Independence day
3rd July 2026
Another week passes and we enter the ‘home straight’ of this academic year. A cooler, more manageable week has brought some relief and allowed us all to remain focused on ensuring our children and young people get the very best educational experience each and every day, and right through until the last knockings of the school year. We all must remain consistent and to reinforce the messages of attendance, punctuality, good behaviour, high standards and high expectations. That might be something of a challenge on Monday, and the head coach of the England team hasn’t made that easy for us. Despite his messaging we know what is right and what is important.
I know I could be writing again about world cups, but not too much this week. Just to say an enormous well done to the England Women’s Twenty 20 cricket team who have made the World Cup final, to be played at Lords, this coming Sunday, against the old cricketing foe, Australia. Both teams have progressed unbeaten and are the best teams in the tournament. It should be a cracker.
You may well be reading this as our cousins from across the pond celebrate their 250-year anniversary of their independence. On 4th July 1776 the United States of America was born as the states, and there were only 13 states (originally the Thirteen Colonies), when the Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence. Happy anniversary to our friends, cousins, adversaries across the Atlantic.
Wherever we think the country is at, where they have got to, whatever the politics or political nonsense it is fair to say that the USA is a remarkable country with an incredible history, particularly over the twentieth century. It seems to me that we might want to differentiate between what we read or consume online and the reality of the everyday and ordinary. Some of you will have visited the states. I’ve holidayed there a few times and the reality of the ordinary, the everyday, the typical seems to be so much different to the perceptions that many of us might have or have inherited. In downtown America the people, those who are just like you and me, are usually the most wonderful, warm, friendly and interested people. Interactions are almost never frosty. Confrontation almost never emerges. An openness is almost always offered.
It’s a message I could share about almost anywhere really. The people, the ordinary, the day-to-day are often at odds with the (social) media driven information, mis-information or even dis-information. Those like you and me, just getting on with their daily lives, can be some of the warmest people we’ll ever meet.
It’s been interesting reading some of the reports coming out of the USA based element of the football (not soccer) world cup. The average fan has met so many lovely people and is having a whale of a time. There has been no trouble; no need for ICE or Border Patrol. Many neighbourhoods and towns have adopted teams; including a whole town which became Algerian for a month. Many Americans have a history that’s beyond their present home. This has allowed the 48 countries to find their diaspora and, as a consequence, there’s been an embracing of those many different cultures.
Maybe that’s why the US has lasted so long and had so much success. Despite some of the ‘ranting’s’ of the political class, the typical, the ordinary American understands their allegiance to their home, whilst recognising and celebrating their personal or family heritage. A message for us all? Maybe I need to re-engage with the North-East and border heritage?
‘There is not a liberal America and a conservative America – there is the United States of America. There is not a black America and a white America and latino America and asian America – there’s the United States of America.’ President Barak Obama
‘There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured with what is right in America.’ President Bill Clinton