ever need to know about the Boer Wars, I will not be a historian!”

“I am never going to be an astronaut, why do I need to learn about the stars?”

Shock! Horror! This is why you come to school to gain knowledge, allowing you to choose your career path wisely and, unfortunately, Maths comes into nearly every job in one way or another.

An equation contains variables, normally letters, which make up an equality. Solving this equation means placing known numbers into the equation in the place of the letters to find an unknown variable. For example, with y=mx+c, the gradient of a linear line, once you have chosen a point on the line, finding the gradient by rearranging the equation is easy.

Before an equation is integrated into society’s knowledge, it needs to be discovered. Take Einstein’s famous equation, E=mc2, where “E” is energy, “m” is mass and “c” is the speed of light. Everyone thinks Einstein is a genius, even though he performed poorly at school.

Superior intellect and complex mathematical reasoning is thought to have produced E=mc2 , however, this really isn’t the case. The truth is Einstein guessed and made it up. That’s right. There was no proof or evidence. All he assumed was that the speed of light was constant. Once that was realised, the constant “C” was added into the

equations which had already been produced to do with energy and E=mc2 popped out the other side.

If the speed of light was constant, Einstein also reasoned that time and distance must therefore be relative.

However, this was totally contrary to what world's leading scientists believed. Before 1905, when Einstein published his argument in a three page paper entitled “Does The Inertia Of A Body Depend On Its Energy Content?” it had not been acknowledged that the speed of light was constant. At that time it was believed that time and distance were constants, but that the speed of light, like the speed of everything else in the universe, was a variable and therefore fluctuating.

What is incredible about this discovery is that it was a guess and it turned out to be true, as validated by technology 20 years later. However, knowing this makes you realise that every single person is capable of making similar breakthroughs. It makes you question what is accepted and known, even if there is little proof.

What Einstein had was courage to follow his hunch even if no one believed him.

However if you are that Year 10 student in that classroom, why would you care about Einstein?

Why does this have any relevance to you? If that student who is willing to question the need for knowledge rather than the actual content is you, then you are right. This has no relevance, because with your mindset, new discoveries can’t be made.

Alice W (Upper Sixth)

SLEEPWA SLEEPW ALKI LKIN NG STRAIGHT INTO JAIL…

Everyone has heard of people walking in their sleep. Sleepwalking is not an unusual phenomenon and a lot of people experience it. Sleepwalkers have been known to do some pretty strange things - for example, cooking, cleaning and ironing in their sleep! But there have been some very extreme cases of sleepwalking.

The official term for sleepwalking is “somnambulism” and it is a relativity common sleep disorder. There have been estimates that it affects about one in ten of us at some point in our lives. Typically the eyes are open, though often described as glazed or staring in appearance. Episodes of somnambulism tend to happen earlier rather than in the later parts of the night. Somnambulism is most common in childhood, peaking just before or at the time of puberty, however, it can continue through adulthood. An episode may last only a few seconds, but can last hours. Interestingly when the individual wakes up, the sleepwalker will have no recollection of what they have been doing. The causes of somnambulism include a genetic predisposition, extreme tiredness, stress, or anxiety. In adults, alcohol and other drugs seem to act as triggers.

Somnambulism is not normally a great problem and sometimes people enjoy sharing sleepwalking

anecdotes. But for a small minority, it can be a very serious affliction. In fact, according to the London Sleep Centre, there had been an estimated 68 cases of homicidal-sleepwalking reported worldwide by 2005.

One of the most famous cases of sleepwalking crime was committed by a 23 year old Canadian man, Kenneth Parks, who began suffering insomnia in his twenties. His insomnia was caused as a result of his financial difficulties and personal problems due to his gambling addiction. Matters worsened when he embezzled money from work which cost him his job, increasing his financial problems. To cover his losses, he took funds from his family’s savings. After finally accepting his problem and attending his first Gamblers Anonymous meeting, he made plans to tell his grandmother and in-laws the following day about his problems. However, in the early hours of the morning of 23 May 1987, the day when Parks had planned to tell his grandmother, he got up and drove 14 miles to his in-laws’ house, injured his father-in-law and stabbed his mother-in-law to death. After this he drove himself to the police station where he declared, “I think I have killed some people… my hands”. Up until this point, Parks had a good relationship with his in-laws, and his wife vouched for his lack of motive in the crime.

Parks’s only defence was that he was asleep during the entire incident and was not aware of what he was doing. Of course, nobody believed him and even sleep specialists were extremely sceptical. However, after careful investigation, the specialists

could find no other explanation for the crime. Parks’s EEG readings (EEG is a test that measures and records the electrical activity of your brain) were highly irregular even for a parasomniac; this is someone who has a sleep disorder when there is abnormal or unusual behaviour of the nervous system during sleep. The combination of facts that he had no motive, that he was amazingly consistent during multiple interviews, despite repeated attempts of trying to lead him astray, and that there is no way to fake EEG results, led to a jury acquitting Parks of the murder of his mother-in-law and the attempted murder of his father-in-law. The Supreme Court of Canada upheld the acquittal in the 1992 decision.

Sometimes people like Kenneth Parks are acquitted on the grounds of a “sleepwalking defence” - however, sometimes they are not. These murders are committed without the knowledge of the perpetrator. The homicidal sleepwalker feels deceived by his own mind and body, and the victim’s family and the court jury worry that they are being deceived by the sleepwalker. There is currently no law which explains this kind of act and the court jury has the huge responsibility of deciding whether or not the sleepwalker should be convicted of the crime. More research is needed to understand what happens when somnambulism gets out of control so people can make informed decisions when someone’s life hangs in the balance.

Poppy N (Upper Sixth)

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DISCOVERY AND DECEPTION IN

PRODUCT DESIG DESIGN It appears that within Product Design, we have more discovery than deception; however, when deception strikes the effects can be catastrophic.

When mass producing a product, one focuses on making it to the highest possible standard whilst bringing in a sufficient profit. In the car industry, making a car as “eco-friendly” as possible is up there in their top ten list of things to do.

In recent months, the German car brand Volkswagen have hit the headlines… for all the wrong reasons.

Back in September 2015, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) discovered that Volkswagen cars sold in America were fitted with a device that could detect when it was being tested and act accordingly to improve results in the emission tests and make them appear cleaner than they actually are. This piece of software which VW have been installing for the last six years is known as the “defeat device”; a piece of equipment that has allowed the company to manipulate the results of the

emissions tests and ultimately improve their eco-friendly and economic standing. When the emissions control is switched on, it makes the car seem a lot cleaner than it actually is. However, when the car hits the road, emissions control is switched off and nitrogen oxide, a pollutant, is pumped out, releasing up to 40 times the legal limit and annually giving off one million tonnes. The device knew how to switch off the emissions all thanks to the software's algorithm, which used the information derived from steering patterns, engine use and atmospheric pressure to tell whether it was under scrutiny from EPA. This “Volkswagen Scandal” has not only affected the buyers, but also the surroundings. Other cars using modern diesels as fuel have been fitted with a tank containing a chemical compound called Urea. This turns the polluting exhaust fumes into harmless nitrogen and water. If you reduce the emissions then the fuel efficiency will take a hit, increasing the cost to drive the car.

Through their deception Volkswagen attempted to create a better, yet untruthful reputation for their company. By using this “defeat device”, individuals have been overcharged, considerably more

than any other car manufacturer.

However, perhaps most significantly, they have put others’ lives at risk to be saved from their own mistakes.

