MR BARNY PEARCE ADDRESSES NORWICH SCHOOL PUPILS ON THE IMPORTANCE OF HUMILITY
June 20, 2024
On Friday 21 June, Mr Barny Pearce, Deputy Head of UCAS and Politics teacher, addresses Norwich School pupils on the importance of humility.
"Good morning school. For those of you I have not yet met, my name is Mr Pearce, and I joined Norwich School in September last year to teach Politics. In my first year here, it’s rapidly become apparent that this is a school that is full of successful individuals – and I mean full: I’m not just talking about the success of high honours and awards and ties and certificates we celebrate here in Cathedral; I’m talking about the day-by-day success of every single pupil as you work in class, get that homework submitted, and show up to that lunchtime club.
So my question for you this morning is this: in a school so full of success, what is it that makes for a successful person? What does the doorway to success look like?
Now clearly in this day and age the first resort for answering such a deep and important question is to conduct a 5-minute internet search for an appropriate meme. Such rigorous academic investigation quickly turns up pearls like:
If hard work is the key to success, most people would rather pick the lock.
And: If at first you don’t succeed, order pizza.
To be clear: that’s not the end of the assembly. Obviously, our next instinct is to ask AI – which I did, and it said there were 15 key traits of successful people, and then – I kid you not – gave me a list of just 5… I can only imagine the 6th trait was cheerfulness in the face of incomplete lists.
Let down by the internet again, we reluctantly turn to thinking for ourselves: the doorway success? Well, working hard, certainly. Talent? It can help. Resilience when things go wrong – yes. And I hope the wise among you might list the ability to balance hard work with healthy rest.
But how many of you would call to mind the less celebrated characteristic of humility? The dictionary defines humility as having a modest view of one’s own importance – but we often think of humility as a kind of weakness, grovelling, looking down on ourselves. Viewed that way, why would anyone want to be humble?
But it’s my suggestion to you this morning that humility is both essential to success, and it can inspire success. Imagine later today that a new homework task appears on Microsoft Teams. A notification will pops up on your computer, and you see the following: “Assignment heading: Build a full-scale copy of Norwich Cathedral. Details: Your replica must be an exact copy, with like-for-like materials, identical size and scale, and – crucially – it must be still as solid in a thousand years’ time. Feel free to work in pairs.”
Now look around you – take in the size of the pillars, the intricacy of the stonework, the height of the roof. Imagine what it takes to find, shape and move a single block of stone for a single pillar. Granted, I’d probably have to set a deadline of a couple of hundred years, but even then, the only sensible response to such a task is to see that you don’t even know where to start. I wouldn’t even know how to start making the pulpit I’m standing in now, and just the thought of that task makes me feel rather small.
Only those with the humility to admit that the task is bigger than they are, that the scale overwhelms, and that there is much that must be learned and countless people to depend on before the task can even begin, are likely to have even the slightest chance of success.
The Christian faith is full of the message that having too high a view of yourself makes the doorway to good things that much harder to find. It’s a faith where those who exalt themselves – that is, who brag about their own greatness – will be humbled, and where those who humble themselves will be exalted. As Daniel read to us, we need to know that our thoughts and our ways, great though they can be, are, ultimately, limited and – in some cosmic sense – rather small.
But Christianity does not simply look down on people, and neither is my suggestion that humility is the key to success about making us all feel insignificant. The Christian answer to the question “Are humans weak or strong, fabulous or flawed?” might surprise you: it’s both… Weak and strong, fabulous and flawed. Christianity is the story of an all-powerful God humbling himself to become a vulnerable human - a human who could have crowned himself with earthly glory, but instead died on a cross to rescue his people. Why? Because humans were not only flawed enough that he had to, but precious enough, and loved enough, that he was glad to.
Whatever your own beliefs, I invite you to consider applying something of this thinking to some or other aspect of your day-to-day life at school. As end of year exam results wash up on the shores of Trinity term, there will be both successes to celebrate and mistakes to own; after that next sports fixture, or musical performance, or D of E trip, or presentation that you give, there will have been both successes and slip-ups. Having the humility to acknowledge where there is learning still to be done – that’s the doorway to success.
And if you need a reminder of this doorway to success, look no further than the actual doorways through which you’ll leave in just a few minutes’ time. Those doors are – I’m sure you’ll agree – impractically large. Have you ever wondered why? How tall were these medieval church-goers? Did they ride here on giraffes? Well, for one thing, in a building this size, dedicated to glorifying God, an ordinary front door would have looked odd. But perhaps those great doors offer two other reminders: on one hand, these impressive doors in this stunning building remind us of all the great skills & talents that people working together in a community possess – I promise not to set you that Teams task, but this stunning place was built by ordinary people just like you and me. You are capable of incredible things.
But those great doors might also serve to give us a humility nudge as we head off to our day. It’s hard not to feel small as you skulk under their great arches. Those doorways to success remind us of all that we are capable of, but they might also keep us humble enough to know that we’ve still got some learning to do."
