The 2023 Chronicle

the national executive committee of the SAHISA for a five-year term and is an honorary member of the Independent Schools Association of Southern Africa. Mr Cook lives in Cape Town with his wife Heather and works part-time as a brand ambassador for Eduvelopment, an online

careers guidance service. He travels from time to time to visit his children and nine grandchildren. Mr Cook, thank you for agreeing to return to Michaelhouse and address us today. We look forward to hearing some of your stories and benefiting from your wisdom.

ADDRESS BY THE GUEST OF HONOUR, MR ANDREW COOK

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hairman of the Board, Andrew Schaefer, Rector Antony Clark, distinguished guests and parents, members of staff and men of Michaelhouse. Shortly before he died, I received a note from Professor Guy Butler, the legendary academic and poet. I had written to thank him for teaching me in my Honours year, and how, over the previous 25 years, I had made extensive use in my own teaching of his approaches to Hamlet , Othello , Macbeth and King Lear . In his note, he explained how teaching differed from other professions. An engineer could point to a bridge or a dam and say, “I built that. See, it is still standing.” An architect can point to a building and say, “I built that. See how it defines space and light, and it brings pleasure to those who use it.” In other words, they get feedback from the project itself. But, unless a student tells the teacher of the impact he has had on him, the teacher has no way of knowing what his influence has been. If someone else had taught the same person, would he have turned out better or worse? Without his supportive parents, might the outcome not have been different? And so on. Receiving such acknowledgement as a teacher from a student is one of the most wonderful rewards we as teachers can earn. I recount this story not merely as an encouragement to you who are leaving Michaelhouse to take stock of what you have been given by others during your passage through secondary school. By extension, I take your decision to invite Heather and me to Speech Day as an acknowledgement of gracious recognition, and we will treasure it as such. Moreover, today, I feel a deep sense of representing so many teachers who have laboured here, unrecognised, perhaps, except in the hearts of those who held them dear and have helped to make this a great school. So many memories flood back to me. I recall teaching an A Block Set 5 class during the first period of a beautiful autumn morning, the grass in the Amphitheatre still old-gold and green, the liquid-amber trees a blaze of reds and yellows. We were reading a Wordsworth sonnet,

what Wordsworth was driving at. The moment was unforgettable even when one of my pagans disturbed the scene by asking in a loud voice whether this poem was going to be for marks, sir! Or Marten du Plessis stepping up to take the penalty on the halfway line in the final minute of the match against Hilton, to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat in the First XV match on Meadows. Or Greg George hitting a winning 6 into the Old Pavilion in the match against KES on the Gathorne Oval with Ali Bacher looking on. Or the highly competitive Jake White saying that Dale Benkenstein’s 1992 First XI was the finest team of gentlemen he had ever coached against. Or the fabulous Andersson brothers singing another Billy Joel winning song in the interhouse music competition. Or the picture that Nick Sacco sent me of him holding the World Duathlete trophy aloft, especially sweet because his coach had told him that he would never make it as an athlete because he did not have the requisite physique. Or James Pitman and Reiner Schneider-Waterberg visiting me at Mitchell House in the light aircraft that James had designed and built himself before flying it around the world. I loved teaching Shakespeare to my top classes. They always gave me new insight into Shakespeare’s art and stretched me to find methods of not getting in the way of what he was saying. One year, by way of introduction to King Lear, I noted that many would argue that this was the greatest of Shakespeare’s tragedies and that, like Moses facing the burning bush, we ought really to remove our shoes because we were standing on holy ground. At my next lesson with them I was met by what might best be described as the rich whiff of a well-matured Camembert. Twenty-three pairs of shoes were neatly arranged at the front of the class for my amusement. I recall asking Old Boy Mark Suzman, who had recently returned to South Africa from Harvard, what it was like to be in the elevated company of Ivy League academia. Did he feel intimidated by the standards demanded of him there, I wondered? He said that in every way he felt the equal of or superior to his American peers, and to prove it, went on to win the de Tocqueville Prize for the Or the presence of God in the Chapel at confirmation, carol services or memorials for lads who had died.

“The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers: Little we see in Nature that is ours”

which my lads were finding less than riveting at that time of day. I had wandered over to the window as I was reading the sonnet, and there emerging from the azaleas was a duiker: delicate, deferential, and unmistakably natural. I called the class to come to the window for a most powerful audio-visual demonstration of

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