SOME ACCOLADES FROM EX-STUDENTS

DESMOND. - Pilot. I was a very damaged and sensitive child when I first met Graeme Whiting. Through his disciplined approach, time and wisdom, but mainly the time he spent with us, we all benefited hugely from his innovative, highly energised and inventive teaching. At school we did many things that would be considered extremely dangerous today! Graeme clearly understood the psychology behind everything he was doing, which made it an extremely powerful package for a young mind. He got us all involved in a sponsored walk to earn money to buy gym. equipment. For me this was one of the first chances I’ve ever had to prove I could excel at something. I raised quite a lot of money and was extremely motivated to do so. We ended up with a gymnasium full of Olympic-Standard equipment. Which we learned to use to quite a high level. There was also a scaffolding tower, which I think was 30 feet high. We would jump from this tower doing forward, backward somersaults onto a trampoline bed covered in crash mats for “safety”. I can remember the feeling of standing on that tower with my back to the trampoline and the void below

and having to find the courage to do a backward somersault from a 30 feet-high tower. This changed me at very fundamental level. Not only was I being very excited by this, but I was also having to overcome some huge fears, which I did with the encouragement of Graeme. And Graeme didn’t just talk the talk he walked it too. I was in desperate need of help and Graeme and Sarah came to my rescue and helped steer me on a course which I wouldn’t otherwise have been able to achieve. My early motorcycle trip around Europe was inspired by talking to Graeme. Graeme help turn me from a scared angry little boy into a strong confident man.

He once put a machine gun in my hand, in his shooting range for which he was responsible as Commandant of a TAVR Centre, to teach me about responsibility. He also gave me the key to the school-gymnasium and said, “this is your responsibility to keep tidy and to look after.” I got on really badly at school, but he was a person that could see through the naughty side of my character and help encourage some real learning. He understood one needs to look at the whole person, give them some trust and then back them up.

It was an amazing turning point for me and it enabled the good part of my character to thrive.

Graeme has dedicated his life to education, but more than that, he is dedicated his life to the spirit of humanity and to try and kindle the best things in people, and for them to then express that in the world.

MAXWELL RAYMOND SCOTT

Pilot. My time at The Acorn School fits the perfect literary planning of a story. Truly, a beginning, a middle and an end. Due to the bond of friendship and the open mind of Graham Whiting, this ‘story’ has not yet ended, despite the fact that it has been some time since I left the school, I write these experiences. In setting up The Acorn School, Graham has given an outlet for a unique combination of his life’s experience, to become his life’s work. From humble beginnings in a poor - WWII family, he has developed a strength of purpose that has stood him in good stead as an educationist. Not for nothing was it that this young man was a candidate for tough assignments in the army, where the fluid mind can be unleashed to solve life-and-death problems with imagination! Graham has been through untold heartache and a trial of grief and pain, through the shadow of death, to a deep-rooted understanding and strength of character, to stand up and manifest what he believes.This is the backdrop of Graeme’s educational mind-set, and through consistent hard work and dedication, he has created his own brand of education, a schooling where the student is left free of mind to choose their own life-path. This freedom can be a burden, finding your way can be desperately hard. With a deep-rooted moral compass that is engaged and engendered in your heart, these gargantuan tasks can be faced to give each student a deep-seated confidence and a raft of knowledge to enable them to overcome all the storms and challenges that life will throw at them. I came on the scene in the year 2000. I arrived at The Acorn School a scared young boy, timid and frail. What struck my mother and I was the harmony that pervaded the school grounds, the happy hubbub of smiling voices and the way that, irrespective of age, from the kindergarten to the tall upper school students, there was respect from each other, from student to student, from teacher to student and most surprising, from student to teacher. This was something different. I went through this system, which draws on a vast range of educational philosophies, many of which were present in the school at one time or another. Great store was placed on physical endeavour, both on the field, with a variety of outdoor sports and orienteering, to gymnastics in the school hall; vaulting, trampolining, floor work and trust-exercises woven with seemingly insurmountable obstacle courses. This trained a great mental and physical resilience which has certainly prepared me for work in HM Government and The British Antarctic Survey. The education has Graham’s hallmark all through it; and his integrity. Graeme does away with the draconian educational aspirations for the young child. Acorn is the place where people can explore ideas and come to conclusions, rather than being told what to do, what to think and what conclusions to draw!I strongly believe that Graham and his educational principles will be instrumental and central to the much-needed overhauling of mass-education throughout the world. Rather than trying to form children into small adults, Graham allows children to be what they are; children! The education teaches you where you fit into the world and is a wall of knowledge built from strong foundations. I have been flabberghasted by the higgledy-piggledy hotch-potch of names and places, which are fundamental in examinations today. Yet these are taught in a disjointed format, for example, today The Battle of the Somme, tomorrow the Battle of Hastings, followed by The Vietnam War - to turn to the ‘wall’ analogy, ‘how can one expect to build a wall by dropping bricks from ten feet up’? If you want a ten-feet wall you have to start with the foundations and then build-up. For example, with history, it is taught at Acorn in chronological order enabling the student to think back as more and more history is learned, to gain a thorough understanding. You are the spearhead of the events stretched out behind you and each student is a part of it all. As Churchill said, ‘the further you can look back, the further you can see forward’.

