Taking time to remember

8th November 2024

I hope that the return to school or college has been manageable. Almost everyone got to take some time away last week and it did come at a time when we all needed some rest and recuperation.

Although we are week 1 of this half term there has been so much happening across our schools and in the college. The weekend break will come as something of a welcome relief but I do recognise that many of you will be marking Remembrance Day, either personally and in private or through attendance at an event or service on Sunday.

As is tradition our colleagues at Thomas Rotherham College will hold their annual Old Boys Remembrance service at its own cenotaph this coming Saturday. There will be students and staff from the college present, standing alongside pupils from Oakwood High School, Winterhill School and Sitwell Junior School, and in the presence of Rotherham Grammar School Old Boys; some of whom served. It looks like the weather will be fair for this weekend’s events; although we remember it is November and there will be a chill in the air – so, wrap up warm.

This year’s remembrance weekend comes at an interesting time, with some of the events across the world, for differing reasons, bringing us some worry. By definition remembrance is a reminder to remember. As our history teachers would tell us, we must understand and learn from the past or we are destined to keep on making the same mistakes. It is important, therefore, that we do take some time to stop and reflect, every now and then. This weekend’s events encourage us to pause and consider why we are where we are, from a local, national and global perspective. There may not be answers to the questions being posed but the context will bring some greater clarity, where there may be a fog. The value of education, and being educated about our personal and national histories, is brought into clearer focus at this time.

I am so pleased that much of the noise of recent years, in the media, about the value, or otherwise of remembrance events has dissipated. There was too much noise about the remembrance events. Too many saying too much, too often – be that via social media, or on mainstream linear media. In all that noise what might be lost is that ordinary people, and in fact our pupils and students can and do want to take a moment to pause.

I was struck by the words offered by Joel Wirth, to be shared in college on Monday morning. A useful reminder of why, how and what.

‘At this time, when we are daily reminded of the horrors of human suffering in war, we invite all members of our College community to join us in an act of remembrance for all those whose lives have been touched by conflict across the ages:

• those service personnel who have fallen in combat;
• those of their colleagues who have served and who suffer the physical and mental scars of that service;
• those civilians of all nationalities, and their communities, whose lives have been brutalised by war.

We pause today in remembrance.’

In all of our schools and in the college, there will be events to recognise and mark the service of those who came before us. We won’t discuss artificial philosophical and abstract concepts of just or unjust wars, we will just ask that our children and young people to reflect and be respectful.

And don’t they just? In standing in quiet reflection, they, you and I, stand to remember; they, you and I stand in quiet reflection in memory of all those who have had to fight, or who are innocent victims of the wars of others.

‘Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.’ George Santayana

 ‘Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.’ H. G. Wells

 This weekend all around this town, this county, this country, ordinary and upstanding members of our communities will take time to reflect.