Today’s Routh Address was given by Mr McClure, Deputy Head Pastoral.
Harriet (201 magazine editor): Good morning everyone. We are the editors of 201 – your school magazine, and today we’re excited to introduce the latest edition to you. The theme of this edition is Identity. When creating the magazine, we wanted to make sure it truly reflected the wide range of identities, experiences and voices within our school. Even within our own team, it’s clear how many different perspectives and ideas exist, and we wanted that same diversity to be visible in the magazine. This edition of 201 is made up of many identities, as every person who has added something has put a little of themselves into it. As you flick through the pages, you’ll see an extraordinary array of contributions by students across all year groups. Their passion and creativity has helped to keep the spirit of 201 alive.I leave you with this quote by Shakespeare, “This above all: to thine own self be true”.
Aaryn (201 magazine editor): From articles to artwork, from Comic strips to photography, from poetry to our many fun perks and additions. In our 2025 201Magazine edition we have made sure to grow: from branches and leaves to roots and seeds. But with your eyes set upon these papers shall the earth be ploughed once more and our seeds sown once again for the morrow. In other words this magazine is not and will never be a finished product, but is instead part of an ongoing process forged by you.
Kate (201 magazine editor): We’re also always looking for new team members. If you’re interested in having your writing, art, photography or ideas featured in future editions, you can contact Aaryn, Harriet, Mr Williams, or me, or join us at our meetings on Thursday lunchtimes in H3. Everyone is welcome, and we’re always open to new ideas. We hope you enjoy this edition of 201. Thank you.
Thank you to the three magazine editors – I hope that many of you do accept their invitation to dip into the contents of the latest issue, as well as perhaps to contribute to future editions yourselves.
The theme of identity did indeed get me thinking about what to share with you this morning. Identity should be one of the most precious things any of us possess – something entirely personal, rooted in our genes yet also shaped by our experiences of the world and people around us (whether entirely positive or occasionally challenging), and developing organically in a way that often reflects our own choices, values and beliefs and which can aid our sense of belonging in any given social, community or societal setting.
I would be quickly out of my depth in trying to explain the intricacies of DNA which is of course the basis of so much of our genetic and physical identity – many of you here this morning are far more talented than me in all things scientific. However, I have previously taught at a school in North London with a science building named after one of its most famous former pupils, Francis Crick, one of the scientists who created the model of DNA in its double helix form, rather dramatically (although with some truth) declaring in 1953 that he and his research partner James Watson had ‘discovered the secret of life’. I’m not sure too many of you will know the connection that the same James Watson of DNA fame officially opened our 91风流楼凤 LRC building in 1995. Our own large model of DNA stood in the LRC foyer as a reminder of that occasion for its first few years, until it was fittingly moved across to the Biology Department where you can still see it in a corner of the glass extension room on the end of the building.
I’m a little more in my own Classical comfort zone mentioning the ancient Greek phrase gnwqi seauton or ‘Know thyself’ which was famously inscribed outside the temple of Apollo at Delphi as a prompt for those about to visit the Oracle and which has become a staple of western philosophical thought on self-reflection and self-knowledge. Both of those are important aspects in developing the authenticity and understanding of one’s identity, and the acknowledgement of one’s own strengths, weaknesses and limitations is a positive step for anyone’s own wellbeing. It is also something that encourages your recognition and appreciation of the diversity of talents and characters in others, whether among your friends, year group, Houses, School or in your families. This Arena really is a melting pot of so many differing identities – in so many different contexts, too – which makes it rather a special community given that we share so many individual experiences within our own collective School identity or brand.
As last term’s displays of pupils’ art work in the Dining Room showed anyone who stopped to have a look, there can indeed be the paradox of unity in diversity – we can have a collective School identity based on a shared set of values, but without the unsettling prospect of producing 1000 pupil clones. It would be naïve of me to think that many of you spend too much time considering the School’s mission statement but, next time you pass that ubiquitous notice and have a moment to spare, you may register that each pair of our core values encourages a beneficial characteristic for the community-minded identity, but also one that can be aspirational for each individual identity.
Which brings us back to the School magazine, in many ways a microcosm of all this, since it is a varied mix of different topics, media, opinions and personalities of its contributors, yet bundled under the title Two-Zero-One that could be mistaken for being rather prescriptive in its branding. I could not help but look up the official descriptor of our School colour, registered as the shade Pantone 201. It is, I quote, “a deep, sophisticated maroon or dark red shade”. I am delighted that even a scientific colour chart expresses itself with a lack of precision which allows some flexibility in interpretation.
Aside from the main headlines, the BBC online article that caught my attention this week was not about asparagus you may be pleased to hear, but rather about the suspicion that a singer called Sienna Rose, who currently has 3 songs in Spotify’s Top 50 may be an AI artist who does not really exist. Music recording analysts point to the generic sound, flawless pitch of her melodies and occasional hint at software tricks. Others are surprised that she has no social media presence, has never played a gig, has produced no videos, and has released at least 45 tracks in only two months. All perfectly pleasant as background music for those who like it, I’m sure, but for those of my generation who may remember the public outrage when it emerged in 1990 that a popular R&B duo called Milli Vanilli merely danced while lip-synching tracks which had been recorded by other singers, the level of acceptance of the possibilities of a Sienna Rose shows just how times change. For everything that the march of science and technology brings to our current society – and I admit that, like many boarders I’m sure, I rather enjoyed the light show which hundreds of drones brought to the sky over the School campus yesterday evening – it is nevertheless individual identities and diversity that provide some soul to our existence; something which I, for one, would never want our world to lose.
Thank you.