Address by Nigel Evans (1955)

Friday 11 Feb 2011

Thank you Headmaster for inviting me to this special assembly to present the 2010 scholarship awards.

The Honours Board surrounding the great hall is a part of a Grammar boy’s life and a constant reminder that he too could one day see his name up there. I was astonished and delighted to hear that 50 of the 2010 senior boys have achieved this goal. All of us here today offer them our heartiest congratulations on their splendid individual and collective achievements.

While at Grammar, you scholars will have mastered the basics of your subjects, learned to think and work independently, rounded your personalities by participating in sporting and cultural activities and, above all, I trust, discovered the joy of study, and the pleasure that results from sustained effort.

A previous Grammar headmaster, Mr John Graham, said: “Education is about what is taught and the teachers who teach it”. By this definition, you scholars have received the best secondary education offered in New Zealand. But do not expect the nurturing you have experienced at this school, or the uniformly high quality of your teachers, to extend to the world of higher education.

I encourage you to attend a New Zealand university for your first degree. It can provide all the academic challenges you need as an undergraduate. It will also allow you to mix with others from different backgrounds, develop a confidence in the uniqueness of this country’s history and communities and explore opportunities for your future in New Zealand.

For those of you thinking of carrying on to a doctoral degree, I urge you to graduate at the top of your New Zealand university. Believe me, the best universities in the world will then be competing to attract you as a doctoral student and you will have access to many scholarships which will make this possible.

Contrary to my advice for your first degree, I believe you should go overseas for your doctorate and aim to study at one of the world’s great universities: for example Cambridge or Oxford or Imperial College in the UK; Harvard, Princeton, Cal Tech or MIT in the US.

Surprisingly, you should not expect that your doctoral supervisor will be a great teacher, even though he might well be a Nobel laureate. The real joy of attending a great university is that most of the world leaders in your area of research will find their own good reason to visit your university during your time there, be it for a seminar, a conference, a sabbatical or merely to spend time with a colleague. Importantly, you will get the chance to meet these leaders informally, to chat over a coffee with them and hear their views on a range of topics. I guarantee that these rich experiences will be remembered across a lifetime; certainly long after the detail of your doctoral thesis has become hazy.

I am a physicist but am not advocating that you all should study science or engineering or medicine. The enhancement of the artistic and moral culture of this country is equally important. But for those who choose natural sciences, my advice is to keep a strong core of mathematics in your studies. Mathematics very accurately models the universe through Einstein’s general theory of relativity and the atomic world through Heisenberg’s and Schrodinger’s quantum mechanics. So it should be no surprise that mathematics weaves strong threads through all the natural sciences and a man that masters mathematics will better adapt to changes within his field, or have the luxury of easily changing fields, in the course of his working life.

Let me finish by coming back to our school. Never forget that the high quality educational nourishment you have enjoyed has been hard-won by Sir George Grey and countless men who have believed in this school and defended its core values and traditions over almost 150 years against those who are jealous of its pre-eminent position in secondary education in New Zealand. I exhort you to be a proud old boy, support the old boys’ association and burnish the reputation of Auckland Grammar School by your continued success and service to your community.