Designers of the future aim to design, develop and create a product that matches their specification as well as being ecofriendly. They want to design a product that lots of people would want to buy. Although the majority of companies are as eco-friendly as they can be, Volkswagen was an example of a company that set out to make their cars eco-friendly but failed to do so. Volkswagen resulted to cheating, and deceiving others to pass their emissions tests, releasing harmful pollutants into the environment. Thus, where many design manufacturers aim to procure an effective eco-efficient product, some companies are deceiving, and it only takes the media a little time to discover and expose their faults.

Harriet W (Year 11)

“The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance it is the illusion of knowledge.”

- Daniel J Boorstin

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WHAT THE

FOOD COMPAN COMPANIES FORGOT TO MENTION

Today food can easily deceive us. We put so much faith in the labels and brands that we do not think where the food has come from.

The deception surrounding false meats, exemplified by the Tesco “horse meat scandal” is a very prevalent and current issue.

The use of false meat was a huge scandal in Britain, where Tesco and other supermarkets had advertised their products as containing beef, when in reality they were being deceived and the products actually contained horse meat. The discovery that horse was present in processed beef products such as mincemeat being sold by a number of UK supermarket chains, resulted in a series of products being recalled ultimately putting the spotlight on the food industry. The Irish Food Inspectors discovered horse meat in beef burgers that were made by

firms in the Irish Republic and the UK, that ultimately went on to be bought and sold by a number of UK supermarket chains, including Tesco, Iceland, Aldi and Lidl. The horse meat scandal subsequently led to stricter food testing regime across Europe.

As a result, authorities across the EU are now working closely on food fraud. The big problem when the horse meat scandal broke, was that no manufacturer, retailer or producer was prepared to accept responsibility.

Today, it is widely known that responsibility should lie with the Food Standards Agency, and its newly formed Food Crime Unit. Due to the deception surrounding food, this unit works with police forces across of the country, with Europol, and with the Food Fraud Network, which links food safety authorities across Europe.

soups and sauces may contain added sugar. A can of soft drink, on average, contains the equivalent of seven teaspoons of sugar. The natural sugar in some fruit, including apples, has increased as new varieties (including Pink Lady, Fuji and Jazz) are bred to satisfy our desire for greater sweetness. Due to the greater push from the National Health Service to monitor our sugar intake, consumers are paying much more attention to the deceiving calorie counts. Thus through both examples, it is evidently clear that deception surrounds the food industry in a variety of ways, and it is important to eradicate it both for our health and the environment.

Isabelle M (Year 11)

The deceptive use of hidden sugar in the food industry is also immense. Low-fat and “diet” foods often contain extra sugar to help improve their taste and to add bulk and texture in the place of fat. Even savoury foods, like ready-made

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FOOD

UNW UN WRAPPED “Gluten Free”, “Organic”, “Raw”, “Unprocessed” Do we really know what these words mean? We are indoctrinated by false claims made by food manufacturers in order to sell their products - in short, we are systematically lied to.

When you hear the word “healthy” you assume a food product is packed full of nutrients and energy and nourishing to your body.

However, food manufacturers don’t need to provide any scientific proof that the food product is beneficial to your health. Nutella boasts its “simple quality ingredients like hazelnuts, skimmed milk and a hint of cocoa.”

Sounds good? In reality, every twotablespoon serving Nutella contains 31g of sugar.

Heart disease, heart attacks and strokes are the kind of ailments you strive to avoid by eating a seemingly healthy diet. Trans fats are one of the most common causes of these diseases, yet food manufacturers have the right to claim “No Trans Fats” even if they are present in the product.

Any food with less than 0.5g of trans fats has the legal right to promote “No Trans Fat,” giving the consumer a false sense of security in their product.

Deceptive, yet completely legal.

Food labels can suggest a product contains real food ingredients, when only the flavourings of these ingredients occur. For example, Quakers “Brown Sugar and Maple Syrup” contains precisely zero brown sugar or maple syrup. Instead, the product contains plain old refined white sugar, laced up with

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colourings and flavourings to appear like maple syrup. Yummy.

It’s been said a multitude of times, but I have to say it again. The way humans treat animals on this planet is truly inhumane - so think twice when reaching for those seemingly “Organic” and “Free-Range” meat products. Food manufacturers can be deceptive when that fabled “I’m Free Range!” label catches our eye - often animals can be brutally treated: cows impregnated then forced to miscarry for milk. Whilst the majority of us can plead ignorant, this is an issue so universally relevant to the western world, we cannot ignore it any longer.

Boycotting animal products is not the way forward, but maybe think twice before reaching for the cheapest meat on the shelf, and consider the animal it came from.

Sometimes, it's not the products themselves that deceive you, it’s the way they are marketed. American television is flooded with adverts

promoting old fashioned gender roles - suggesting the mother has a duty to supply her family with the most low fat, low sugar, low carb blah blah and if she doesn’t buy said product she is somehow inadequate.

Sports people are targeted with “Health Bars” which imply healthy high-energy and carbohydrate content, and suggests their performance will be significantly worse without the bar. The Eat Natural bar contains 10.6g of sugar, more than a double finger Kit Kat. The moral of the story? Do not be deceived by crafty food marketers who want you to purchase their product. Do not think that food manufacturers care about you or your health. A new “healthy” range equals a large pay check. Do the research for yourself, study the food labels, and don’t let clever marketing techniques let you buy something even remotely healthy. Most of the time, it’s not.

Imogen S (Lower Sixth)

ARTWORK BY EMILY B (YEAR 11)

SUP SU PERFOODS THE TRUTH BEHIND THE TREND

The year is 2030 and we are all living off tree bark because, thanks to new scientific research, we have learnt that it lengthens life and makes your hair glow in the dark.

Whilst this idea may seem ridiculous now, if you had told people in the 1990s that we should all eat high fat diets (the good fat, of course), because it was better for us than sugar, they would have taken you to get checked out. But how much does all this new evidence and fluctuation in what is “healthy” actually help us? The health trend of 2015 saw the influx of superfoods, ranging from garlic to nutritional yeast. The Oxford English Dictionary states that a superfood is “a super nutrientdense food, loaded with vitamins, minerals, fibre, antioxidants, and/ or phytonutrients, suggesting that this nutrient content confers to more health benefits than other foods.”

But how many of these foods can actually fend off illness and reduce ageing, and how much of this is a marketing ploy for food companies to take our money?

According to Susan Jebb, a professor of diet and population health at Oxford “evidence that any one food has specific effects on long-term health is lacking and

shows more connection to celebrity endorsement and PR stunts than any scientific evidence.” However, superfoods are not unhealthy and suggest a brighter future for our health, away from the onslaught of junk food advertising, they just don’t have the power to elongate life by ten years, as some would suggest.

But here’s where the problem lies: people seem to be under the illusion that simply by having a shot of wheatgrass along with a bowl of Shreddies for breakfast will make up for their lack of vegetables for the rest of the day. These foods, with a lack of education, have the ability to undermine the need for a varied diet. Living off quinoa is not going to keep you alive for very long no matter how high the protein content is. Adding in new foods and research into what we eat is not an excuse to throw away the long standing evidence that the best diet is one of variety. Reliance upon these foods could actually harm our health if taken to the extreme.

And now we return to another problem: the cost. Let’s take the plain and simple broccoli, which has been described as a superfood. We are always told that fruit and vegetables are the way forward but there is more to this green cruciferous than meets the eye. Touted as one of the healthiest vegetables due to its nutritional make up, its antioxidants are said to fight cancer whilst its vitamin C aids in iron absorption.

