Tower and Town, April 2018

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Editorial: Marlborough College Edition

The April edition of Tower and Town is normally written by a team of pupils from Marlborough College. This year the team is drawn from the College adults.

We begin with a review by Bob Pick of his experience as the first head of Marlborough College Malaysia, setting up and running an entirely new branch of the College in an area of the world where the work ethic is noticeably different and the mix of faiths and ethnicities hugely enriching.

Sean Dempster, recently retired, taught Biology and was always at the heart of the College’s involvement with Wiltshire's natural history. He follows a long tradition of such College commitment and has produced for us a bird's eye view of the meticulous recording by students and teachers that went into this.

Andrew Brown reflects on the dynamism of the College's contribution to modern language teaching, moving out from core French and German in the 1960s to include Russian and, later, Spanish, and a couple of decades later Chinese, Japanese and Arabic, driven by the vision of Gerald Groffman. The first-year taster course, where all pupils are introduced to the full range of languages on offer, is an inspiring exercise in horizon-widening.

Andrew Gist describes for us another example of the College striking out along its own path in the shape of its first-year humanities project “Form”. In fact this is more of a return to an earlier era: my own first year as a student at the College included just such an arrangement, under the watchful eye of Jake Seamer. There can be few better ways to encourage joined-up learning.

Guy Nobes concludes with a review of some of the exciting university possibilities now open to school leavers, with degrees from Europe, America, Australasia and even Abu Dhabi offering experiences far beyond what my generation dreamed of.

Gabby Venus and Debby Guest continue their regular columns, while David Chandler introduces us to Human Writes. It all adds up to a hearty meal!

Hugh de Saram