HORiZONSNo. 19 APRIL 2014

HORiZONS Private Bag X10 Parkview, 212 2

26 Woolston Road, Westcliff, Johannesburg

Telephone (011) 481 5800

Fax 086 299 1964

Website www.ridgeschool.co. za

Email info@ridgeschool.co.za

The Ridge School

“MY SON, THE LAWYER”

My wife and I have always subscribed to the view that our children must choose their own direction in terms of their studies and careers. We have a daughter who works for an NGO and a son who is com-ing to the end of his studies, and wants to teach in Alexandra. I may, though, have made a classic parental mistake with our 15-year-old, by passing on our expectations. For the last few years I have “joked” with him that he must become a lawyer so that he can keep his elderly parents in comfort in their dotage. According to Dr Max Price, Vice Chancellor of UCT, this is one of many areas where we as parents and educationalists are sending our children the wrong messages.

He asserts that the children of today could easily live to 100, and they need to be prepared to have multiple careers. He argues that they need to have the capacity to “retool” or redesign themselves. As somebody who is trying to do exactly that at the not so tender age of 56, it is quite a daunting prospect. How do we prepare young people for this? I shall give here a brief outline of the skills and challenges Max Price identified:

1. Independent thinkers - We must have children who are independent thinkers. He bemoans the fact that there are too many matriculants coming to universities who don’t understand that all knowledge can be contested. Worse still, many of the students have a copy and paste approach to studying, and look for short cuts, often resulting in essays full of plagiarisms.

2. Career planning – We tend to place pressure on children choosing subjects and even careers too early. (See above!) He cites Actuarial Science as a prime example of a course which maths teachers push bright Maths boys to pursue. He claims that this is a subject which has the highest number of students who quit early as they don’t really know what the subject is about. In fact, he urges, and I fully concur, that we need young people to take generic degrees to broaden their education, and to learn how to write and how to think. He maintains that it is a myth that people with degrees in the humanities don’t get jobs. Employers want people who can become managers, and the skills for this are broad and deep. We shouldn’t be in a rush to map out our children’s lives, for example, by choosing Accounting as a matric subject at the end of Grade 9, and then naturally falling into a B/Com-type route, while still only 15!

3. Digital literacy - Max Price argues that at schools there is too much emphasis on how to use digital devices as opposed to how to use knowledge and imagination. There is too much uncritical accept-ance and consumption of “what’s out there”. He believes we need more of the digital equivalent of model plane building to stimulate the imagination.

4. Non-academic skills – I think it is a generally accepted these days that EQ skills have the potential to take you further than IQ. Max Price argues strongly in favour of the need for young people to be equipped with leadership skills, team-building skills and the ability to work with a diversity of people. He asserts the need for young South African people to be fluent in at least one second language so that communication with people from other backgrounds is that much easier.

5. Emotional literacy – Max Price is of the view that many of the students who drop out of university are bright and come from top schools – and that most of them are boys. Their problem is that they aren’t used to asking for help, and aren’t used to making themselves vulnerable. They are not used to handling failure. He argues that schools need to encourage a culture that maintains we are all vulner-able; and we need to develop an emotional language to deal with failure, in which stumbling is seen as part of the learning process.

I probably won’t live to 100, unlike my grandchildren (to be), according to Max Price, but I will learn from the mistakes I’ve made with my own children and not put pressure – subtle or otherwise - on them to take a particular direction, despite the fact that “my son, the lawyer” has such a nice ring to it!

Paul ChannonHeadmaster

WORLD BOOK DAY

We decided to celebrate UNESCO’s World Book day on 6 March, along with the UK and Ireland, be-cause it falls during our school term. The 23rd of April, every year, is World Book and Copyright Day, and this is when the rest of the world and other South African schools will be acknowledging the day. With valuable input from a number of colleagues, we set forth to celebrate books, reading and writing AND our favourite literary characters. This was a gamble – would everyone come on board, especially the senior boys? Without a doubt, as the photos show, dressing up is a firm favourite with everyone. The whole school gathered together in the Nicolson Hall to watch specially pre-recorded interviews with a variety of illustrators and authors. Terry Deary, of the Horrible History series, proved to be very popular with our boys because he discussed ways in which facts can be made interesting when writing, and the importance of writing ‘page turners’. All the senior boys then began their group story writing and illustra-tions. These continue to be a work in progress, but it has been so exciting to see the enjoyment, across the board, in writing a meaningful story. On completion, some of the stories will be displayed.

www.worldbookday.com gives an excellent overview of what we tried to achieve on the day.

