Last night, patience paid off. My son’s school hosted a Sword in the Stone ceremony.
Since half-term I’ve been going in half a day a week to work with a class of primary school leavers to write speeches with them. They practised and got feedback from their fellow pupils. It was great when they could tell each other to speak more clearly, or identify ‘hyperbole’. They came up with their own ideas, but I sat down with them to give the presentations a three-part structure.
I wanted them to reveal their backgrounds, what languages they spoke and what countries their parents came from. I wanted them to tell stories about their lives – the dramas and the achievements so far. I wanted them to make pledges for their future.
The deputy headmaster was as nervous as I was about how it would turn out. Up until yesterday afternoon, we weren’t sure if more than half-a-dozen would show up. At least three had disappeared on summer holidays already.
We put on the Hans Zimmer music, we tried to get the smoke machine to work. The children came forward. The deputy headmaster draped the cape on their shoulders. They took the sword from the stone. Then they spoke for a minute gesturing with the sword in different ways. They all raised their game on the night in front of their parents.
One boy wore his Scout uniform and announced he wanted to be a soldier and fight for his country. Another boy said he’d been hit by a car and survived. Another said if he were President he’d give everyone a second chance. One girl announced that she wanted to work with horses (which was news to her mother), another girl ended the evening with an inspirational poem.
My wife said she was welling up at some of them.
In my conversations with the deputy headmaster he said it was a refreshing event because the education system is focused on measuring the children with data. This at least was encouraging them to show off their character.
If you’re involved in education and you would like to do speechwriting training with your students and host a Sword in the Stone ceremony at your institution, please get in touch.
MotRadar
Ceremonies survive precisely because they are inefficient — the meaning lives in the parts you could cut. It is the same instinct that keeps people attached to ritual inspections and checks long after the practical case is made. The British version is oddly the annual MOT: a yearly ritual of judgement on the car, publicly recorded, which you can read back in full through a MOT history check. Not quite Excalibur, but the ceremony is real.