Saltus Grammar School - Yearbook (Hamilton, Bermuda)

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Mr. R.V. Haygarth ' s Final Assembly Speech: I would be grateful for your attention for some five min- utes — no longer, I would trust. It is a five minutes I ' ve de- voted a certain amount of thought to. Nothing clears a man ' s mind more than the thought of execution the next morning! There are three subjects I want to talk about. One is, that because of the ages of people in this school, we are con- cerned very much with the concept of MATURITY. The words ' mature ' and ' maturity ' , appear a lot in school reports and, of course, they ' mean different things at different ages. One expects a great deal more from Senior Year than from first-formers (when one talks of maturity, of course). At first form level, one is probably only talking about the strength of mind to be able to organise one ' s time, do home- work before watching TV and just getting priorities straight. When one gets higher in the school, one is talking of a great deal more. One is expected to have the courtesy of be- haviour and natural demeanour that help a great deal more than 1 shall here go into. The definition of maturity that I have offered you before — and I am sure it isn ' t the only definition but it is the one I would like to remind you of - is the ability to forego the present pleasure in order to achieve a future good: Maturity. The second point is an obvious one and I am only going to say two things about it. WORK. Firstly, there is a time when all talk in the world becomes a waste of time — it doesn ' t mean anything. I have a number of boys in this school (and I am sure ev- erybody has in every school) who spend a great deal of time telling other people, and themselves, the reasons why the work wasn ' t so good this week and how it ' s going to be bet- ter next week . . . and so on. There is a time when all that is meaningless and the amount actually done is what counts. Secondly, the time spent working usually solves diffi- culties — not only difficulties in the actual subjects you are working on, but difficulties outside the curriculum — and this is my point. Many boys in this school who have problems would find them vanishing if they did some work and didn ' t spend so much time sitting around wondering who is to blame and what excuses to make. Half the problems we have in this age are simply matters of people indulging in the luxury of self-examination. If you have plenty to do and lead a busy life, you won ' t find your- self needing so much excusing and understanding. So work not only solves the problems in the curriculum, it solves the problem outside it. Work. The last point is this: What counts in the long run is how you feature as a PERSON. Face up to a few facts, go back to maturity again. Even- tually, you will be judged by your fruits; as Jesus said, By your fruits shall ye know them. When people judge you — and they will, and they won ' t be wrong to do it — they will of- ten judge you by your friends. A man is known by the com- pany he keeps. Think about that; look around yourselves. Even dispensing with other people ' s judgment, there comes a time when you grow up and have to shave; you look into the shaving mirror every morning and you have to face yourself (some of you don ' t do much of this at the mo- ment and I don ' t really think you have to!) You will nonethe- less, someday, have to ask yourself whether you ' ll do. And, often enough, if you are honest with yourself, the answer is No, I won ' t, not really. The sort of man who says, Oh yes, today was a good day: I got seven out of ten in this test, and I scored three goals, and I heard someone say I was a great player ... I am not talking about that at all. I am talking about what have you given, what you have contributed, what you have done. You don ' t have to give a gift, you know, to give. The senior boy who plays like a gen- tleman on the soccer field; the senior boy who moves around school in the right way, with his priorities right — he ' s giving all the time, he ' s giving examples. The other thing you have to face when you look in the shaving mirror every morning is that you have to live with the mistakes you ' ve made — and that ' s the real test of ma- turity. At the moment, you don ' t. But, as you grow up, you find that you have got to live with the mistakes you ' ve made, face up to them and come to terms with them . . . and with yourself. It ' s a funny thing about mistakes; most of them you can live with. Most of them. I have made lots of mistakes and agonised over them and, on the whole, I have been able to say, Well, O.K. I ' ve made it, and that ' s that — I can live with it. But there are one or two mistakes- which will haunt you. And those are the ones we have to avoid. And the final thing I have got to say is quite different from these three things, and indeed it is the hardest thing to say. I would like to thank those people who have been good to me here — especially the gentlemen sitting behind me on the stage. I appreciate this a great deal more than you do, of course. But when you have grown up, boys, if I can speak down to you a little, when you have grown up, you will value tremendously the unspoken, automatic type of friendship that grows from working with someone you can trust and who trusts you. Such a working relationship I have found in the gentle- men behind me — and I am very, very grateful for it. I also appreciate the fact that this sort of relationship has been in- creasingly possible with more and more of you, and I am grateful for that, too. I do want to thank Mr. Stephenson especially, with whom 1 have worked closest for the longest. And to the whole of the staff — thank you very much indeed for the support and the loyalty I have always been given. I count myself very for- tunate.

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New Headmaster takes over Mr. James Keith McPhee becomes the new Headmaster of Saltus Grammar School from September 1 st, 1 979, filling the post left vacant by the departure of Mr. Roy Haygarth. Mr. McPhee, with 1 6 years of secondary and tertiary teaching experience behind him, left his position as Head of School of Communications and senior lecturer at Durham Technical College in 1 976 to move to the Bahamas. There he became deputy-head and Head of Senior School at the St. Andrews School, which is in Nassau. He holds a B.A. and a Dip. Ed. from Durham University, and this summer was due to complete his M.Ed, degree in Educational Administration and Supervision at the University of Miami. The new Headmaster is also an avid sportsman, with particular interest in rugby, shooting, archery, athletics and sailing. (He plans to bring his boat from Nassau when he arrives on the Island).) He is married, and has three children aged 7, 1 0 and 1 2. Best wishes are extended from all at Saltus to Mr. McPhee as he prepares for his new undertaking- ■ llltllllltl Man, he lives in jerks . . . gets a farm an ' loses his farm, an ' that ' s a jerk . . . but the river, it goes right on . . .. We ain ' t gonna die out. People is goin ' on — changin ' a little, maybe, but goin ' right on. Ma Joad, — The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck.