Rector’s eNews 23: 29 July 2026

On Friday afternoon the Michaelhouse community gathered in our magnificent chapel for a service for my institution as Rector of Michaelhouse. There was some debate as to whether the service was an institution or an installation or an investiture – but I have it on good account that it was a service of institution. By that I gather I have now been officially institutionalised! The Bishop of Natal, Nkosinathi Ndwandwe, led the service and his sermon was pertinent and thoughtful. One line resonated especially: “Leadership flourishes best within a community marked by trust, grace and shared purpose.” It elegantly articulates my thoughts on leadership, and it is my hope for Michaelhouse that this is indeed a community built on trust, grace and shared purpose.

To that end, I had the opportunity to address all Michaelhouse staff – teaching and operational – last week before the boys returned to school. My message focused on one core belief: our purpose at Michaelhouse is first and foremost to help our boys to become good at learning. Everything else is secondary. If our boys become good at learning, everything else follows from that. Of course, learning is not restricted to the academic pursuit of knowledge – which has intrinsic value – but it includes learning of all kinds and in all places so that when our boys leave here as young men, they have the confidence and skills to make a meaningful contribution to society.

Taking a step back, it is essential that boys learn how to learn, and that they understand how they learn, so that they can take ownership of the process. In assembly, I asked the boys whether they could arrange the days of the week in alphabetical order, without collaborating or writing anything down. For the record, the sequence is Friday, Monday, Saturday, Sunday, Thursday, Tuesday and Wednesday. It is hard work, but, given enough time, most of us can manage it. I then asked them to do the same with the twelve months of the year. Very quickly, our working memory becomes full and our brains begin to struggle. This is an example of ‘cognitive overload’ and a reminder that our working memory can process only so much information at any one time: it is a scarce and finite resource. Our long-term memory, by contrast, has an almost limitless capacity. If we were to commit the months in alphabetical order to long-term memory, we should be able to retrieve the sequence whenever we wished. The central challenge in learning, therefore, is how we transfer knowledge from our limited working memory into our long-term memory, from which it can be readily retrieved – like our times tables, if we were diligent enough back at Prep School!

This took me on to challenge the boys to be mindful of developing good habits. Research into habit formation suggests that it can take up to two months of daily repetition for something to become embedded in memory. At that point, we no longer need to do something intentionally, it just becomes part of our automatised routine. It is effortless – and importantly – it uses up no working memory and reduces the cognitive stress creating capacity for other things.

The example I used came on the back of having watched the British Open Golf Championship. I find it amazing how consistent the pros are in hitting their drivers off the tee. The biomechanics of a full-blooded drive are remarkably complex and for most beginners the number of technical things to remember causes us to be incapable of hitting the ball consistently straight. Yet through the repetition of hitting thousands of golf balls – intentionally and effortfully – the task becomes more and more natural and automatised. It means that the pros have available working memory to assess wind direction, lie of the ball, the placement, shape, spin, etc.

I will keep encouraging the effortful engagement with the development of good habits, whilst at the same time, helping our boys to understand what it takes to become good at learning.

As the week draws to a close, our A Block boys will be looking forward to the Matric Dance on Saturday. I am sure it will be a special occasion.

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