Last week marked Martin Luther King Jr. Day in the USA. Building on our broader school PSHEE theme of Dreams and Goals, Friday’s Whole School Assembly focused on the work of Dr King, and his “I have a dream” speech in particular.

Martin Luther King Jr Day takes place on the third Monday in January. It honours the life and legacy of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. Each year in the USA, the celebration takes place on the Monday closest to his birthday, which is on January 15.

As a school, we listened to an account of a women who was taken along to this speech as a 10 year old, sulking for much of the time, before being inspired by Dr King’s words. We then listened to the speech itself and what we might take away from Dr King’s approach to driving change, how far we had travelled since his address in 1963, and what we might do to continue this work – today, tomorrow and when we move on from All Hallows. Moving and inspiring stuff!

Unbeknownst to me, our Year 8 philosophers have listened to and watched this speech in their Theology, Philosophy and Ethics lessons, before pondering, What influenced Dr King?

Our senior pupils have been drawing connections between Dr King’s activism and the Exodus narrative from the Old Testament that they studied last year. They were keen to tell me at the end of assembly, how liberating a people, hope in a loving God, and signs of a new creation, all fed into Dr King’s vision and his rhetoric, and sheds light on their broader musing around just how relevant can the Old Testament might be for us today?

I have to say this higher order thinking from relatively young minds blew me away and reinforced the importance of such lessons in our curriculum. Again, the outcomes may be difficult to measure here, but I are incredibly important for our young people’s development.

For me we are missing a trick if we only educate young people in areas that can be quantified.

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