ARLT nostalgia

The ARLT motto is ‘respice, prospice’, and we spend most of our time looking forward, finding ways to meet the new challenges thrown at us by our students, by our school authorities, by governments, by exam boards and universities.

Those who chose the motto were thinking, no doubt, more philosophically, of the riches of the Classical past and what they can do for us and our students as we live our lives now and in the future.

But there may be a place also for a little nostalgia about ARLT itself, as it marches on towards its centenary in 2011.

With this is mind, I’ve begun a section on the ARLT website to make available some of the raw materials for a history of the Association.

At present it’s just a list of where the Summer Schools have been held, from 1933 to the present.

I have been entrusted, temporarily, with the photograph albums which have been lovingly compiled year by year, showing the people who came, the places they visited, and some of the serious and daft things they got up to. (The daft things are what attract photographers, so the impression given by the photos is somewhat unbalanced!)

When I get back to broadband (I’ve got dial-up at the moment – how did we ever put up with its limitations?) I’ll add the photos that I’m busy scanning from those precious albums.

My impression is, having spent some time with the albums, that we work a lot harder at Summer School now, and there are more of us. I haven’t found a single group photo from the past that shows as many people as were at this year’s Summer School.

So we latter day ARLT members must be doing something right!