Scholarly Buzz at the Year 10 NHEHS/Harrow symposium!

On Tuesday, sixteen of our students took a trip to Harrow School to begin their Symposium project.

The “Remove/Year 10” Symposium, now in its third year, is a challenging cross-subject research project which allows the most scholarly students at Harrow and NHEHS to learn to collaborate, whilst developing their appetite for challenging material and real scholarship. 

Students work in groups of four, with two from each school. This year, each pair will produce an academic article, using original sources, and produce a presentation. The questions are drawn from different subject disciplines, all loosely tied to a central theme. Articles will then be published in a journal which explores the topic of Bees from a number of different academic angles. 

On arriving at the school, students were put into groups – loosely based on subject areas they had stated an interest in – and the Notting Hill girls had a chance to meet the Harrovian counterparts who they would be collaborating with. Following some successful icebreakers, which stimulated lots of conversation, they were introduced to the purpose of the symposium, and challenged to guess this year’s topic. It was then revealed to be BEES, and students were given their questions. 

These included:

• How accurate were Aristotle’s observations about bees? What does this tell us about ancient Greek science more generally?
• Explain why the internal structure of a beehive is an elongated rhombic semi-dodecahedron.
• Detail the use of honey as an antimicrobial agent, and describe its role in modern medicine.
• With particular reference to the sources given, explain why Shakespeare uses bees as a symbol for human hierarchy in his History plays.

Each group worked effectively to break down and contextualise their question, and allocated roles to different members of the group. Then it was time for the library!

A focused study session followed, with students getting to grips with the recommended sources, discussing their ideas, and agreeing a plan for the subsequent meetings. As one student put it: “I was really stretched but it was enjoyable”. Another quipped that they were surprised that Nigerian honey-production was such a rich and interesting topic! 

The collaboration will now continue online for four sessions after school, before the final conference in mid-November.  We all look forward to following the students on their scholarly journey.