A major element of The Abbey’s curriculum is all the activity we are bringing together under our Ideas + Passion Programme: the wonderful, myriad and diverse paths of learning, guided by sheer curiosity, that lead not to mark schemes and assessment, but wherever each individual student wishes to explore.
This programme happens inside and outside every one of our classrooms, and as many of you know first-hand, extends to parent talks, too: the next one features Olympian and gold medallist Adrian Moorhouse on 16 November and we look forward to seeing many of you there.
We hope that Ideas + Passion gives students and the wider community the opportunity to get enthused and feel inspired. They are qualities we see every day at The Abbey and always wish to nurture. Interestingly – and guided only by curiosity – while their meanings are now reasonably distinct, the two concepts of enthusiasm and inspiration come from the same root. Both mean to be possessed by the divine. Enthusiasm is literally en theos – inspired by the gods. Inspiration is the breath of the divine: being breathed into by the sacred spirit.
In these original meanings, both terms implied frenzy and the loss of control. In a notorious example of divine enthusiasm, Bacchus possessed Agave and her companions and in their inspired state they tore Agave’s son Pentheus apart limb from limb: Agave ended up toting around his head as a hunting trophy, unaware of what she had done.
There is another form of inspiration, less violent, but still troubling. The Romantic poets often characterised the inspiration of nature as an overwhelming force. Wordsworth describes the destruction of all his own thoughts and pleasant memories in the face of sublime nature, being left only with ‘huge and mighty forms, that do not live / Like living men’ moving slowly through his mind. Of their own volition, and not his.
In our encouragement of enthusiasm and inspiration, we are not, as you will be relieved but I hope unsurprised to hear, encouraging either frenzied violence or the destruction of the self. That said, there are perhaps two aspects to these original, overwhelming senses of the words that reflect what we mean by ideas and passion.
The first is how we have ideas in the first place. Sometimes creativity does what it is told: we face a problem, we think hard about solutions, we find one. But much more often it disobeys us entirely. It is not until we stop thinking about it, not until we let go of the conscious striving to have an idea, that it arrives. And this is something we can practise. Keats called the state of being ready for an idea negative capability: get yourself out of the way and be ready to let an idea take you over. Others might think of it as meditation or mindfulness or a long walk: anything that quietens the mind and allows creativity to work its mysterious magic.
The second is the nature of passionate interest. It implies a degree of complete commitment: an activity which is not just fun and distracting, but all-consuming. From the athlete in the zone to the chorister lost in the music, from the actor surrendering to character to the experimenter so absorbed by their work that time melts into meaninglessness – there is a sense of possession by the task at hand that is extraordinarily rewarding.
So: our advice to all students is to be enthusiastic and to look for inspiration. To spend some time each week not striving for ideas but allowing them to arrive; and in all the activities they undertake, to seek those passions that last lifelong. Enthusiasm, inspiration, ideas and passion: not the worst compass points when exploring true and meaningful learning.
Mr Will le Fleming