However the average broccoli is 52p so that hardly seems a worry. But what about these other superfoods?

Can they really be worth the high prices and hassle?

If the NHS were to suggest that all the best diets contained chia seeds, and strongly advised this across the nation, then the average wage would have to rise by 7.5%. Priced at an average of £13.31 per kilo (that’s if you wish to buy your chia seeds in bulk), incorporating these minute plants into our everyday diet is not a possibility. So therefore these “diet staples,” as described by many health food stores, appear to lack the ability to be a “staple.”

Now for the good news: for all you chia seed fanatics there is no need to fret. They are proven to be one of the most nutrient-dense foods on the planet, full of fibre protein and calcium. But if you would rather obtain your daily nutrients from other, more attainable sources then this appears to work too. Ultimately the food industry seems to feed off our need to follow trends and eat what is in vogue. Similarly to the world of fashion there are those who follow and those who don’t.

But either way it isn’t a life-or-death situation. And even if your local supermarket is offering you tree bark by 2030, no doubt it will still be offering Heinz Baked Beans in the next aisle down.

Romilly J (Lower Sixth)

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THE DECEPTION OF

DAIRY FARMIN FARMING FINDING THE TRUE REALITIES

The portrayal of dairy farming is increasingly being shown in a negative light on social media. I have heard various comments about dairy farming and the way cows are kept, used and treated, and I would like to clear up any misconceptions from a professional viewpoint.

I live on a working dairy farm; the dairy was started by my grandfather in the 1930s. I am passionate about all things dairy and one day hope to carry on working in the industry.

The deceptive propaganda in the media portrays the treatment of cows in the UK as being terrible. But this is extremely rare. Our whole business relies on our cows being given the best conditions so that we can ensure that they are productive.

To be productive a cow has to have good food and water supply, comfortable living conditions, and be free from disease. To provide all these things is costly, but it is essential for a cow’s wellbeing. A cow is worth about £1500 so it is important to look after them as they are highly valuable. Most cows will be kept indoors in the winter, when the grass doesn’t grow and the ground conditions are too wet, but

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turned out to pasture when possible in the summer months. The worry at the moment is that most dairy farms are running at a loss, as the milk price is currently less than 21p per litre or sometimes as low as 15p, with the cost of production being at least in the mid-20p range.

Often when I have looked and seen criticism on cow welfare, I realise how much better the standards are in the UK than other places in the world. Images shown on social media shock me as these are extreme cases that bear no resemblance to the dairy farming industry I know in the UK. Some pictures can also be very misleading, as it is very easy to stage a picture and put a deceptive twist on it, and it would greatly sadden me if people believed that was typical for our industry. The UK has some of the highest welfare standards for farm animals in the world, which are constantly improving; we also get regular inspections.

Recently I have seen a lot of videos on social media about dairy cows and practises that are not understood. Every year a cow has to produce a calf in order to keep producing milk. On our farm either the calf will join the herd at about two years old if it is a female dairy calf or the calves will be sold to other farmers to be reared for beef or we rear them ourselves for prime beef cattle, which will be mature at about two years old and weigh about 700 kilos.

Another issue that I hear about time and time again is the separation of the cow and calf within the first day of it being born, this is a standard practice within the industry. This is done so that the best possible care can be given to both the cow and calf. A good number of cows don’t show a sign of giving a second thought about the calf once it’s been removed, whereas dairy farmers give a lot of thought to the calf, making sure that it’s as strong and healthy as it can be so one day it can become part of the herd. A cow produces colostrum, a form of milk, for one to two days after calving, it is essential for the calf to get six litres of this within 24 hours.

If the calf doesn’t receive this, it can impact its health for the rest of its life. If the calf is left with its mother it’s very difficult to tell if it has received all the colostrum it needs.

Once the calf has been removed the cow tends to look after herself better, and eats and drinks properly which avoids conditions which could be life threatening to the cow. By milking the cow and collecting the colostrum before feeding it to the calf allows us to test it and make sure that it is of a good quality with plenty of antibodies. This is far more work than just letting the calf suck the cow, but would be far less distressing for both in the long run.

All our calves are dehorned using a local anaesthetic, which is not indicated on some websites. This is part of our herd health plan which

“There are three types of lies -- lies, damn lies, and statistics.”

- Benjamin Disraeli

is written professionally with the vet. Another problem people talk about is lameness. It is often spoken about that cows are often lame.

We have our cows routinely foot trimmed twice a year, one of the biggest problems that we encounter is when the cows go outside and get little flints in their hooves which is extremely painful, so we have to get them out. In the UK there is no tail docking, and no hormones are added to the cows to make them produce more milk. The one thing I urge you to do is when seeing videos or research about dairy cows, is to

check your sources as many things happen in foreign countries and not in the UK, which is another reason to support British farming.

I am proud to say that on our farm we look after our cows and they have good conditions. They are a valuable food source, providing nutrition in the forms of milk, cheese, cream, butter, yoghurt and milk powder.

So please go out of your way to support dairy, but in particular support UK dairy. Every year there is an “Open Farm sunday" and I encourage anyone who

has questions about farming to look up your closest one and visit it. There are so many aspects of dairy farming that are better discussed face to face, and this is an opportunity to talk to someone who really knows the industry. I hope this article has enabled you to discover, or learn more about the reliability of the farming industry. Please do not be deceived by a picture that comes up on your screen, as the realities are very different.

Charlotte W (Upper Sixth)

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DISCOVERY AND DECEPTION IN THE FIELD OF

NUTRITIO UTRITION N

Nutrition is the study of the substances which you put into your body as food, how our body uses nutrients and the relationship between diet, diseases and the way in which they influence your health.

Traditionally food has been perceived as a means to provide energy, but lately it has been recognised that it has an ability to prevent and protect the body against diseases.

There is a clear relationship between our lifestyle and health.

However, recent research shows significant evidence of the relationship on the effects of nutrition on our brain function.

Two main areas of nutrition which impact on brain health are oil fats - like fish oils - and plant fighter chemicals - particularly flavonoids.

These are found in fruit, cocoa and green tea. Diets that are particularly rich in these two areas have an ability to promote memory and learning in older individuals and prevent neurodegenerative diseases - such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. Although they have many antioxidant properties, we are unable to use these in our bodies because when absorbed into our blood streams their structure slightly changes. However, they are able to interact with cells, such as proteins. They do this by entering cells and interacting with signalling pathways, some of which are important for influencing learning and memory pathways.

Memory and learning and the storage of thoughts are determined at a molecular level. The brain reacts to sensory input and then stores this information at this molecular level. The cells create new proteins which are important in the storage of short-term and long-term memory.

The second way flavonoids influence our mental health is through their effect on our vascular systems by allowing them to work fast and acutely within the body. For example, if you ingest a flavonoid rich diet, you have an acute vascular change - such as a drop in blood pressure - meaning there would be a change in blood flow in the brain which affects its performance because it receives more oxygen and nutrients. If you want to access one area of the brain - such as carrying out a specific cognitive task - the

It has been suspected for a long time that the abundance of specific nutrients in our diets affects cognitive processes. New research has discussed the effects of dietary factors on neuronal function and synaptic plasticity which has revealed some vital mechanisms that are responsible for the action of diet on mental function. For example, several gut hormones have been shown to enter the brain and influence cognitive ability.

“The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”

- Marcel Proust

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“There is no such thing as the pursuit of happiness, but there is the discovery of joy” - Joyce Grenfell

flavonoids are able to modulate blood brain flow in specific areas, making brain function more efficient.

