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Head's Blog

Radnor House parents receive a Weekly Bulletin of news information, highlights of achievements and details of forthcoming events, as well as additional communications from other departments and individuals as necessary.

Our Head, Darryl Wideman, also writes a regular blog to share his thoughts about education and the world with a wider audience, which you can read below.

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  • The Value of Values

    In my assemblies this week, I have been talking to the pupils in more detail about our Values Wheel and why I believe it is so important.  The framed posters of the wheel now adorn pretty much every spare surface in the school, but I wanted to emphasise to the children the reasons why we did th...
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  • There Are Better Ways To Do This

    Of all the books I read over the summer break, I find myself coming back repeatedly to Rutger Bregman’s ‘Utopia for Realists’.  I have already highlighted his thoughts about education, most notably that we need to teach children values ahead of skills.  No one knows for s...
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  • Early Thoughts from the Hall

    We had the opportunity last weekend to show over thirty colleagues from Radnor House the new site at Kneller Hall, which has consequently triggered much excitement and discussion, all of which has gone way beyond the more obvious motives behind a visit, such as a grab for the office with the best vi...
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  • Nothing New Under the Sun

    My favourite historian at the moment is Dan Jones, who writes with commendable clarity about even the most complicated topics.  In the summer, which already feels a long time ago, I read his book about the Wars of the Roses, which was a gripping account of the turbulence of the fifteenth centur...
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  • Be Curious, Not Judgemental

    I was delighted to see that the Apple TV programme ‘Ted Lasso’ did so well at the Emmy Awards on Sunday.  While I thoroughly enjoy ‘The Crown’, and I am not remotely surprised by its continuing success and consequent awards, ‘Ted Lasso’ offers something a lit...
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  • In Case You Missed It

    It has been good this week to get back into more usual routines where possible, in my case by seeing all the pupils in their assembly time.  During the height of ‘bubbling’, it took eight different visits to get round to see everyone, so it was a lot easier to be able to cover the v...
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  • Leaving the Plateau

    You may be pleased to know that my new school year’s resolution is to write shorter blogs, trying to summarise ideas more succinctly.  This is not because I am getting lazy in my old age, but because I think I may be able to make everyone’s life a bit easier if I can work on my skil...
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  • Head's Address at Prize Giving, 1st July 2021

    Well done for concentrating so well this afternoon.  With everything that has been going on in the last couple of weeks, not to mention all the challenges of the last fifteen months, I am not surprised that everyone feels the need for a break – even if we may not be able to...
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  • Questions, Questions, Questions

    I will start this week with a few final thoughts from Tim Harford’s book ‘Fifty Things That Made the Modern Economy’.  As you may have noticed from last week’s offering, Harford quite often references China in his writing, with a very clear sense that...
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  • We Do Not See the World as It Is: We See It as We Think It Is

    Photo: Aristotle.  De Agostini Picture Library \ Universal Images Group The title of this week’s blog is a quotation from Aristotle, which is getting on for 2,500 years old.  No wonder that his philosophy and science were so enduring, with much of it providing the founda...
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  • It Was Good While It Lasted

    Picture: Seven Ages of Man woodcut, The Granger Collection / Universal Images Group. I will start this week with a couple of quotations from US president Harry S. Truman.  Firstly, he once said, ‘You know what makes good leadership?  It’s the ability to get men to do wh...
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  • All Roads Lead to Bill Bryson

    Picture: Peter Jackson / Bridgeman Art Library / Universal Images Group There has been a consistent theme in my recent reading about the development of societies and the inequalities and consequences that their creation brings.  For example, in his history of cheese-making, Ned Pal...
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