Like me, I’m sure many of you have enjoyed watching the exploits of Andrew Flintoff and his team of young cricketers on tour in India – the BBC series is called ‘Field of Dreams’.
This programme has an extra resonance for me. Their home town of Preston is just under 10 miles from Chorley where both my parents grew up and the wonderful charity, Future Hope, which they visit after playing them in a game of gulley cricket was one that my wife, Sarah, and I worked with many years ago: including welcoming one of their alumni as a GAP student at a previous school.
As Flintoff sits down with various members of his touring party and shares his own anxieties in an effort to build their confidence, he asks ‘what failure looks like’ for them. ‘Not giving something a go’ is his answer.
Are we so frightened of failing to hit our targets that we won’t even try? School, in particular, is the perfect environment in which to succeed and fail and children should be encountering both experiences with smiles on their faces.
Surrounded and supported by family, classmates and others in whatever type of team you find yourself, I hope no one at Cargilfield feels the need to duck a challenge.
As one of our pupils read aloud in Chapel:
Somebody said that it couldn’t be done
But she, with a chuckle replied
That “maybe it couldn’t” but she would be one
Who wouldn’t say so till she’d tried.
So she buckled right in with the trace of a grin
On her face. If she worried, she hid it.
She started to sing as she tackled the thing
That couldn’t be done and she did it.
Rob Taylor, Headmaster
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