Another key aspect of research is how our diets affect our sleep patterns. Research has found that eating more fibre increases time spent in deep sleep, however, an increase in saturated fats and sugar intake are related to less, more disturbed sleep. Research “emphasises the fact that diet and sleep are interwoven in the fabric of a healthy lifestyle,” as president of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, Dr Nathaniel Watson, claims. Studies have also shown that diets lower in saturated fat and higher in protein reduce the time it takes for us to fall asleep.

This suggests that the effect of diet on sleep could have significant health implications because the role of sleep is associated with the development of chronic disorders, such as diabetes.

Despite these compelling findings, why is it that the majority of the population are unaware of the tremendous impact our diet has on how health? It can be argued this is due to the role of the media in reporting false research, leading to deception. It has come to a point where we don’t know what to believe.

Some people are of the opinion that honey is a very good alternative to sugar. This has come out of the fact that honey is more nutritious than sugar, containing more vitamins and minerals. However, in reality it contains a very similar amount of calories compared to sugar and the advice is still to eat everything in moderation.

You may think that you crave certain foods because you're deficient in one of the nutrients they provide.

In reality it is the fact that we know that we are not able to have something which is when cravings occur. The one nutrient deficiency that is associated with cravings in humans is iron. However people who are severely iron deficient tend to crave things such as ice.

Overall this shows that research into diet and nutrition is extremely relevant in our society to help our awareness of the importance of a balanced and nutrient-rich diet.

However, we must be aware of the flaws of the media and be cautious about what to believe.

Millie F (Upper Sixth)

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THE OLY OLYMPICS REVELATIONS AND RUSES

With Rio de Janeiro taking to the world stage on 5 August to host the 2016 Olympic Games, athletes across the globe are in their final stages of preparation.

For many, their performance this summer will be the result of many challenging years of sheer determination and commitment to their training in order to achieve their goals. The methods of preparation chosen by athletes, from exercise regimes and diets to mental techniques vary considerably; however all take meticulous planning and research. In recent years, the discovery of new ergogenic aids have enabled athletes to achieve even greater successes. Although it could be argued that there is a danger that some athletes have become so focused on “winning” with the help of external aids that they compromise the effort, skill and courage needed to bring about a true achievement.

Since the discovery of new legal methods of preparation, altitude training has grown in popularity for endurance athletes. This form of specialised training is based on the scientific theory that at altitudes greater than 2500m where the oxygen levels are reduced, the body is stimulated to produce more red blood cells, meaning that more oxygen can be carried around the body. Use of altitude chambers have also grown, and scientists in Finland have even designed a “high-altitude house” for athletes to live and sleep in, which is now being used by thousands of cyclists and triathletes around the world. Additionally, glycogen loading is a second legal method athletes use to enhance their performance. Firstly, athletes

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deplete their glycogen stores through intense exercise before eating a diet high in carbohydrates.

This is super compensated by the body meaning they have more energy for a competition.

This poses the question: are we being deceived as to who the most successful athletes are? Does this mean that athletes who have more funding are able to win against those that cannot afford these methods, even if their natural ability levels are the same? Several altitude training strategies and devices have undergone critical review by the World Anti-Doping Authority, with the view of potentially banning them as illegal performanceenhancing methods. Since 2000, the International Olympic Committee has even prohibited the use of simulated altitude devices within the Olympic village. Whilst idealistically success should only be obtainable for those with natural, unaided talent, today, in order to win, athletes must combine their talent with the utilisation of legal preparation methods.

Through gaining a greater understanding of biomechanics, sports scientists have been able to design specialist equipment, such as lightweight, aerodynamic bicycles. New materials and clothing have been developed to reduce the effects of air resistance, further improving the athlete’s performance. In 2008 Michael Phelps wore the LZR Racer, a Speedo swimsuit designed by the Australian Institute of Sport, and the wind tunnel testing facilities of NASA. Although it does have some disadvantages, such as the 20 minutes it can take to put on.

Despite these advancements in equipment and clothing not being illegal, they have narrowed the gap between world record holders and the way the sporting achievement

is perceived. Is this technology enhancing the athlete’s ability in those sports to such an extent that we can no longer distinguish between a truly talented athlete and one that has the funding and resources to artificially improve their ability?

The Olympics also provide a platform for the discovery of new hopeful athletes. Although, the World Stage has been dominated by athletes that have pushed the boundary on what performance enhancing methods are allowed.

This was seen in 1988 when Ben Johnson won the 100 metres at the Seoul Olympics by using the illegal drug stanozolol, as well as more recently in the scandal involving Russian athletes. Consequently Adidas have terminated their sponsorship for the International Association of Athletics Federation.

UK athletics are also calling for a fresh start for sport with the resetting of the current World Records and making events harder so that results are incomparable. They hope that this will deter future athletes from taking performance-enhancing drugs; however, it is such a narrow line between the boundaries of legal and illegal aids, or do the boundaries need to be revised?

The symbol of the intertwined Olympic rings and the athlete’s Olympic oath highlight the values of Olympism: “We swear that we will take part in these Olympic Games in the true spirit of sportsmanship and that we will abide by the rules that govern them, for the glory of sport and the honour of our country.”

Although in this modern age, is this an idealistic vision when considering the deception that surrounds sport?

Victoria H (Upper Sixth)

THE ADVANCES IN SPORT IS IT ALL FAIR?

I am sure that many readers are aware of the ever evolving advances of technology in sport, ranging from performance enhancing drugs to abdominal toning belts. But we have to ask ourselves the question: how much do we really know about the technology we are using, and how will it affect our performance in a competitive situation?

There has been no shortage in the technological developments over the past ten years regarding how modern appliances can help athletes with their performance at the highest level. You may remember the introduction and the banning of the LZR full body swimsuits, introduced in 2008. There was much speculation surrounding the design, which later claimed to be moulded to the body to reduce the lumps and bumps of the human skin and compress the body for increased aerodynamics. Furthermore, the suit only consisted of three pieces of material, which was tested by NASA, to reduce the drag created by the seams. These suits, made from a detailed combination of high-tech materials including spandex, nylon and polyurethane, positively took

the competitive swimming world by storm, with 98% of medallists in the 2008 Beijing Olympics wearing them.

To further prove the craze was for a real cause, within less than one year of the LZR’s first appearance, over 97 world records had been broken at the highest competitive level of swimming. However, it was not long before the International Governing Body of Swimming, also known as FINA, saw them as inequitable and less than 18 months after their first appearance at the Olympics, the suits were banned from international competition.

However, discovering this type of technology also has its drawbacks to the average consumer as well as to the professional athlete. Some of you may own a particular portable device that may track your number of steps in a day or your fitness progress. But here lies the painful predicament that the average consumer faces with the desire to increase their activity levels: are we not just cheating ourselves?

Surely the irony of this technology within sport is encouraging the very thing sport is designed for us not to do: to stay at home in front of a screen and reduce the amount of time spent outdoors being active. Uploading all the data collected from your device onto your computer can be just as timeconsuming as doing the exercise itself, which in effect is doing the reverse of what you bought your device for in the first place. Are we all being scammed?

With this in mind, there are also benefits of the advances made in technological involvement within sports. Tennis, for example, uses one of the most revolutionary pieces of equipment, known most commonly as “Hawk-Eye.” It uses lasers to visually track the trajectory of the ball and display a record of its statistically more likely path as a moving image. Not only is this useful for confirming if a ball has been hit out of play, but is now also being used in advanced training programmes for elite tennis players and the commentators, allowing them to have a visual aid when explaining the details of a specific shot to viewers on analysis programmes. Not only has it evolved the accuracy of the umpiring, but also helped educate the lovers of the sport at home.

