Why fit in when you were born to stand out?
At Skippers we value the importance of the individual. One of the most exciting elements of being in education is recognising a child’s unique abilities and encouraging their growth and development.
To help illustrate this we need to go back to the 1940s when the US Air Force started to wonder why so many of their planes were crashing. It was so serious that 17 pilots crashed in a single day. Their investigations led them to a conclusion that was revolutionary. Back in 1926, when designing the first-ever cockpit, engineers measured the physical dimensions of hundreds of pilots and used this data to standardise the dimensions of the cockpit.
As part of the investigation into the cause behind the frequent crashes they measured ten body dimensions of 4063 pilots and found something stunning – not one of these pilots met the criteria of average. In other words, if you’ve designed a cockpit to fit the average pilot, you’ve designed it to fit no one! This is the same in education.
At Skippers we love seeing our children flourish, whether that is in academics, sport, performing or creative arts. We know that by making them feel safe and happy we reduce internal stress and cortisol which has been shown to inhibit learning as well as playful and imaginative thinking. In the words of one of our parents, “it is within this safe and happy environment that our children have been able to find their wings and soar.”
Skippers is not driven by average because we would run the risk of missing the uniqueness in every single child.
In the words of Dr. Seuss: Why fit in when you were born to stand out?!
Phillip Makhouli
Categories: Headmaster's Blog Uncategorised
