Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.
I always think about Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poem ‘Ring Out, Wild Bells’ in September. There are lots of great poems about beginnings but this one is my favourite. Tennyson wrote it after hearing the optimistic sound of church bells ringing at Christmas in a year when he had suffered the loss of a great friend. The sound encouraged him to move forward, to think of the future; the bells urged him towards optimism.
September is a time for us all to think of the future, to ‘’ring out the old’’ and ‘’ring in the new’’. All is possible in the days ahead, there should be no limits to our ambition. This year – of all years – we must instill the young people in our care with ideas of grandeur, visions of a much better world and we must urge them to play their part in creating it. We have shared a collective experience which has tested us. As there was for Tennyson, there has been grief and loss. BIS Abu Dhabi doesn’t have a school bell, but if we did, we would ring it out loudly for the new academic year and it would signal to us what the church bells signalled for Tennyson: new beginnings, happiness, truth. Welcome back to school. Ring out the bells.
Chris Lowe