So, this debate of discovery and deception and its advantages and disadvantages is positively endless.

There really is no answer as to whether this is the right or wrong thing for advancing sport, but who knows where it could take us in the future? We could be watching badminton being played from a miniscule camera in the racket, or hear about sprinters running the 100m in less than five seconds due to newly-designed shoes.

But whatever happens, I’m sure the future will not disappoint.

Jade B (Year 11)

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VALETE VALET E SARAH CARWARDINE, TEACHER OF SCIENCE Sarah joined Pipers Corner in September 2003 as a fulltime teacher of Biology. At her interview she said that she knew Pipers would be a good fit for her as it reminded her so much of her own school where she had been so happy. In her first year she was a member of the boarding staff, living on site, getting up before six each morning to go and look after her “boys”, her two horses. A typical biology teacher, she has always had

a love of animals. She bought her own flat and moved out of boarding, but the Pipers community has been a large part of her life for the last 13 years.

Sarah has impressed us in so many ways. She is an amazing teacher of Biology, conveying her passion of the subject to so many students over the years.

As a Sixth Form Tutor, she has built strong pastoral relationships with all her tutees, guiding them through their studies, applications to higher education, and she has kept in touch with so many of them. It is a testament to her kindness and

ALISON CLARE, PRE-PREP Alison Clare started teaching at Pipers in 2000 and moved into the newly extended Pre-Prep building as the Year 1 teacher and more recently she has taught Year 2. With a degree and previous career in science, Alison brought her passion for this subject into school. She introduced pupils to the secret world of frogs and butterflies, enabling children to develop curiosity and fascination for the natural world. The Pre-Prep ceremonial releasing of the butterflies each year was always a poignant moment.

Alison introduced many other highlights into the curriculum, the most memorable including; International Day, the Grandparents Tea Party and the re-enactment of putting out the Great Fire of London. Alison’s knowledge of the English language and love of books led to her cataloguing the Pre-Prep Library, enabling everyone to easily find a variety of books on numerous topics. She was also responsible for the collection of the Christmas Shoe Boxes, ensuring many less privileged children overseas, benefited by the generosity of the Pre-Prep girls.

Alison has witnessed many changes both in the school and the Pre-Prep Department during her 16 years.

Throughout this time she has always been whole heartedly committed, extremely loyal and a valuable member of the team. On behalf of her colleagues I wish her a well-deserved long and healthy retirement with her husband, children and grandchildren.

Elaine Rushforth, Head of Pre-Prep

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generosity of time that so many girls have remained friends with her long after leaving Pipers.

As Head of Penn House she has shown her leadership and motivational skills as she has steered the House to many successes in debating, the music competition and the ultimate prize of winning Pipers Sports Day. Sarah will be missed by the Science staff and the girls equally. She has been a truly caring teacher and friend to all.

Pami Sandhu, Head of Science

SARAH CLIFFORD, TEACHER OF GEOGRAPHY Sarah joined us in September 2013, instantly breathing a rush of energy into the Department. She quickly rose to the challenges of life in the Geography Department, keen to take on as much as she could to support the girls and myself as a busy Head of Department. Sarah deserves to be commended for probably being the first person in Pipers’ history to receive a promotion after half a term as she took on the role of Staff Co-ordinator for Hampden House, a role she thoroughly enjoyed throughout her time at the school and she did a sterling job of coaching the House Leadership Team in their various roles. Sarah worked incredibly hard and was adept at ensuring that girls of all ability were pushed to achieve their potential.

She took time to get to know everyone on the staff and seemed to have her fingers in lots of pies – one minute planning a creative lesson on quarrying, the next she was sewing Lion King costumes or accompanying a Drama trip to London. It is not surprising, therefore, that when a senior Geography role came up at Claires Court, she was snapped up.

Sarah leaves with our very best wishes.

Melanie Collins, Head of Geography

CHRIS GOULD, NETBALL COACH Chris Gould, our wonderful netball coach retired this Easter after 25 years of service at Pipers Corner School (1991-2016). Her extensive coaching experience, knowledge and humour have ensured that all who have been coached by her, will never forget her.

She coached a huge number of girls over the years at Pipers Corner; from the Prep Department all the way through to the Senior age group. Her enthusiasm was endless and although

she had in recent years cut down her hours, she still gave up her free time to go on Netball Weekend Tours or Sports Tours to such countries as Cyprus and Barcelona.

Many of the girls she coached have gone on to represent not only their school, but also their club, county, region and some even nationally.

Chris has been a huge support to the Department, in both a personal and professional context. She definitely

JUDITH HARPER, TEACHER OF TEXTILES Judith and I first met on a fashion illustration course in West London in the late 90s. Fast forward 5 or 6 years when we had both moved to Buckinghamshire I met her again, this time on a computer course. When the need for extra Textiles teaching arose, she stepped into her role within the Textiles Department at Pipers. Her meticulous attention to detail, her high expectations and the standards she expects from girls are hallmarks of the teaching and learning experience she has given to girls at Pipers. Her high energy and capacity for hard work is endless and I have hugely appreciated the contribution she has made to the Textiles Department both in terms of her time, valued opinion and professional judgement. Judith has taught Textiles through the school to GCSE with some incredible work produced and projects devised for girls to gain the most out of their textiles experience.

She has also contributed to after school clubs and has always been a keen supporter of girls in their own extra-curricular activities. She will be sadly missed but I know she is moving on to more high energy activities outside the classroom, after many years of teaching.

Judith leaves with my heartfelt thanks and very best wishes for her future endeavours.

keeps us all in check! She has a great sense of humour and we will all miss the regular updates of what her new puppy has been up to in the garden and what he has now “destroyed� in the house.

Chris will be sorely missed, but we wish her well in her retirement and hope that both she and her husband, Rick, enjoy their many travels.

Jo Poore, Head of PE

ROS LEE, FOREST SCHOOL AND PRE-PREP Ros joined Pipers in 2002 as a Reception class teacher. She has been the musical influence in many Pre-Prep plays, concerts, assemblies and the Pipers PTA camping nights.

In 2011 Ros became a Forest School Practitioner and helped to transform the overgrown woodland into a magical playground. Her enthusiasm for outdoor life has enabled the girls to have fun, appreciate the environment, learn new skills and care for the woodland. She has shared her incredible knowledge of birdlife inspiring the girls to complete the RSPB annual bird watch.

Ros is retiring to spend more time with her family and partner Rob and is looking forward to an amazing trip to the base camp of Mount Everest.

She will be missed by all in Pre-Prep and Forest School and we wish her a happy and healthy retirement.

Debbie Easterbrook, Forest School Co-ordinator

Catherine Tebb, Head of Textiles

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DAVID LEITH, DIRECTOR OF PREP STUDIES David Leith joined Pipers Corner in September 2012 and changed the way that Maths is taught in Prep forever.

His introduction of the “speed tables” challenge continues to cause great excitement amongst the girls as they vie for the Queen of Speed Tables Crown.

