Our Local Schools

From the LOCH A TUATH NEWS February 2001

My involvement with our local schools is one of the most thrilling and important aspects of my work in the community. It therefore gave me great pleasure to be involved in the re-opening of the newly refurbished Tong School last month.

An account of the proceedings will appear elsewhere in this paper, I'm sure; but the full story is known only by those who endured the disruption while their school was stripped to nothing and then remade to its present high standard. And while all this was going on, it was business as usual for the staff and pupils.

It is impossible to single out anyone for credit. An enterprise like the refurbishing of a community school is one that requires commitment and hard work from many different quarters. Often the heroes of such an undertaking go unsung; and often the full extent of the work is not sufficiently appreciated.

At this point I must interject and say that although it was a great honour to be invited along, to join the platform party and to hear the pupils sing Psalm 23 to my new tune "Sgoil Thunga", I had received a command from on high (no, not that on high -- I mean the Council's Education Committee) that my dedication prayer was to last no more than two minutes.

Such rulings fairly concentrate the mind, and I think that my "Amen" crossed the finishing line in the 58th second of the second minute. At such times I fall back on my Calvinistic theology -- what a boon that is to a time-pressed Free Church minister -- that God measures prayer not by length but by depth, and that he takes a good look at the "thoughts and intents of the hearts" before he weighs up the words.

Not that the words are unimportant, of course, and the re-opening day was full of words. Words of thanks, of congratulation, of reminiscence, of dedication, of hope, of dreams. Such moments are poignant in the extreme, and one had the sense of standing on a threshold between a past held in the embrace of a former generation of pupils, and a future envisaged by the substantial investment both of money and talent in the newly decorated school. What some words did not say was said by tears in some eyes.

Let me just take this opportunity to wish Tong School well in the commencement of this new chapter in its history, and to anticipate great things. And let me say that whatever the McCrone report promises for teachers' pay and conditions -- and it is still, in my view, to address the long problem of the gradual erosion of teachers' rights -- nothing can compare with a strong learning facility at the heart of a community.

With the headship of Back School once again settled, I would also like to wish Mr Maclean well in his new post. I look forward to working with both Back and Tong in the future.

We are singularly fortunate in our district not to have been dogged with the scholastic or ecclesiastical controversies that have torn other communities apart. We have a lot going for us, not least the links between school, community and church. Three-fold cords are not easily broken.