BEACHCOMBER 105 YEARS OLD AND STILL CHANGING HIS MIND...

THANKS to a recent theatrical experience in Cambridge, I have altered my opinions about education. As you may recall, Tony Blair, when he was PM, once identified his three priorities as “education, education, education”, which may have inspired Liz Truss’s announcement that she believed in “growth, growth, growth”.

Albert Einstein is often quoted as telling us that education is what remains if we have forgotten all we learned at school, although Einstein never claimed it as his own idea but ascribed it to a “wit”. My recent Cambridge experience, however, confirmed the truth of this statement.

My conversion came after watching a performance of Chess – The Musical at the ADC (Amateur Dramatic Club) Theatre. Written by Tim Rice with music by Bjorn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson of Abba, this show has a great pedigree but its complexity poses a challenge even for a professional company.

I had seen several productions before, all high-budget and technological. This had led me to believe that it could not be done effectively on the sort of budget available to a student production, but the Cambridge University Musical Theatre Society proved me wrong. The singers were astonishingly good, the small band excellent, the production was effective and it was sold out to appreciative audiences for every performance. The performers had only three weeks’ rehearsal time and after a week on stage, they went back to their studies. For students, education comes in what they do in their spare time. A triumph such as this musical enhances the self-belief of all who contributed and hugely increases their chances of success in whatever challenges life may pose.

Education can be offered as much by musicals, musicals, musicals or sport, sport, sport, as study, study, study. The study, however, gives them all something to fall back on if their dreams of glamour do not materialise. Cambridge has given us Nobel Prize winners, archbishops and great writers but the students I feel sorry for are those who end up as politicians.

They are the ones who lacked the talent to do something enjoyable in their lives.

Such a success can be far more beneficial to one’s education than any first-class degree.