Whether they are film stars or sports stars, wealthy society ladies or prosperous business tycoons, the allure of gold or silver is great.
However, while they see the shining article and admire it greatly, they do not see what lies behind it, what has been going on behind the scenes to produce this masterpiece.
All around us here in Zimbabwe we see evidence of mining operations, all being created in pursuit of such lucrative minerals; some of it is hidden, to detract from any possible criticism, while others are dumped and ignored.
The fact is though: what we see on the surface is not always an accurate presentation of what is behind.
Speaking of mines, some readers may be old enough to remember the 1985 action adventure film, King Solomon’s Mines, starring Richard Chamberlain, Sharon Stone and Herbert Lom, which was filmed here in Zimbabwe, much of it close to Harare.
There were the fronts of buildings visible from the Bulawayo road but there was nothing behind them.
Indeed, one scene showed the hero fighting his way through a jungle (which happened to be the Rain Forest at Victoria Falls) and arriving at that ‘building’ outside Harare! What we see on the surface is not always what lies behind!
When we want to know what a school is like, we will most likely be invited and persuaded to attend an Open Day at the school.
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Everything will be shiny and clean, after special efforts to make it so.
Pupils will have been reminded how important it is to behave in front of the visitors.
The school choir and band will be brought out to perform; pupils’ paintings and other work will be proudly on display; details of pupils’ and past pupils’ performances will be described; guided tours by primed prefects will be given to specific carefully selected areas of the school.
Who would not choose any school based on that? The question is, though: what really goes on behind the scenes?
One school had the prospective parents go on a tour of the school with Form One pupils giving the commentary unscripted, instead of prefects.
The benefit of that was that Form Ones will blabber on unfiltered about everything while visitors can actually see (and ask directly) how the Form Ones feel about the school.
The fact is, any school can put on a show but what is the school really like?
What happens every other day of the term? Every day should, in fact, be an Open Day.
If we want to mine for the truth of a school, we should not go to an Open Day, but to their Speech and Prize-Giving Day; that is when we will see what the school is all about.
Some are short, some are long. Some are formal, others very informal.
Some incorporate music and drama, others stick strictly to speech and prizes.
Some have hundreds of prizes (for whatever a particular parent has donated a trophy for), others have limited essential selected prizes.
Some invite only parents of prize winners, others invite all parents.
Whatever they do, they reveal the school very clearly.
More specifically, we will find out what is important to the school.
We learn a great deal by who is invited to speak (especially the guest speaker, who is often not very good at public speaking even if extremely successful in a chosen field and ideally a former pupil, suggesting that all pupils there will be successful) and what they speak about (head boys and girls always say “we’re the best school” and recount amusing stories of their wayward life at the school.
The best head boy speech heard by this writer was by one who simply thanked all the parents for the sacrifices they made and the teachers for all the commitment they showed — that spoke far more about the school).
Then we learn so much from what trophies are given, which are the biggest, which receive the biggest applause, which come at the end (the cherry on top).
We learn so much about how the pupils behave and even more so by how the parents behave. We truly see what lies behind the noise.
Forget King Solomon’s Mines; consider King Solomon’s sayings, not least “vanity, vanity, all is vanity and a striving after the wind”.
Dig deep, behind the scenes, to find out what a school is like.
All that all these things mentioned above are doing are emphasising what the school considers to be important to them.
There is no right or wrong to what happens at a Speech Day; there is simply the truth of the school being revealed.
There is no prize for that, no speech necessary. Who wins? The one who mines.
