Commemoration
of the school; and to our excellent and committed Board of Governors, led expertly by the Chairman, Bill Woolley. This year’s team of monitors has fully merited the honour of donning the blue gowns. Led with character and humility by our two excellent Heads of School, Ben and Sally and their highly capable deputies, Izzy and James, they have been a terrific team and done the school proud. Our young are living in an age of unprecedented possibility. Our children carry the burdens of their own dreams and expectations; and the challenges of great competition. They are surrounded by choice and dazzling evidence of progress. But, as a civilisation, humankind still has so many things yet to get right. As educated people, they know that our world is also a place of unprecedented inequality, benighted with events of malevolent darkness: the radicalisation of young Muslims; the use of child soldiers; the desperate economy of human trafficking; the global reality of disadvantage, disease, hunger and fear. Together with all young educated men and women, our leavers carry the weighty burden of striving to right the wrongs that still prevail in our world. Western culture consistently mistakes perfection for wholeness. Living with a sense of obligation to others, however this finds expression, is one of the virtues of a St Peter’s education. I hope that our pupils learn that the ultimate joys in life are moral joys; that the ultimate virtues are Eulogy Virtues. The virtues that illuminate our youngsters must be bright enough to guide them on life-paths that are not simply about selfsatisfaction and the amassing of riches and experiences. The light of their Eulogy Virtues must shine even more brightly than the lesser light of their CV Virtues, impressive though those may be. We need their light to seek out the darker places and make them brighter. 800 years on from the signing of the Magna Carta - the ‘big charter’ between King John and his restless Barons - what is the charter that we make between those who are in positions of power and influence and those who need to be guided and cared for? What is the charter between the old and the young, between the educator and the educated, between the leader and the led? I fervently hope that the pupils of this fine school, which is, as you know, older even than the Magna Carta, have entered into a charter with themselves and with the world they are about they enter as young adults: a charter to improve themselves and the world around them. I wish all our leavers every happiness and success. Even more fervently I hope that, as they pursue their goals in life, they will live in ways that are true to their deeper selves. May their minds grow in wisdom. May they carry all of life’s burdens with lightness of heart, with a sense of service and, above all, with hope. Mr Leo Winkley Head Master
The Peterite 2014-2015
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