The Edge of the World, the Truman Show, and Widening Horizons

In the “Flammarion Engraving” (above), a man crawls to the ends of the earth after journeying hard for many days.

Kneeling down, he explores a rip in the fabric – in the very place where sky and ground – or perhaps earth and heaven – meet. Here the earth and the sky are not joined together, and seem to have come unstuck.

By dropping his shoulder, the traveller manages to squeeze his head through the sphere of the world and out into the larger universe beyond.

The image (circa 1888) is said to reflect the moment that a limited perception of the world is transformed into a more modern sense of a larger cosmos.

Made precisely one-hundred-and-ten years after the engraving was made, Peter Weir’s movie The Truman Show details a similar moment of revelation. 

Starring Jim Carrey, The Truman Show is a satirical 1998 film that depicts a dystopian society in which Truman Burbank seems to live an ordinary existence in a suburban town in contemporary America.

What Truman does not know is that his whole life is being played out on a large set populated by actors for a TV reality show that is all about him.

Everything about Truman's life is fake — including the relationships with his wife and those around him. His daily existence is constructed solely to engage a TV audience.

Slowly, Truman realises the truth and he, like the figure in the Flammarion Engraving, explores the artificial seam between the sky and the sea, wondering what might lie beyond the torn canvas.   

The only real-life equivalent of this experience might be the moment an astronaut leaves the earth and is transported into space, able to look back at the blue planet where he/she has lived, and to recognise in the most vivid terms that there exists a vast universe beyond.

Other experiences that replicate this sensation arguably include a religious conversion, the escape from a totalitarian society (crossing the Berlin wall, for instance), or the first trip to a new continent or foreign country.

For students, there is a benign version of this journey when they first start school, and later when they leave home for university. A whole new world opens up.

But there is another experience that a young person might go through.

For years, independent, fee-paying schools in the UK have been working hard to widen access by offering financially means-tested bursaries to students.

A bursary involves assisting students so that they might be able to attend a top school, when ordinarily their parents would not be able to afford the fees.

We have a small number of students in the BSM that already we assist in this way. But we feel a responsibility to do more.

This is why we have launched a Bursary Fund. The idea is to raise funds to allow talented students from the local Milanese community or from migrant communities to take advantage of the world-class education on offer at the BSM.

The problem is, as in the UK, that often the disadvantaged students and families we want to attract rarely consider or ever entertain the possibility of going to such a school.

Such students exist in one world with certain expectations, and remain unaware that there might be possibilities beyond it.

Or rather, they may be aware that this other world exists, but they never consider the possibility that they might be part of it. It is simply beyond their horizon.

The school has a responsibility to find such students, not in a morally crusading ‘saviour’ kind of way, which can be condescending, but in a way that genuinely recognises the talent, energy and breadth of experience that such students can contribute to the school.

Whether privileged or underprivileged, it is unhealthy for students to exist in a bubble.

Every child deserves the best opportunities in life. And while life is rarely fair, our educational mission involves doing our best to make it fairer and more just. We can help to make that happen.

Fifty percent of our scholarship applicants each year come from English-speaking, non-Italian families. We have been in contact with the UNHCR and UNICEF, who in turn can help partner us with trustworthy NGOs and identify potential bursary students.

“Surely”, wrote Freya Stark, “of all the wonders of the world, the horizon is the greatest.”

If you feel the same, then you might like to support the school’s Bursary Fund.

It has the potential to transform a student’s life, to allow them to flourish in the world, and in turn they will help to enrich and deepen the experience of those around them.

I was one of those students who, at the age of eleven, happened to pass an examination that meant I could attend a ‘grammar school’ – the equivalent of a lycée. I was the first person in my school to pass this exam in six years.

I was lucky. It changed my life chances. It meant I could take advantage of a great education. As a result, I became the first person in my family to go to university.

This is, at least partly, why I believe in education, because it helped to transform my own prospects. It helped open doors that would otherwise have been closed to me.

As the gap between rich and poor widens ever more, I hope as a school that we can give opportunities to others less privileged than ourselves, to give them that moment of revelation – and liberation – when the horizon widens and they recognise the existence of a larger world.  

Chris Greenhalgh
Principal & CEO

Bursary Fund - Education - Fundraising - Opportunities - Opening Doors to Education