Graham’s educational system allows one to look back in history to the dawn of time. The lessons are based on a threefold system that allows all the range of learning types to connect easily with the subject, and allows the children to engage with all three, instead of being painted into a corner, to be labelled as ‘thick’, ‘autistic’, ‘dyspraxic’, ‘dyscalculia’, ‘ADD’, ‘ADHD’ or ‘clever’. The school is a place for everyone and there is something for everyone and a place for individuals to shine. It engages kinaesthetic, visual, artistic and intellectual learners, physically engaging the body to learn.

Graham’s work on the Auditory Cognitive Gap (ACD) is a great and noble undertaking. His understanding has carried across the educational system at Acorn and under this research it does away with labels that are pinned on children, which leads to a great unblocking of many channels. Labels are based on the assumption that all children learn at the same speed and rate, whereas Acorn allows children to develop in their own time, under the guidance of well-trained, sympathetic teachers who understand each child as an individual. Graham has the courage of his convictions and is not afraid to speak his mind, nor is he afraid to admit when he is wrong. This is the fluid mind that made him such a successful soldier and makes him such a good role-model. I am a young man and we have very few good role models in this world. My alumni of inspiration includes such names as Douglas Bader, Major Dick Winters, Churchill, C.S.Lewis, Tolkein et al. I cannot speak for the women who have received this education, but I hope that in the book’s Appendices some might write about the school’s ability to educate and honour women. To this alumni of the world I will forever add the name Graham Whiting. At the back of Major Winter’s book ‘Beyond Band of Brothers’ can be found a page entitled ‘leadership at the point of the bayonet’. With Graham in mind I offer this summary as a list in points!

1. Strive to be a leader of competence and courage. Graham has always embedded these virtues and embeds them into each student.

2. Lead from the front, saying, ‘follow me’. Graham has always been at the front, be it in the classroom in front of those he is teaching, or in the lead canoe down the rapids of a river, or in the gymnasium, where I always remember seeing Graham demonstrate.

3. Physical stamina is the root of physical toughness. Great store is set by physical endeavour at Acorn, both for boys and girls, and has encouraged all students to strive for the best they can achieve and implants mental competence within them as well as striving for physical excellence and fitness.

4. Develop your teamwork. The team of teachers is led by Graham, and he leads this nucleus so that a direction can be established within the school.

5. Delegate responsibility. Not only does Graham honour this with his own teachers but it is imprinted in each student, so they can rise to unexpected heights to take their place in the world, taking on responsibility.

6. Anticipate problems. Challenges are to be dealt with and overcome.

7. Remain humble. Never worry about who receives the credit. Graham will not be celebrated for what he has brought to the world but will be seen as a visionary in the future. This does not stop Graham’s resolve to pioneer new systems in order to give children back their childhood.

