Grove Celebrates Cape Town Link
Students, parents, visitors and governors were welcomed to a special event at Grove last week by outgoing headteacher Richard Arrowsmith and his successor from September, Jane Radbourne.
A group of about twenty students spoke movingly about their recent visit to Cape Town. It is the school’s fourth visit and the third time that students have been to experience the contrasts and contradictions of life at the bottom end of the world..
Jane Radbourne
One student spoke of her first contact with real poverty and the impact it had made. Another surprised herself by not feeling pity, but almost a kind of envy for the happiness and purpose she found in the lives of underprivileged children there. A third view was a kind of regret at the lack of cultural identity which English children have with local and national issues while the township children clearly thrive on past traditions and heritage such as dance and song. Yet another felt an awakening in herself that, for the first time, she realized that it was time to get involved with the world’s problems and not to worry so much about trivial things.
Some of the students who visited Cape Town
One parent commented on the impact of the visit on her child by saying ‘ we seem to have fewer arguments about unimportant things. It is as though they have seen something more important and reflected on it.’
The visit also embraced sight-seeing and attendance at a range of other South African schools, some of them similar to Grove, others very different. The students experienced a wide range of food, saw animals in the wild and visited some spectacular and remote landscapes, including of course, Table Mountain.
The real purpose of the visit however was to present a cheque for just over £6000 to the headteacher at Vukani – a sum which will enable major improvements in ICT and science at the school. It is hoped that the head can come to visit Grove in the new year.
The driving force behind this long-running project is maths teacher Pat Jackson. “Pat has really got the bit between her teeth about Vukani” said Richard Arrowsmith. “I cannot recall an educational visit for children which is richer in spiritual and visual experiences. The thoughts and ideas provoked by their encounters with another world are incalculable in this age where we try to put a value on everything. We are in danger of losing sight of the old view of a teacher who used to influence and inspire young lives. Such work is alive and well at Grove!”
At the end of the presentation, David Thomas – who accompanied the party – said that everyone needed to understand just how splendid the students had been. ‘They were a credit to the town, to the school, to their parents and most of all to themselves’ he said.