Many will remember his hands on kinaesthetic lessons which include dance mat tables. Those that have been lucky enough to have been taught Maths by Mr Leith will fondly remember sharing a Maths berry (raisin) sometimes between four children as a reward. His approach to

assessment enables girls to relax and perform with confidence and without fear of failure. Kicking off your shoes and eating a custard cream whilst completing a test, does wonders for instilling a positive mindset approach to Mathematics. Mr Leith’s personal challenge has always been to develop a love of Maths; it is clear, when watching the Maths movies made by the girls, that this has been achieved.

Mr Leith is a firm believer that children should take responsibility for their own learning in the classroom and beyond. He has promoted leadership within the Prep Department by setting up a number of initiatives including, the Prep Captain’s Challenge and Applied Learning. Through these he has encouraged the girls to raise

There have been a number of occasions when Mr Leith has been spotted in unusual attire, such as his Elvis and Abba costumes and his Christmas jumper which has made an annual appearance and amused staff, girls and parents alike. However, the most memorable was when he was asked to wear an enormous wig during the amended version of The Twelve Days of Christmas at the Prep Christmas concert.

His charisma and wit will certainly be missed by all, but we wish him lots of happiness in his new role as Head Teacher of The Downley School.

Beth Eagles, Deputy Head of Prep

JACQUI MARTIN-LÖF, GARDENING CLUB AND FOREST SCHOOL

SUE MAY, TEACHER OF RS, ENGLISH AND CAREERS

There are few members of staff at Pipers who will leave behind them such permanent legacies as a wildflower meadow, a beautiful willow tunnel as well as several "bug hotels". Jacqui's work in running our Gardening Clubs has literally transformed our site - as well as the attitudes of the girls in it. Creative, artistic and ever enthusiastic, Jacqui has devoted hours of her own time behind the scenes to all of the Gardening Club endeavours and the results have been fantastic to see.

Sue May has been a valued member of staff since joining Pipers and has shown herself to be a women of many talents.

Working in English she greatly enjoyed her classes, in which the girls benefitted from her love of the works, her care for how the girls learned to present and articulate themselves, her dramatic flair, her care for each girl and her sense of humour and fun was apparent to all. Colleagues benefited from her great politeness and positive approach. In RS she has shown again her versatility and the Department have thoroughly enjoyed working with her. Her subject knowledge is exceptional and she has a deeply held moral concern for the well-being of the girls in her care flowing through into her lessons. Finally, in yet another string to her bow, for the last year she has added her experience and dedication to the Careers Department, where she has contributed a wealth of knowledge and expertise to the delivery of Careers education across the year groups. Sue has a true passion and zest for careers education which she passed on to many students in conversations and interviews.

From a quiet start behind the huts with a long raised bed and one shed - the Gardening Club recently moved into the greenhouse and surrounding area where it now stands at the heart of our school, metaphorically and literally. I have been told that many, many years ago at Pipers, weeding the vegetable patch was a punishment - under Jacqui's careful eye, our girls today see growing their own produce as a privilege.

Jacqui has also created Pre-Prep Gardening Clubs and as a qualified Forest School leader has worked with the Pre-Prep girls for the last six years. She also initiated our Applied Learning classes in Prep where girls brought their curriculum learning to the outdoor spaces. Jacqui's journey, starting out as a Pipers' parent, through PPTA leadership and ending up as one of Pipers most creative teachers, has been a delight to witness. She has given so much of her time and her skills to the school and we will be eternally grateful to her.

Helen Ness-Gifford, Headmistress

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an enormous amount of money for various charities.

Emma Cresswell, Assistant Head

SANDRA MURRAY, PA TO THE HEADMISTRESS Being the Head's PA often requires the tact of a top diplomat, the patience of a saint and an encyclopaedic knowledge of the school, every member of staff and every student - as well as most of their parents. The PA is often the person to whom everyone will turn for answers, solutions and sympathy - and the member of staff who is rightly at the heart of the school.

Sandra Murray has been one of the very best and she has put up with me, and with all of us, for 13 years, both in her previous role in the school office and latterly as the Head's PA. Her calm and constantly positive exterior belies her shrewd

and common sense approach, as well as her instinctive understanding of people and the school. Sandra often knew things before anyone else did, not least the fact that we were going to be welcoming ISI for yet another inspection. Sandra took this call four times and on all four occasions her calmness set the tone for what was inevitably a stressful and busy time. It was during times like Inspections that it was clear just how good Sandra was at the many varied and complex aspects of her job - in recruitment, marketing, communication, compliance, health and safety and in finding the forms that everyone knows exist but that nobody can put their hands on at short notice!

Sandra's understanding of the drive for excellence at Pipers and the changes we have made has meant that new initiatives, ideas and changes were always facilitated and supported by

LAURA PARRETT, TEACHER OF ENGLISH In 2010, Laura arrived at Pipers as Miss Lindsay for her NQT year, fresh from distinction in her PGCE at Exeter University, and into our first September INSET Department Meeting. She arrived early to En1, of course, with sharpened pencil, and a pad of clean, lined paper. I wondered at the time how long that would last. She folded back the cover, and began.

Six years later, a breathless lunch break, Laura Parrett came in to see me in the hurried clutter of our office's routine mundanities and inspirations and perched on seat to tell me that her new daughter and husband, her new life, were taking her away from Pipers, she was taking on examining roles and positions helping to lead Departments and, well, Dad, it's time to go.

If we were granted an academic life flashing in front of our eyes, we would see effervescent smiles and claps of delight in class, peg and line book displays hanging from the ceiling in En3, intense care in green pen comments over essays, glow of scholarship, a shepherd of the Sixth Form, whiff of alchemic vapours swirling in her essays, a voice of ideas, experience and perception emerging in Department Meetings, exchanged looks between SGi and EBe which said, "Are you seeing what I'm seeing?", hurried excuses now arriving late to Department Meetings having dealt with Sixth Form UCAS emergencies, and the thrill of being able to send a wonderful teacher on her way.

Not a blank sheet of paper now, but one packed with experiences only teaching can give. Sharpen the pencil, Mrs Parrett, and turn the page.

Simon Gifford, Head of English

her willingness to adapt. Even though she's sent me away to far flung places such as Hong Kong and Peru, where realistically she might have expected to have a little peace from me to catch up with her other tasks, she soon discovered that I would always work out the hours when she was at her desk and be in touch with emails and questions during that time. It was not just the technology that allowed me to continue doing my job from the other side of the world - it was having Sandra as my PA. A good PA is invaluable to any school, but an exceptional one leaves behind a school which has been significantly enriched by their contributions. Like many others here, I am privileged to have worked alongside such an exceptional PA as Sandra and we will all miss her a great deal.

Helen Ness-Gifford, Headmistress

FERZANA QURESHI, SECOND IN MATHEMATICS It is with great sadness that we in the Maths Department say goodbye to “The Beautiful One” this year. We are of course very excited that she has a fabulous new role, but as I am sure everyone agrees, the place will not be the same without her. If anyone has done their utmost to promote the enjoyment of Maths lessons in the school, it is definitely Mrs Qureshi.

Mrs Qureshi joined Pipers eight years ago from Dr Challoner’s High School and has developed a very individual style of teaching. From apples and bananas to cosy triangles, she has a story for every mathematical situation and trying to take over a class from her involves listening to very many strange tales. She has also been a friendly ear to many students over the years, always giving time when it mattered, and being able to have a laugh as well.

In the staff room she has been equally popular, and will be sorely missed. Her ability to say absolutely anything with a huge smile has been a source of great amusement to many of us and her sense of fun is most infectious. As my Second in Department she has been invaluable, and has worked behind the scenes keeping everything ticking along, and to say that I will miss her is a huge understatement.

However, we wish Ferzana every success in her new job. We know she will be fantastic and hope very much that she keeps in touch.

Alison Robinson, Head of Mathematics

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ANGELA RANDLES, DIRECTOR OF MUSIC

SHARON REED, SCHOOL OFFICE MANAGER

We were delighted when Angela Randles accepted the post of Director of Music for one year to ensure we maintained an excellent level of teaching for our girls, but especially our GCSE and A Level students. From the outset she fully immersed herself in the musical activities of the school and ensured that the girls were ready to perform at the Christmas Carol Service. This has been followed by smaller informal concerts throughout the year with the last performance showcasing the work she helped our senior girls to compose themselves. We wish her every success for the future.

Sharon joined the school in 2012 as a member of the School Office, and quickly was promoted to Office Manager. She used her skills previously learnt in military establishment to ensure all processes were well managed and this was invaluable to both staff and students. Many parents encountered Sharon as there first introduction to the school and she was well known for her welcoming style. Sharon had many hidden talents; however, staff were often amazed by her knitting talents. Her patience when explaining techniques and the expertise of her final products. She will be missed by all who had the pleasure of working with her and we wish her every success in her new school

Caroline Derbyshire, Assistant Head

Caroline Derbyshire, Assistant Head

ELAINE RUSHFORTH, HEAD OF PRE-PREP Elaine Rushforth joined the Pre-Prep Department in September 2009 and the recent ISI inspection report shows just how much she has brought to the school. A shrewd ISI Inspector herself, she combined wisdom and experience with the ability to still feel incredibly excited about the learning of our youngest children - as well as a keenness to give them the very best opportunities. Under her leadership, Forest School was introduced and the girls began their journey in outdoor learning, a journey which now continues up through the school.

Her legacy will be the numerous girls who will move into adolescence far

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more connected to nature than those who went before them; girls with a genuine respect and love for the world in which they live. It was not unusual to go in to Pre-Prep and find the staff as excited as the girls about the eggs which had just hatched in the blue tit nest box. Elaine has never lost her joy of discovering new things and of sharing that excitement with others and this is what makes her such a special teacher and leader.

Elaine has always impressed me not only with her own extensive knowledge of education in KS1 and Early Years, but also with her willingness and passion to learn from other educationalists. Some teachers, particularly those close to retirement, can sometimes think that they have seen and done it all - I know that Elaine sees each new day as a fresh

opportunity to learn and to develop.

She is indefatigable with her ideas and her enthusiasm is catching watching her bring about change in her Department has been a real pleasure. Because Elaine believed in change and how it would affect lives - other people believed too.

As a colleague she has been a valued member of the staffroom - she would do anything for anybody and I have lost count of the times when I have gone in to Pre-Prep at the end of a long day in order to tell her to go home. She may be retiring but I am sure that her retirement will not be quiet, sedate or lacking in enthusiasm for all it brings. We wish Elaine and her husband, Peter, all the very best in their new lives.

Helen Ness-Gifford, Headmistress

LISA STRINGER, TEACHER OF ICT

PETER WADDLETON, SECOND IN ENGLISH

Lisa joined the IT Department in September 2014 teaching a wide range of ICT and computing courses to the senior girls. Her impressive list of previous jobs include working for the RAF and Norwich Union and these resulted in Lisa having first-hand experience of working in the IT industry, not to mention discussions on hideous uniforms. Her calm approach to the subjects have been appreciated by the students who are grateful for the time Lisa takes to find relevant examples of technical parts of the A Level course.

What many do not know about Peter’s commitment to Pipers Corner is that every morning he battled the M40 all the way from Oxford and arrived, often breathless, having slain the dragons of Handy Cross and the High Wycombe roundabouts. What many do not know is that Peter was an indefatigable supply of resources selflessly shared with colleagues and girls for a whole panoply of texts and a miscellany, a menagerie of literary figures: Wilde, Lear, Miller, the Gothic, Chaucer …. – not a problem. Organise three trips for three Year groups in three days? Not a problem. Many do not know that Peter has the arcane art of hoodwinking theatres into letting go of their beloved posters, many of which now adorn the English staircase, all framed and put up by Peter himself. What people do know are Peter’s satirical tour-de-forces, delivered deadpan, his love of painful one-liners. If girls did not know before, it did not take them long to find Peter in long-haired gothic splendour pounding out the bass beat in 90s YouTube videos. These and his tales of Roadies on the road all seemed impossibly cool to the tender hearts of the English Office. Peter is moving on to furnish the stage of other young minds and we wish him well.

Lisa has also been heavily involved in the extracurricular life of the school, running the politics club and participating in several ski trips and this year’s World Challenge expedition. Lisa can always be relied on to help out around the school be that with the lost property or selling cakes on Children in Need day.

Lisa leaves us to take up the post of Head of Computing at St Helen & St Katherine School at Abingdon. I know she will be a great success and we wish her well.

Lou Scott, Head of ICT

Simon Gifford, Head of English

JAMES WOODHALL, ASSISTANT DIRECTOR OF MUSIC James Woodhall has been at Pipers for four years and in that time has made a huge impact within the Music Department.

One of his key roles has been to enliven the music within the Prep Department and he has also been an outstanding Form Tutor in Year 6. His Christmas and summer productions have become highlights in the Prep calendar and never fail to delight and impress in equal measures. He has also taught both GCSE and A Level and contributed hugely to the wider life of the school.

It is a measure of James’s enthusiasm and talent that during his first term at Pipers Corner School, having never acted or sang on stage before, he stepped up to the challenge of being Captain Von Trapp in the School’s production of The Sound of Music when the lead actor became unwell.

Needless to say James performed wonderfully and has gone on to great things including jointly creating the first Pipers pantomime and sharing his joy for performance with the whole staff whilst also delivering memorable performances as Buttons and Charles Dickens.

The wit and sense of fun that James brings to all his lessons was always evident and never more so than when orchestrating parents and staff

to actively participate in songs and routines during the Prep Christmas concert. The appearance of the obligatory Christmas jumper before the singalong to the twelve days of Christmas will remain long in the memory of all those who have experienced this.

James has blessed Pipers with his expertise and passion and he will be missed. We wish him well for all his new endeavours, such as his new band the Cold Light Ensemble, and look forward to following his progress as he takes over the music department at his new school.

Neil Walker, Deputy Head

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UPPER SIX SIXTH LEAVERS

1. Where are you going after Pipers and what will you be doing?

2. Tell us something about yourself that few people know.

3. What’s your favourite Pipers memory?

4. Famous last words?

BEATRICE A

LYDIA B

JOANNE B

1. I will be going off to university next year to study Sport and Exercise Science.

1. After returning from the World Challenge expedition to Ecuador I will be off to university to study History.

1. I will be going to Oxford Brookes University to study Primary Education.

3. There have been so many memories, but my favourite times would just have to be those where we shared funny little moments that made me laugh on those rainy days.

4. “Pipers has certainly been an experience and although I'll miss everyone and all the memories I've made, I'm ready to go on to new things.”

2. I’ve always wanted to learn Russian – there’ll be enough time at university, right?

3. When Ms Bell leapt out of the dark and terrified our English class on a trip to Haworth! It was so scary that Alice H fell off her seat and none of us had a good night’s sleep in the “haunted” youth hostel.

3. I have had so many amazing Pipers memories but I must say the Geography trips have been a real highlight for me.

4. “Jo, what’s for lunch?”

JENNER C

4. “Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened.” (Dr Seuss)

REBECCA B ELLENA C 1. I will be studying Early Childhood at Oxford Brookes, with the hope of running my own nursery.

