The assembly at the end of Term 2 is always a bittersweet affair. I deliver it knowing that the next time I speak to the whole school community, some of the students who join us this afternoon will have moved on from ICHK Secondary. They will have moved on to begin new adventures in new settings and we will not enjoy their company at a school assembly again. By that time, they will be not students, but alumni. They will be part of ICHK’s history.

Having watched them metamorphosize over the years, having watched them mature and deepen, watched them graduate from apprentices in thought and action to journeymen and now young masters, having watched them grow, it’s a little sad to know that we will no longer be advantaged by their presence, and that our school will no longer benefit from their contributions. 

But, so be it. That is the nature of education, of course. 

The very essence of a school, a college, an academy or a university is for it to fashion a programme so designed that those who undergo its ministrations can take strength from the experience, blossom as a result, and, at the allotted time, end their acquaintance better positioned to meet life’s challenges than had they not attended and given of their time and energy. 

Knowing this, my proper hope on these occasions is that all our Year 13 students, as well as those individual Year 11s who are moving to different schools next year, do, indeed, feel that their time at ICHK has positioned them well. That it has left them confidently equipped to embark on their next phase of building for a successful, purposeful, rewarding life - a life during which the years spent at school will be remembered as time well-spent.

How to cap that time at school is the task that I face each year at this point, as I am set the challenge of imparting a message to those who are leaving ICHK - a message which they can tuck away as a worthwhile addendum to the lessons learned during their time at school. A message that will return to them, perhaps, wherever they find themselves next, and which will help them to navigate their studies, order their experiences, and weigh their options in the value they afford. However, while it is you, the leavers, to whom I am particularly addressing these remarks, I suggest that they are of no less importance to those who remain at school, if for no other reason than they provide a test against which you can evaluate the time you spend at ICHK now and in the years to come.

My intention, then, as you leave us as young people who know a whole lot more than when you joined, is to draw your attention briefly and precisely to two different types of knowledge, two different types of knowing, and impress upon you how one type - in many ways the more elusive and hard won type - can usefully inform the second. And my intention is also to warn you, in a friendly fashion that, despite its being perhaps of less value, it is the second easier and less elusive type of knowledge that school typically takes as its focus and burden - so that, despite all this new school knowledge you have, there remains something very important for you to learn. 

What I am suggesting, in essence, is that there is a great deal of difference between saying “I know” and “I know” - or, to put it more plainly, that there is a great deal of difference between knowing about something and really knowing something.

On reflection, there are just two ways in which humans arrive at knowledge. The first way humans share with all living things; the second is unique to our species. The shared way is to undergo something, to have it happen to you, to access it with one’s entire person and to find your whole self implicated in the experience - body and soul, we might say. The unique way, the peculiarly human way, is to learn about something at one step removed, not as a participant but as a recipient, to read about it, watch a video about it, to imagine it on the strength of someone else’s testimony. 

Let us consider for a moment the example of riding a bicycle - something that is notoriously difficult to learn to do, but famously difficult to forget how to do once learned. You can read books on bicycling, watch tutorials on bicycling, listen to friends talking about bicycling, you can buy a bicycle and study it from every angle, you can become familiar with every part, yet, despite all this learning and knowledge, until you mount a saddle and practice you will find yourself still quite unable actually to ride a bicycle. Your knowledge about cycling will be deeply impressive, highly comprehensive, theoretically immaculate; and yet, you will know less about the real experience of riding a bicycle than a five-year old who has got to grips with the art. To know what it is to ride a bike, you need to ride a bike.

So, we can say that knowing about something has the following qualities. It tends to be vicarious and secondhand - it is reliant on a social filter, it comes from someone else. It is disembodied and abstract - it is processed by the intellect and not felt in the body, the guts. And because of these characteristics, it can feel thin, can fail to resonate, fail really to speak to you, and can be, as a result, easily forgotten, easily replaced or superseded by new information, which chases it out of mind and out of awareness.

Contrast that with knowledge that is won by experience, by having undergone the process of embracing something as a fully lived occasion. This experiential form of knowing resides deep inside, which is to say: it is a part of you. It need not be “brought to mind” on special occasions, because it has been woven into the very fabric of who you are. It habitually guides your action and governs your thinking; it shapes the decisions you make and figures in the unconscious ways you live your life. As something that permeates who you are, it exists beyond mere memory, it is written into your body, and cannot be forgotten. 

Your time at ICHK is spent adding to both types of knowing. You attend a great many lessons, learning a great deal of book knowledge, broadening your appreciation of what we can call academics. Over the years, you have become scholars. As you well know, a test of this knowledge is on the immediate horizon.  

Additionally, you have picked up some valuable experiential knowledge: playing on teams, performing in plays, conducting experiments, and collaborating in groups. You are more sophisticated social operators day by day, year by year. You can persuade and convince, guide and lead. 

All of which is fantastic and all of which makes your tutors and your teachers very proud of you. Proud of the journey that you have been on and proud of the progress you have made. However my suggestion to you, now, is that what you really know, through your experience as young human beings, is something that was inside you from the beginning. It is something which your time at ICHK has not introduced you to but only confirmed. 

I believe that you know - not “know about” but know - five essential things: first, that humans need positive regard, or, better still, they need love; second, that humans need to be listened to and understood if they are to thrive; third, with the passing of time and in the right conditions, humans change and grow; fourth, humans, being social animals who need to be loved and understood, affect each other constantly by the ways they behave and interact; and, lastly, everyone make mistakes but, given the chance, can put them right. And the reason you know these things is because they apply quite as much to you as everybody else.

And so, finally, what is it that I hope for all those students for whom this is their final assembly and for whom ICHK becomes part of their historical experience rather than their daily life. I hope above all this:

• Knowing that humans need positive regard, you will show compassion

• Knowing that humans need to be listened to and understood, you will lend a sympathetic ear

• Knowing that humans change and grow, you will provide others with opportunity and support  

• Knowing that humans affect each other constantly by the ways they behave and interact, you will behave with decency and constraint 

• Knowing that everyone makes mistakes, but, given the chance, can put them right, you will be charitable in judgement and generous in pardon.
  

ICHK leavers of 2022, if you live according to those values and standards, you will deliver on the promise you have shown as students at this school that we share. I wish you the very best in doing so.