Bong's Last Words

From the 1971 STHS Journal, Volume 54, page 8.

Mr and Mrs Bong (left) at an STHS Old Boys' Do.

A Message from the retiring Principal:

First of all, I am a Libran and the Insignia of the Libran is the laboratory scales. It was perhaps inevitable that, having developed a liking for Science during my secondary school years, this should have been my choice as a University course.

In later life, on becoming a bowler, I chose scales (or the Balance) as the identification for my bowls, and have always found some of my philosophy in this sign of Libra.

If one can keep a balanced outlook on life - not tipping the scales too much one way or the other - one can maintain a workable credo for living. By cultivating an ability to set the practical against the intangibles, the emotional against the factual, a well-rounded personality should result. 

Extremism has never benefited mankind in the last resort, as history shows, so use your educational opportunities to avoid this pitfall. Pascal said, "Man is but a reed, the weakest in nature, but a thinking reed".

So start your thinking early in life, whilst effort and study are easier so that your powers of judgment can give you confidence for maturity. You will all need to set your sights high for what you want in life, but if you work hard, you should attain your goals.

To the Sixth Form I wish every success in their Public Examinations, and to all students, best wishes for your future lives.

It was rumoured that Bong became senile during his latter years. It's touching here to see him attempting be 'with it' and join the Age of Aquarius by revealing that he is a Libran. The 'well-rounded personality' he achieved merely made our Headmaster an irrelevance to us; no more than a figurehead. His interest in the talents and development of any individual student appears to have been nil. I have heard no laudatory anecdote of Mr Brown from any STHS lad, though it's possible that we knew him later in his career when his energy had run out.

We knew Bong as a mere speechifier, a handshaker and hander-out-of-prizes, an unveiler of plaques, an absurd and pompous figure in mortarboard and gown on our auditorium stage, rarely seen in any setting so humdrum as the quadrangle or our classrooms. He never chatted with any chance-met group of boys; he stayed distant, as a leader must needs be to retain authority, but Bong did not awe us; he was not disliked, but he was not much respected either; Bong was mildly mocked, but not hated; none felt strongly enough about this 'well-balanced' man to have much opinion of him either way. His influence as a leader appeared to be negligible, and this cannot have been the result of a wise and planned delegation to his subordinates. It is alleged that H. B. Brown did not even know the names of many of his staff, let alone his students, and did not care to learn them. We all recall Bong, at the retirement of Mr Twigg the Manual Arts teacher, referring to him as 'Mr Quigg'.

Yet H. B. Brown was the founding Principal of STHS after it moved to Bexley, and at that time he would surely have been busy with much spadework; in his own way and time, an educational innovator.

As for the 'extremism' Bong here condemns, he may merely be referring to the photos appearing in this 1971 journal; the length of the boys' hair alone would have caused some of our older staff seizures. It's a pity Bong cited Blaise Pascal, who was hardly a model of the 'balanced' life, abandoning science for a mystical religious obsession. Perhaps Bong drew that quote about the 'thinking reed' from the Readers' Digest, or the newsletter of his bowling club. It would be quite in keeping with the middle-brow habits of those times.