Volume: 5 Issue: 18

Aldous Huxley’s famous novel “Brave New World” is not taught with the same frequency as it once was. Despite the fact that social conditioning and genetic engineering are perhaps far more real than fiction today than they were in 1931 (and there are definitely modern equivalents of soma), it is rare that a syllabus will have it listed. For a whole host of reasons, it is still one of my favourite novels.

One reason is because the principal character, Bernard, is like the famous characters we know so well in The Wizard of Oz. However, instead of wanting a heart, or courage, or a brain, Bernard says he wants to “know what passion is. I want to feel something strongly.” He does not want to be listless, or numb, or simply live life according to some pre-ordained plan. He wants passion.

The students at the School are no different. They want passion. This is one reason why they love and respond to teachers and coaches who have passion for their subject or sport. It is why Jeff Smith inspires so many great musicians, Kim Walsh has so many successful wrestlers, and DJ DeCoste such keen Physics students. Like so many amazing faculty at KES, they have passion for what they do. It is infectious.

There is a bit of Bernard in all of us, and this is why I found myself collecting bits of old electronics from storage and giving them to Mr. DeCoste for his robotics team. I was infected by his enthusiasm for my junk! You should see how excited he gets by this stuff. A week later, when I saw that Grade 11 student Cornelius Escaravage had torn apart my old DVD player, cannibalized its little bits, and hooked up its internal motor to an external power supply, I realized that he was infected too. One man’s garbage is truly another man’s treasure.

At present, our new robotics room is being created in the maintenance building by Herman Field. The renovations started over the Christmas break and will be finished by the end of the mid-term break next week. We have some cool new toys too: a new 3-D printer and boxes of special “robotics” Lego. Who said physics cannot be phun?