8. Take time for self-reflection. Graham is constantly looking at his work and for ways to improve it.

9. True satisfaction comes from getting the job done! The key to successful leadership is to earn respect. Of all the men I have met, I know Graham to be the most-manly, balanced man and I respect him hugely, and he in turn respects me.

10. Hang Tough! Never, ever, give up. Graham is still pioneering at age 75 years. He will continue to be unique and will never give up while there is breath in his body.

To quote Churchill again, ‘perfection spells paralysis. There is no perfect educational system, and Graeme will be the first to say that his education is not for everyone, as it demands active interaction and strength – if you are strong and ‘Hang Tough’ through his educational system you will be able to truly wear the mantle and responsibility of freedom and know that you are truly alive…

Anon. GP. I heard that Mr. Whiting has written a book on holistic parenting and has almost finished writing his autobiography, so I wanted to write something to convey to the world an extraordinary period in my life. I will, and I apologise in advance for not referring to Mr. Whiting by his formal teacher-name; refer to him as Graham! I never disrespected him when he was my teacher by taking such liberties!

Since I left education decades ago, I have experienced a full-life and have a family of whom I am proud. Some of the things I have since heard about Graham is that he has suffered a great deal of ‘behind the back’ whispering-criticism, none of which was founded but were based on envy and jealousy, because Graham had leadership and education right, not only for that time; but it is even more appropriate for today’s world. I have often wondered how Graham knew that he was preparing us for the world of today when he was teaching us for the world that was, as well? This beautiful world is sadly steeped in criticism, persecution, innuendo and denigration, maybe because the society in which we live never had the privilege to be educated by such teachers as Graham, to become free-thinking human beings. It is not my intention to over-flatter Graham’s educational ethos and his personality, but there is not a day that goes by without scanning back to those adventurous days at school, and as I write this tribute, in anonymity, it come from my heart. What took place in a small independent school in Hertfordshire from 1975 to 1986 in the school’s sports hall, needs to go down in history as the most extraordinary physical education programme ever created in a school, which stimulated our inner being and enabled us to engage better academically, subliminally. It was not only dynamic education, it was superb, exciting, holistic, challenging yet free from competition; the main element I remember so well. Those of us who experienced this man’s leadership, his human qualities and outstandingly ‘Graeme-created’ challenges, hold what he created in our hearts as ‘a suit of armour’ for our

lives, a physically created veneer that enabled us all to seal within us our individuality, no matter what our physical skills were! That school was a ‘dead duck’ until September 1975 when Graeme arrived and found a new, huge sports hall; equipped with absolutely nothing! The next paragraph is a collective from the ex-pupils I have spoken to who were in my class, in recent weeks, which I have edited after I checked the facts. ‘Within a few weeks, large lorries were drawing up at the sports hall carrying more and more Olympic gymnastic equipment, which included: Goliath and Olympic trampolines, eight thick crash mats, A double-trampette which was designed by Graeme in 1964, which I found out when I spoke to the delivery ex-gymnast who delivered it, now modernised by Nissen and made into a superb bouncing-machine for all the world to use, a set of parallel bars of the highest quality, pommel horse, Olympic high-bar, assymetric bars, a large gymnastic floor-area, numerous vaulting horses and a lot of ancillary gymnastic equipment. So much ‘never seen before’ kit arriving at our un-physical school was mind-blowing. Everyone just stood and gazed, wondering what would be delivered next, and within a fortnight, javelins, shots, discoi, hurdles, high jump stands and bars came trickling in as those in lessons gazed mouth-wateringly out of the classroom windows at the lorries rolling into the school grounds, past the classrooms on the way to ‘Tiger’s Domain! It was stunning and so bloody exciting that my parents bought me a leotard that weekend’! I salute you Mr. Whiting!

