ESSENCE OF FINCHDEN MANOR "Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove:" We offer the consistency of security of this order to many who have been held in by rules without the flexibility to bend so that as in the reed a snap takes place rather than a fruitful yielding. This means we work within a structure which produces limits of the kind which encourage growth because coming up against them is made to be developmental. Finchden Manor is organic and can appear disorganised. It depends how deeply the observer sees into education and growth through the frictions which could be ironed out. The choice is between the smoothness of efficiency and the turmoil of life. This, I hope it is clear, does not mean that there is not a need for meticulous care and professional timing to achieve and maintain this environment, to the extent that the whole may seem something of a paradox. The atmosphere is of a poetic nature and is quickly lost in prose form. However what do we give the boys: 1. RECOGNITION This is of them for what they are and as an individual person, if only in embryo. Experience enables us to act therapeutically in support of this. The spotting of camouflage, the interpretation of needs, actions, frustrations, self-pity, etc. 2. RESPECT As persons. Not case histories or subjects for theorising. 3. RESPONSE To their real and sometimes imagined needs. Sometimes only to their wants if one can get no nearer. 4. RELATIONSHIP Is what is being worked for and of course covers past, present and future. How do we approach this in practical terms? (a) By remaining open; at any time and any place to anything - almost. Please note the almost. We are not permissive. (b) Involved are instinct, intuition (remember 1% inspiration to 99% perspiration), quick-wittedness, light-heartedness, waiting and seeing, manipulative powers, the employing on occasion of delaying tactics, where necessary the taking of evasive action, while remaining true to one's convictions and belief in the best way to help the boy in question. None of this must be allowed to become mere technique, but there is a technique of leaving the door open (for advance or retreat of oneself or the boy), leaving situations retrievable, not committing oneself while not being non-committal. In fact, quite often treading a middle path while remaining positive in one's approach. The potential makes possible the reciprocation, however hesitantly, of the three R's - Recognition, Respect, Response and the aim - Relationship. This is what is lived throughout Finchden and can be generated from within. It is heart rather than head to the point of apparent irrationality, but the emotions are of the heart. Of course there is tension for a staff which has to have its head screwed on tight to meet the level of a disturbed boy's challenge. But the staff allow for the feeling intellect. ....... "That grace which dwells between one possibility and another, perceiving and revealing a pattern beneath the surface of experience without wishing to impose a style upon it". By now it is clear that discipline is self discipline fostered in the ripeness of time as in the family. That is what we and they do all day. Added to this there is opportunity to learn, to play, to act, to take sharing on to participation - when the time is ripe. One is working for reconciliation of one kind or another. On the way one is for ever called upon to be elastic but not stretched, to be close and stand back, to meddle and not touch and to create a rhythm so that out of all the give and take is born the pulse (through restriction ultimately) of freedom. Faith is needed. A boy needs to doubt. I don't shy from the word 'mystery', but believe it is worked for, paid for, by perpetual vigilance in the cause of wholeness. The music critic of the Observer wrote: "In the final resort all art is a resolution of disparate elements in an organic unity. The fact that these elements are potentially hostile gives a work its tension, without which it is lifeless. The fact that they are none the less capable of resolution gives a work its unity without which it is unsatisfying. But if both these contrasting conditions are to be fulfilled, the material out of which (music) is to be fashioned must undergo a series of events whose relationship may be neither straightforward nor immediately apparent." David Hobbs