Sihle Blose and Bev SchultzSenior Prep Library

READiNG BREAKFAST\

Pictures tell stories, and another story unfolded on Friday morning, February 28th. After a series of grey and grisly mornings, the sun rose proudly and warmed the early starters, as some unpacked volumes of exciting books to sell, others made sure the urn was on for that much needed first cup of tea or coffee, and yet others were on hand to welcome everyone to the first reading breakfast of the year.

It wasn’t long before the quads were buzzing with families, laying out their picnic rugs, unpacking the edible goodies, and getting down to the real reason for being at school so early in the morning, read-ing together as families. The Book People were delighted with your support and many boys (and girls)

were fortunate enough to go away armed with at least one new book.

For those of us who are lucky enough to encourage boys into our libraries every day, we were delighted at the ongoing sup-port the Ridge parent body has for reading, and we thank you. Now let the pictures complete the story……

Sihle Blose and Bev SchultzSenior Prep Library

ACADEMiCS ARE KiNG!

Sometimes it’s easy to forget in amongst the hubbub of several sports and culturals, music, tours, spe-cial days and so forth, that all of these disciplines revolve around our challenging academic programme. Teachers and boys simply get down to the academic programme designed to stimulate boys to real-ise their potential and grow their cognitive processing in the most efficient and boy-friendly way. At The Ridge we call this our “Creative Inquiry Curriculum” and it is based on several cornerstones that provide the solid foundation for learning. Amongst these cornerstones are dealing with the National Curriculum skills, content and abilities as well as the enrichment programmes woven in through our association as an independent ISASA school. To that add our commitment to a boy-friendly approach, several Thinking Skills programmes, the conscious use of Bloom’s taxonomy, great resources, includ-ing IT, dynamic teaching strategies with a relational thrust, and one starts to understand the complex network that makes up the academic curriculum at The Ridge.

Needless to say, it is hard work keeping ideas fresh and matching high expectations with excellent results.

Therefore, we are very pleased with our Conquesta results that have recently filtered through from 2013. We believe it is proof that our methodology of working with skills over content and thinking programmes over regurgitation has resulted in better-than-ever results. The results are as follows and I congratulate and thank the teachers for all their hard work, not for preparing Ridge boys to take this exam, but for preparing the boys to use their skills and knowledge to tackle new problems and unseen resources.

Conquesta is an external assessment established in South Africa in 1998 (grades 4-7). The olympiads are written in South Africa and Namibia / Botswana / Swaziland. They include approximately 50% of all the independent Schools in South Africa (ISASA), and hundreds of Government Schools across South Africa and her neighbouring countries.

HORiZONS Private Bag X10 Parkview, 212 2

26 Woolston Road, Westcliff, Johannesburg

Telephone (011) 481 580 0

Fax 086 299 1964

Website www.ridgeschool.co. za

Email info@ridgeschool.co.za

Patrick Kinsey, Luke Tillim and Jasper Hersov

2013 Conquesta results for The Ridge placed in the overall top twenty:

Grade 7 English 2nd, Mathematics 5th, SS 1st and NS 2ndGrade 6 Mathematics 8th English 16th, SS 1st and NS 1stGrade 5 Mathematics 13th, SS 1st and NS 1stGrade 4 English 13th, SS 4th, NS 11th

What spectacular results! Congratulations!

