Theme: HONOUR
The theme for this week is “honour”.
It is an old-fashioned word but one that I, as an old history teacher, with an interest in battles and wars, have thought about for years. I have also noticed how old soldiers love to talk about “honour”, and of course, one way we recognise a soldier of honour would be being awarded the Victoria Cross. The original “VC”.
But honour comes in many other shapes and forms, and when I was a College boy, I also liked to read about the American mob – which is often known as the Mafia or the Cosa Nostra. I read about gangsters, with surnames like Gambino, Capone, or Corleone, who swore oaths of silence, took blood oaths of loyalty, and belonged to demonic but vaguely appealing gangs known as “families”. I read that “honour” meant everything to these men, who (I learnt) lived by a strict code of loyalty, respect and obedience. As a young teenager, I wondered whether I could ever “whack” an informant, or make him “sleep with the fishes”, and whether I could uphold the sacred code of honour of these romanticised gangsters. But over time, I realised that these men of so-called honour were deeply, deeply flawed. They lied and cheated, they stole and murdered – and in the end they were cheap replicas of honourable men: they were pimps, drug-dealers and murderers, pretending to have a code of honour, but actually not having one at all.
So, we need to be quite sure of the HONOUR that we are talking about.
To be a true man (or, of course, woman) of honour is one of the highest and noblest accolades that any person can earn, and it is something that we, as one of the oldest schools in the country, aim to instil in all our young men.
To be a man of honour means that –
- You are a man of your word.
- You respect other people and other things, and that you strive to be a “good” man.
- You do not lie, steal or cheat.
- You strive to never let your people down.
- But you also act reasonably and kindly, you think of others, and you are morally correct.
- And a man of honour instinctively learns to do the right thing, even when he is under pressure.
These are attributes that we want you as College boys to live out every day. They are not attributes that people are necessarily born with, but you can learn them over time, especially if you are in contact with good people who offer you worthy examples of honourable behaviour. Many such fine people live and work amongst us, in the staffroom and in the boarding houses, and many other College people (including your own parents) are such people.
On the flip side, though, what type of person does not have honour?
- A bully is not a man of honour.
- A thief and a cheat is not a man of honour.
- A man who lies down in the face difficulty, is not a man of honour.
- A man who fails to follow the code of empathy and goodness known to all such good men, is not a man of honour.
Last week, after I had spoken in assembly on Monday about being “committed to a set of values”, I was disappointed to discover that we were let down by some boys.
This is not the conduct of honourable young men.
These are not the actions of young men who are fully committed to a set of noble values.
I am not naïve and I know that Maritzburg College is filled with proud, testosterone-filled young men, who stand up for themselves and for what they believe is right. This place is not a kindergarden.
But I truly hope that you all aspire to be men of honour – and I do accept that such men can disagree with each other.
But they do not publicly brawl with each other, they do not swear at each other, and they do not bring themselves and their school into disrepute.
I have warned all you boys on Friday that severe steps will be taken against anyone who lets down the honourable code of being a Maritzburg College boy. I hope it doesn’t come to that.
Be a young man of honour.
Respect the people and things around you, and do the right thing.
Pro Aris et Focis
Matthew Marwick
Senior Deputy Headmaster