I have always believed that one of the most important qualities a teacher can model for their charges is a genuine love of learning; not just the performance of it, but the real thing. In assembly in the Prep this week we looked at the peoples of Indonesia. Here was the world’s fourth most populous nation, an archipelago of more than seventeen thousand islands stretching wider than the breadth of Europe, home to over two hundred and seventy million people speaking more than seven hundred languages and I confess that beyond a vague awareness of Bali and perhaps a distant memory of the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami, I knew precious little of either the place or its peoples before I started planning out this term’s assembly theme. I suspected, correctly as it turned out, that the boys in the Prep would know even less.
Despite the enormous geographical distance between these (British) islands and the island nation of Indonesia, and despite what might on the surface appear to be profound cultural difference, we found as we so often do when we look carefully enough, a great deal of common human ground. Somewhat distinctly however, the Indonesians have a national motto which translates as ‘Unity in Diversity’, and it is not merely a slogan on a coat of arms but a living, breathing principle woven into the fabric of daily life: in the way communities build homes together without payment or expectation, in the way five major world religions coexist within a single nation, in the way three hundred distinct ethnic groups share a flag, a currency and a future.
The boys sat quietly with that for a moment – as well they might – as the greatest single takeaway from our assembly turned out to be the idea that difference makes us stronger, not weaker. Indonesia, a country many of our boys could not have placed confidently on a map at the start of this week is, we discovered, a nation that could have been pulled apart by its extraordinary diversity but proactively chose instead it seems, to be defined by it, which feels like a very important lesson for us all.