The International Examination Board’s benchmark test results also came through recently. Once again, Ridge boys scored a significantly higher aggregate than both their South African and International peers at the end of Grade 3 and Grade 6. The Boys were tested on their abilities in English and Math-ematics in Grade 3 and English, Mathematics and Science in Grade 6. These IBTs give very meaningful data and insight into the strengths and weaknesses of each boy. Certificates for individual boys and general IBT reports will be sent home to parents shortly.

The Ridge uses the data from assessments such as the IBTs, Conquesta and the Shared Assessment exams written at the end of grade 7 to constantly moderate our internal assessments and guide us through targeted learning. The practice for boys is also invaluable so that they feel confident moving into an assessment-rich environment in the latter part of their education.

Congratulations to all the boys who regularly put their best foot forward and strive to the best of their ability in the class room. That’s showing The Ridge Right Stuff.

Simon CurtisHead of Senior Prep

SPORTS NEWS

The start to the 2014 sport season has been a most frustrating one due to the weather having such a large impact on trials and fixtures. That aside, the boys seem to have really enjoyed their sport.

Even with all the rain interruptions we have been extremely busy with cricket and swimming. We hosted 8 sides from Clifton Durban which the boys thoroughly enjoyed. The 2 match days seemed to be divided into two camps with Clifton taking the honours in the senior matches and The Ridge edging in, in the junior sides. Overall cricket was the winner. On the same weekend we had our Grade 3 cricket day, which really seemed to be a huge success. After boys completed their matches and Mr du Preez and Mr Buckley addressed the boys and parents, the afternoon ended with a social braai which was enjoyed by those who attended.

We also co-hosted the Prep Schools Cricket Festival with St John’s, a festival that really seemed to go off well. We had touring sides from the Eastern Cape, Western Cape and Natal playing cricket over the mid-term break. What an exciting weekend it was with some amazing cricket being played. Even though day one was called off due to lightning, the boys were still able to play 2 days of really competitive cricket.

Since the cricket and swimming seasons have been completed, we have been hampered by rain which has delayed our athletics trials by 2 weeks. This has been very frustrating for not only boys, but also the staff. At the time of writing we have started the water polo season and the boys really seem to being getting into the swing of things. The desire and eagerness of the boys to play has been most impressive. The 1st side played in the KEPS festival, which was hosted for the first time. Our side did us proud and ended a respectable 6th out of 16 schools. We were also awarded the fair play trophy at prize giving.

At the same time, we have also had boys attending U12 and U13 hockey trials for the district side as well as U13 boys who have attended the Southern Gauteng trials. We would like to congratulate the following boys on their selections:

• John Turner – Southern Gauteng U13A side• Liam MacMahon – Southern Gauteng Invitational side• Timothy Leech – U12 District side• James Fleming – U12 District side• James Presbury – U12 District side• Thomas Chemaly – U12 District side

We wish these boys all the best for the hockey season that lies ahead for them.

We hope that the rest of the athletics season goes off without any more delays and look forward to an excit-ing football season.

Bennie du PreezHead of Sports

SENiOR PREP CAMPS

Grade 7 Camp

The itinerary for the Grade 7 camp was put together with the intention of combining educational activities and other boy-friendly activities. These activities encouraged the boys to work together, get to know each other better and some activities challenged them to try new things as well. With only four scheduled days for the trip, we packed many activities into the programme, so that the boys could have an enjoyable and memorable time.

The boys had a lot of fun building a dam, complet-ing an obstacle course, and playing Stalk the Lantern – of which they never seemed to tire. However, the most beneficial activity was the $-a-Day Activity. This was a 24 hour programme, and the boys were each given a dollar, equivalent to R10. They had to buy meals for breakfast, lunch and supper. The boys were put into groups of 5-6 boys and they had to buy three meals for the entire group. The most popular items the boys bought were baked beans, 3 Minute Noodles, and eggs. The most interesting meal I saw was a Marie biscuit sandwich! Although they strug-gled with the limited budget, in true Ridge fashion, the boys made the best of what they had. The pro-gramme was valuable and some life lessons were learnt; the boys learnt to share and use their money

wisely thereby learning exactly how much items cost and how expensive things really are. For one day, the boys’ lives were stripped down and they led a simple life by cooking on the fire and sleeping under the stars. Apart from the rather long bus journey, the boys had enormous fun and spent some quality time with their friends and staff. As they approach the end of their Grade 7 year, I hope that they cherish the memories, experiences and friendships they have created along the way. The boys are excited about their trip to Suikerbos, which I am sure they are going to love.

