Gavin Taylor, Head Master
What does it mean to be courageous?
It is tempting to think of courage as something dramatic: taking a great physical risk, overcoming a significant challenge or stepping forward when others might retreat. Those are certainly acts of courage. But in a school, I believe some of the most important examples are much quieter.
Courage can be putting your hand up when you are not entirely sure of the answer. It can be walking into the Boarding House for the first time, auditioning for a play, trying a new sport or attempting the difficult question when there is a very real possibility of getting it wrong.
It can also be saying, “I got that wrong.”
And sometimes it is being the person prepared to say, “That’s not okay,” when everyone else remains silent.
At Lockers Park, Courage is one of the four values we now share with Harrow School, alongside Honour, Humility and Fellowship. They are words our boys will hear regularly, but my hope is that they become much more than words. Values only have meaning when they can be seen in the way we live, learn and treat other people.
For us, courage means having the confidence to try and the strength to do what is right.
The courage to get things wrong
As parents and educators, we naturally want children to succeed. But preparing boys well for life cannot mean protecting them from every disappointment or removing the possibility of failure.
A boy who never risks getting something wrong may also miss the opportunity to discover what he is capable of.
That is why we want Lockers Park boys to try. To volunteer. To ask questions. To perform. To compete. To explore an unfamiliar idea. To have another attempt when the first one does not work.
There is an important connection here with our Lockers Park Learner Profile. Courage might prompt a boy to attempt something difficult; resilience helps him respond when it does not work first time.
Gradually, those experiences build something enormously valuable: the confidence to approach uncertainty without being defeated by it.
The courage to stand apart
There is another form of courage that matters enormously during childhood: moral courage.
For boys growing up among their peers, the desire to belong is powerful. Sometimes doing what everyone else is doing is the easiest option. It takes greater strength of character to recognise that something is wrong and choose not to join in.
That intervention does not need to be dramatic. Courage can be quiet.
It might be refusing to laugh at someone else’s expense. Including a boy who has been left out. Supporting a teammate who is struggling. Politely disagreeing with a friend. Or simply being the first person to say that something has gone too far.
This is particularly important as boys become older and begin to recognise the influence they have on those around them. Leadership is not confined to the boy wearing a prefect’s badge or standing at the front of an assembly. Leadership can be demonstrated by any boy who is prepared to set the standard through his actions.
Giving boys opportunities to be courageous
One of the privileges of a Prep School education is the extraordinary range of opportunities boys have to discover this for themselves.
Across our 23 acres, in classrooms and on pitches, on stage and in concerts, through boarding, outdoor learning, trips, competitions and friendships, boys encounter moments that ask a little more of them.
Sometimes the challenge is significant. Often it is almost imperceptibly small.
But these experiences matter because childhood is not simply preparation for what comes next. It is a formative period in its own right, when habits are established, character develops and boys begin to decide what sort of people they want to become.
Our partnership with Harrow strengthens that ambition. Our shared values give us a language through which boys can think not only about what they achieve, but about who they are becoming.
At Lockers Park, we want boys to be ambitious and enthusiastic learners. We want them to be resilient, inquisitive, aspirational, collaborative and creative, and to understand their place in the wider world.
But alongside all of that, we want them to develop character. And courage is an important place to begin. Not because we expect boys to be fearless. Courage is rarely the absence of uncertainty or nerves. It is choosing to act despite them.
It is having the courage to try, the courage to fail, the courage to speak, the courage to admit when you are wrong and the courage to stand up for somebody else.
Ultimately, it is understanding that doing what is right matters more than doing what is easy.