2. I used to be a very good tap dancer and can still surprisingly do the splits!

1. After Pipers I am planning on going to university to study Sociology.

3. One of my favourite Pipers memories is going on the school trip to Iceland, especially when we visited the Blue Lagoon.

4. “Don't stress, do your best, forget the rest.”

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1. I will be going to University of Liverpool to study Psychology.

3. The many school trips we had, especially with the GeoCats and the multiple traumatic experiences with the minibuses.

4. An inspirational quote: “I’m a bit sweaty.”

4. “To narrow a favourite memory down to just one would be impossible and I think that says something about my seven years at Pipers… Every day, week and year at this school have been so incredibly memorable and for that, I love you, Pipers.”

LEAH E

MILLIE F

ALICE H

1. I will be working alongside and gaining experience in coaching sports.

1. I will be studying Food Science and Nutrition at the University of Leeds next year.

1. After Pipers I am going on a gap year.

3. One thing I will never forget about these past seven years is having the privilege to take part in amazing opportunities in which I have created lifelong memories.

3. Winning Sixth Form vs. Staff netball dressed as superheroes!

4. “One day you'll be at your last Sports Day. One day you'll be taking your last school exam and eating your last school lunch. One day you'll have your last break time with your friends. One day you'll be walking out of the doors for the last time. One day you'll be sitting in a white marquee on Parents’ Day with the people you grew up with. One day you’ll be saying goodbye to the people you've known for half of your life, but will never forget all of the memories you've made.”

JEMMA H

1. I am going to Bournemouth University to study Forensic Computing and Security.

3. Becoming friends with Abbie V after our first lacrosse lesson in Year 7.

4. “If you can dream it, you can do it.”

VICTORIA H

2. My guilty pleasure has got to be the TV show “Friends”!

3. My favourite memory was going on the bouncy castle in the Spinney garden on the last day of 2015. It was so fun to hang out with everyone.

4. “I'm going to miss everyone in Year 13 so much. You are all so nice and I can talk to any of you.”

GEORGINA H 1. In the summer I’m going on the World Challenge expedition to Ecuador. Then I will study Sports and Exercise Science at university.

3. It’s so hard to choose just one moment; however, whilst completing the D of E award we found ourselves in the funniest situations - including calling SOS on our Bronze expedition and spending nights in dilapidated bunk houses due to the constant rain and 90mph winds in Snowdonia.

1. I will be going to Exeter University to study BA Geography and then a Masters in International Relations.

3. Mrs Newson’s Maths lessons, ski trips and the Geocats 4. “Hey man, got any snacks?”

(Jenner C, 2016)

4. “I would like to say thank you to everyone who has been a part of my eight years at Pipers, it definitely wouldn't have been the same without you.”

4. “We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we’re curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.” (Walt Disney)

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KIRSTY J

HARRIET L

1. I will be going to the University of Birmingham to study Biomedical Science.

1. I will be going to Loughborough University to study Psychology.

3. My favourite memory is definitely when I led Milton to success on Sports Day. This was the first time Milton had won Sports Day in eighteen years and I was so proud!

4. “I hate Mop End. I literally hate Mop End. It always rains.”

3. Making up songs together in English on our Year 11 Muck-Up Day will stay with me forever.

4. “Though she be but little, she is fierce.” (Shakespeare)

ELIZABETH P

POPPY N

PAMELA N

1. After Pipers I will be going to Oxford Brookes to do an Art Foundation course before choosing a specific art degree course.

2. On my first day at Pipers I discovered that purse belts were not supposed to be worn over jumpers - I learnt that one the hard way 3. My favourite memory was the last day of Year 12 when we all went on the bouncy castle in the Spinney garden.

4. “I meeeean...”

NIA T 1. I will be going to university to study Business Management with a year in industry.

1. I will be going to Liverpool University to study Psychology.

4. “Even with all the work and pressure of school, make sure you enjoy your time at Pipers. It goes so quickly!”

3. My favourite memory was winning Inter-House Debating after being so terrified beforehand.

4. “Take every opportunity especially when it scares you!”

MADDY S GABRIELLA S

1. I am going to study Modern Languages at either Exeter or Durham University.

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3. My favourite Pipers memory is our netball tour to Cyprus in Year 10 as that trip made our netball team a lot closer and we made some very funny memories together.

1. I will be going to study History at the University of East Anglia.

During this time I hope to spend a semester in Boston.

3. Pipers has given me so many amazing memories and so I find it impossible to pick my favourite!

I find myself smiling when remembering all the English lessons.

4. “You have brains in your head.

You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose.” (Dr Seuss)

1. I am going to study Philosophy at Cardiff.

2. I work at the Hell-Fire Caves in West Wycombe. This includes running children’s parties, which involves dressing up in various costumes, including ghosts and werewolves - not your average job, but I love it.

3. The continuous banter with the Languages Department.

Another great memory was the heart dissection in Biology.

4. “Remember how quickly time flies, and to take every opportunity. Pipers has offered me so many opportunities, and I wish I had taken even more than I already have.”

ABBIE V

ALICE W

CHLOE W

1. I’m hoping to do a foundation course in acting at RADA after I leave school and then go on to a full degree at drama school.

1. Zoology at Exeter University

1. I’m going to Bucks New University for an Art Foundation and then to the University of De Montfort to study Fashion Buying and Design.

3. One of my favourite memories is the English trip to Haworth, when everyone thought I’d been possessed by a ghost in the middle of the night!

4. “Good friends are like stars. You can’t always see them but you know they are always there!”

CHARLOTTE W

2. I have never watched the High School Musical films. I first heard “Breaking Free” when I was 15.

3. Definitely winning the last lacrosse match of Year 11 and tackling Coach victoriously we were told to calm down as we were behaving in an “unsportsmanlike manner”!

(This was our one and only win of the season!)

4. “Laughter is poison to fear.”

(George R. R. Martin) No matter what happens, have a laugh and enjoy your life.

HANNAH W

2. One of my many memories of Pipers was during our Year 11 Muck-Up Day in the English classroom. The whole year sang “Wonderwall” to the guitar. It was such a lovely moment.

4. “I just want to say thank you to everyone who has been part of my life at Pipers! You have made my time here so special and I will leave filled with many amazing memories that I will treasure forever. I’m going to miss all of you but I truly wish you the best of luck for your future. Love you all!”

REBECCA W 1. I am going to Harper Adams University to study Agriculture.

3. I will never forget our DofE Gold expedition.

4. “What you see depends on how you view the world. Most people just see dirt. To a farmer it's potential.” (Doe Zantamata)

1. After Pipers I am going to go to Bristol University to study English and Theatre.

3. It’s so hard to choose! Perhaps the standing ovation I received on the last night of “Thoroughly Modern Millie” when I played Mrs Meers. It was that moment I realised perhaps acting was my thing!

4. “You never realise how much you love something or someone until they're gone.” These words sum up how I feel about Pipers.

Whilst I know I will miss this lovely school, I don't think I can yet comprehend how hard my goodbye will be..

1. I want to study Sport Science and hopefully work in the motorsport industry.

3. The 2014 Italy ski trip. I have great memories from each day.

4 “The brave may not live forever, but the cautious don't live at all.”

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Pipers Lane, Great Kingshill, High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, HP15 6LP theschool@piperscorner.co.uk 01494 718255 www.piperscorner.co.uk www.facebook.com/PipersCornerSchool @PipersCornerSch

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