Urvasi NaidooHead of Grade 7

Grade 5

On Day 1, we all arrived at about 7:30am. When everybody had arrived, the Sirs checked our bags for excess quantities of sweets. I was very nervous because I thought I had too many, but I passed! After they checked for sweets, they checked if everyone was present... All this checking made me feel like I was on “Border Security”. Finally, we got on the bus.

After a three hour drive we arrived at Bush Pigs and walked to Camp Hedgehog. It was about a 1 km walk. When we arrived, they split us into big groups. The groups name were Oinkers and Grunters I was in Oinkers Blue. After they split us in two groups, the Oinkers got on the bus and drove to camp Gemsbok; it was a 55 minute drive. When we arrived at Gemsbok we chose cabins and ate. We had the most the delicious food we had spaghetti bolognaise.

On Tuesday when we woke up, we went to eat breakfast and they told us the names of the cereal. They were just a little bit “different”! Chief Choco-late’s Overgrown Toenails were Corn Flakes. Deep

Fried Maggots were Rice Crispies and if you think that’s weird, they called the yellow juice Giraffes Urine and the purple juice was Bats Blood! If we wanted milk, we had too make like a cow; mooooo! After breakfast, we went to Camp Hedgehog to make tents, do teamwork drills, and listen to a Bush-man talk about the Khoi Khoi and the San. After that, we played lots of fun games. After lunch. there was a massive storm so we went to the hall and played There’s a Fire on the Mountain. Wow, that was a long day!

On Wednesday, when we were done with breakfast, we walked to Camp Crocodile and chose cab-ins to sleep in. We ate more food because everybody was still hungry. When we were done with the food, we went on mountain bikes for exercise and then we went on a exciting game drive! We also went on a 3 hour hike and visited a spot where we could hear our voices echo off the cliffs. After that we broke our tents, we took part in the muddy Mudstickle Challenge where we got sopping wet AND covered in mud. Needless to say, we slept like babies that night.

We woke up early the next day (about 5 o’clock) and because it was the last day, we made pancakes, checked lost property screamed “oink oink” and went back to The Ridge.

Nicholas ClaassenGrade 5P

Grade 4

There was a buzz of excitement as the Grade 4s gathered on the tennis court awaiting their depar-ture for Konka. If you looked carefully, there were also a few nervous faces on those who were not quite sure what the next 4 days held in store for them. The bus journey passed quickly with much munching and chatter.

We were welcomed at the camp by the counsellors and the boys were quickly whipped away to be-come immersed in their first ‘ice breaking’ activity. However, as recent form would have it, the thunder rumbled and the heavens opened. There was no chance that this was going to dampen any spirits, and within a short while, the sun came out and the activities were resumed.

Konka offered a great variety of activities with the emphasis on team work and some physi-cal challenges where the boys were encouraged to participate in some new, unfamiliar activities. These activities made it necessary for many of them to ‘dig deep’, rise to the challenges and gain a wonderful sense of achievement when they succeeded. One of the special spin-offs from these activities was the incredible support and encouragement the boys gave each other and the excitement it created among the group with each success. These activities included a thrilling zip line, climbing a 10m high wall, abseiling down, archery, kayaking and an obstacle course which, after all the rain, was made even more fun with

the slipping and sliding through all the mud. The team activities encouraged the boys to work together towards a common goal and required every member of the team to be on board.

By supper time each day we had many tired but happy boys who were ready to tuck into a good meal. The food was excellent and the very smart layout of the dining room saw the boys remove the white napkins from the glasses, give them a natty flick and tuck them into the collars of their T shirts……..dining in style. Each evening, there was a final activity before bed but, by the second night, many little heads were nodding before the end of the activity and lights were out and not a sound could be heard by 8.30pm. We’ll leave the boys to tell you how the rest of the night went when the early birds awoke!