THIS MEMORY IS FROM MY PARENTS:

‘Graeme Whiting mentioned to me once that he wanted to break a world-record, so he set about creating the largest long jump pit in the world; and I am not exaggerating. It could have been a swimming pool. It was a work of love and most days in the Spring of 1976, Graeme was up early in the mornings digging this massive pit, long enough for four jumpers to jump from both directions and never meet. Six youngsters could jump across the pit at one time, in complete safety. It measured 46’ x 22’! The governors and other teachers of the school did not support this initiative, and many, including teachers, Graham’s colleagues, walked past and glanced at what was being created as more and more earth was dug up and deposited around the pit. We know that it took a month for Graeme to create the concrete surrounds; alone. The pit was a much-needed and magical addition to the school grounds and served a great purpose as the after-school athletics clubs often featured a total of over 100 children’! There was hell to pay the day a lorry brought 9 cubic metres of pit-sand; and all this was paid for by a sponsored walk. The younger pupils just stood watching and staring as each break-time was getting more and more exciting. One thing I remember, from what my mother told me, is that the school governors never paid a penny for this specialised kit, refused to honour Graeme’s needs and did not want it in the school; but it was unstoppable!’ The parents paid the fees and raised the money to pay for all of it, which only Graeme knew how to use. In the appendices is the original letter about those days. The initiative for this gymnastic equipment support-system was the work of many school-parents, most notably Hugh Howard and Anne Stringer, both parents, who should have been honoured for what they created through their kind actions. Neither was ever thanked by the establishment! After Graeme had set up the gymnastic equipment, aided by many enthusiastic older pupils, we saw him bouncing on the trampoline, performing twisting routines including double-somersaults and rotating around the equipment as though the Olympics were going to be held in our hall! Once, I entered the gym. and although it was silent there were over a hundred children standing and watching as Graeme performed on the parallel bars. He was doing a handstand, and every few seconds he pirouetted a complete 360 degree turn, then swung down and into a reverse somersault dismount. “What the hell was that” I asked one senior boy. “I have no idea” said Richard, “but I want to learn it”; and he did! Graeme ‘christened’ every piece of equipment with his performance. None of us had ever seen anything like it. The equipment was his set of toys! Truly his! The stunning skills that Graeme showed, inspired every child in the school, from six to nineteen to become gymnasts, and throughout his time at the school there was never ever one moment of disrespect towards him, no lateness to lessons and he certainly loved teaching us all, no matter who we were or how capable we were. He always saw the potential in every child he taught. I lost contact with him until this week as I have been working in Singapore for decades, and it was only through word of mouth that I heard he now has his own school, and I wanted to honour what he gave so many back then. Within a couple of months, the school gym. as it was referred to, was filled each morning and lunch break with children learning gymnastics. It was always a safe and welcoming place to go to. Children were heard leaving their classrooms after their first lesson, running helter-skelter to this new centre for physical excellence! The gym. clubs were overflowing, and no child was unable to join. It was gym. for all, always, and the main school seemed to disappear into oblivion in the face of this new impulse that we all needed. I will end by thanking Graeme, and Sarah, who he trained the year after she left the school, leaving college where she was studying Fine Art, and eventually married, for giving me and all of us a great start in our lives, with confidence, uprightness and made our school-life wonderful; which it certainly was not before he arrived with his fleet of lorries’!

What became of the kit?

Well, Graeme left in the mid - 1980s and when I visited the school in 2015, I found a washed-out, scruffy and uncared for school and sports hall, with just hundreds of ‘ex-pupils’ ghosts filling the hollow void that was apparently a feature after Graeme and Sarah left with their new son, William. I was utterly disgusted. It had become a disgrace, with some of the original equipment rusting away in the corners of the hall, ripped crash and floor mats, and Graeme’s beautiful ‘toys’, his professional life-equipment, unused for over thirty years. It was an absolute testament to the lack of leadership from those who labelled themselves futuristic educationists at the school, and who lacked respect for the greatest physical educationist any school had or would ever have! Graeme changed my life!

My mother’s foot note! ‘The man was a legend. Why he has not been honoured with a substantial award from the country for what he has committed to education since he was a young PTI in the British Army in 1964, the youngest son from a family of 9, who was brought up in poverty by his WWII crippled father, I shall never understand’. I salute you and respect you with all my heart Mr. Whiting. I owe you so much for the inspiration you subliminally wove into my three children! Hundreds of us do! Long may you live, and may the world read this book. Graduated 1970s.