We returned to school on Thursday with 62 excited, exhausted, happy, muddy boys. Mission accom-plished!

Erica Kinnear | Head of Grade 4

OLD BOYS’ NEWS

Mrs Sue Glendinning, mother of Thomas (2004) and William (2007) sent the following update to Mrs Wallis:

Hi Liz

Lovely to get your email too. I hope you are well. I think of our Ridge days with such fondness- they were very happy days! We are all well and Tom and Will are grown up and flourishing -see attached pic! Tom, 6ft 4in and Will, 6ft 3in!

Tom matriculated at Kearsney in 2009 and spent a year at home in 2010 working with a Sound Engineer in a recording studio which we have at home. He also did a 6 week summer school programme in Music Performance at the Berklee School of Music in Boston, USA, which was the highlight of that first year out of school. Thanks to dear, old Mr Schuster and his Ridge school days, he is now a fully fledged Grade 8 drum-mer and plays for 3 bands in Cape Town.

In 2011 he studied at SAE (School of Audio Engineering) in Cape Town and loved the course, completing the diploma course in Music Production & Sound Engineering that year. In 2012 he started a Jazz Degree at UCT, but half way through first year realised that it was not the right course for him. He worked for the remainder of that year in Milestones Recording Studio, one of the most established studios in CT and all the while, performing in 3 different bands! Last year he started a part-time lecturing post in Electronic Music back at SAE and he is loving teaching. He is also a certified trainer in a music production software called Ableton Live which is a product from Germany, and he started the first user group for Ableton Live in Africa at SAE.

Of the three bands he plays in, one called Original Swimming Party, have just finished recording an EP, which they are launching next month at the Fugard Theatre. Their music is described as Electronica and Tom doesn’t play drums, but operates all the technology. So synths, rhythm tracks, bass, and sound effects using a laptop and Ableton Live! All very new to Steve and I! In the other two bands, he plays drums and they are more conventional rock bands. So, as you can tell, music is his passion and he is making a career of it with playing, producing and teaching.

William had a happy Grade 7 year at Highbury after we left JHB and then went on to Kearsney for Grade 8. Tom was in matric and so they had a year together. After much consideration, we decided to move him to the Steiner Roseway Waldorf School in Assagay, which is close to Hillcrest. It was the best thing for Will and he has flourished and enjoyed their different approach to schooling. He complet-ed the Waldorf equivalent of matric last year, but is doing Class13 this year which is the National Senior Certificate. He has his driver’s license and takes himself off to school and, as they don’t wear school uniforms at Waldorf, I think it feels like there’s not long to go before he is truly independent. He is not sure what he wants to study next year, but would love to go to UCT and be with Tom in Cape Town. He is also definitely inclined to the Arts and Ioves Drama, Engish and History. Jour-nalism perhaps or BA Screen Studies?

Steve has been with Mr.Price as the group HR Director for about 5 years now and enjoys the laid back Durban approach. He got his Private Pilot’s license about 2 years ago and loves his flying, often fitting in an early morning flight along the coastline before work! I am trying to get back into painting and drawing,

William and Thomas Glenndinning

although this year I’m class mom for Will’s class which will be busy, but I’m happy about it, seeing as it is my last school year! Steve and I will be on our own from next year and with this in mind, we recently bought a smaller house on the coast, in Umdloti, just north of Umhlanga, which we will renovate and move into by the end of next year. We’re hoping the close proximity to the beach will be a draw card for the boys to come home, although Tom now definitely considers CT home!

Well, Liz, I have rambled on quite a bit and you are now up to date with the Glendinnings! Please send our love to Paul and the rest of the staff (Sean Coughlan, Erica Kinnear, Sue Dabrowski, Di Louw, Simon Curtis) who might remember us from 6 years ago! I believe Tony Blackhurst is no longer at the school and I know that the Parkers retired. Greetings to all who are still there!

Love,Sue