ROSALIND. Mother. ‘We did archery, and sometimes you demonstrated for us, always hitting the black of course! Most of my memories are of the outdoor activities, Canadian-canoeing down the River Wye, camping and sleeping rough in forests and on river-banks, and the singing and life-stories around the campfire. On Summer Camp it was Knee-boarding on the Estuary at Lawrenny, Pembrokeshire, the Rock-jumping, with you at the bottom treading-water to make sure we resurfaced safely! Gosh, the times we had, it seems like a lifetime ago now! You were an inspiration to all of us, setting us challenges and being there to help us overcome them. (I am thinking of the mud at Chepstow at low-tide for instance, when we had to carry the huge Canadian canoes, self-made, sinking into the mud up to our mid-thighs)! Back then there were fewer health and safety rules, we were able to experience real-life situations that were pretty challenging for all of us, (The "Great Mid-Winter Capsize") which strengthened us, especially as we didn´t call off the trip but saw it through to the end. I could go on for much longer. There were so many character and group- building situations that have had a big impact on me and my life’. Graduated 1990s.

ANNIE. Herbal Medicine Practitioner.

‘I attended the The Acorn School from age twelve until age nineteen. I thrived in the smaller classes (having been in a class of around 25 previously). Graham Whiting was an inspiring and charismatic teacher and I really felt he saw the best in all of us and supported us to shine as a person and excel in the subjects we were studying. I was treated with respect for my own individual qualities and interests and felt cared-for within the school environment.

During classes, we were encouraged to ask questions, have class discussions and take part in activities which brought each subject alive. I feel I maintained my love of learning and confidence in my ability to be self-motivated and really understand what we learned instead of learning for the sake of a test or exam. I especially enjoyed anatomy and physiology classes with Graham, and this stood me in good staid for studying for my degree in Herbal Medicine (a BSc Hons) as did the ability to be self-motivated and confident in myself, despite having never sat an exam. before, I managed to get on the course and did well in my degree.

This was all set within a backdrop of the nourishing rhythm of The Acorn-ethos, based on the rhythms of nature and the songs, festivals and craft activities associated with each season. I loved learning poems, acting in plays and doing the art, sculpture, mosaic, pottery and stained-glass classes. We even made a wooden Canadian canoe!

I enjoyed physical education classes, especially gymnastics - we used to use a trampette to jump over the tower, upward circles on the bar, somersaults on the trampoline as well as from the floor. I also took part in daily circuit-training, which was intense and was a real work-out, but felt a good way to start our day. I also loved the 'Weekends Away' canoeing, knee-boarding, hiking with our packs on (with our camping gear) up mountains and on the Isle of Skye. We made camps, cooked our food, sung around the campfire, played the 'torch game' which involved creeping up on the person with the torch and trying to touch them before they shone the torch on us. Also, I enjoyed our 'Summer and Winter Camps' in Pembrokeshire - sleeping in dorms, swimming in the sea, fishing for mackerel from a canoe, and water sports.

I have fond memories of the 'Italy trips', where we travelled in a mini-bus through France, Italy and Germany, visiting art galleries as well as many historical sites, including the Colosseum in Rome, the Leaning Tower of Pisa and Vesuvius near Pompei. There was a sense of camaraderie, humour, fun and challenges that are all the ingredients of a good adventure!

During my teenage years, the love of learning (and going to school), gymnastics and 'weekends away' were a lifeline to me in an otherwise difficult and stressful time of my life. The physical education and outdoor pursuits provided the challenge and risk-taking element that I felt I needed and that most teenagers need at this time, and if not met in a held way, can mean they are more susceptible to drugs and other destructive pursuits. I feel the physical education gave me a core strength that has served me well in my life and I continue to value keeping fit and healthy.

The skills I learnt have been so useful and supported me in my travels, studies, camping trips and now as a parent. I feel I have resources inside myself and skills which I am continually grateful for, and which I can offer my children, the community of people I am connected to and those who I work with’. Graduated 1990s.