One Pair of Eyes — Season 1, Episode 49: John Dancy: We Must Offer a Vision

Episode synopsis

Headmaster of Lancing when he was only 33, now headmaster of Marlborough, John Dancy "believes a public school can only be successful if it offers its pupils a vision - a vision of something they can live by, or aspire to". In his One Pair of Eyes John Dancy, one of Britain's most progressive public school heads, shows how he is trying to achieve his aims at Marlborough - a public school where there is no fagging or beating, where a small number of girls are admitted, and where the old games-playing traditions of "muscular Christianity" have no part in his concept of what a school community ought to be. Dancy's vision of understanding comes from a mixture of Greek and Christian ideals - in the words of one of his favourite quotations: "To Christ we owe compassion, to the Greeks everything else".

About One Pair of Eyes

A monthly series of highly personal documentary films in which individuals are given a platform to discuss issues close to their heart.

More episodes from Season 1

• E1James Cameron: Temporary Person Passing Through
• E2Dr Alex Comfort: A Traveller in the Dreamtime
• E3Anthony Howard: A City of Magnificent Intentions
• E4Nicholas Tomalin: No Worse Heresy
• E5James Cameron: The Road to Kingdom Come
• E6Jo Grimond: The Dead Hand of Democracy
• E7Peter Wilson: You've Got to Win
• E8Norman Parkinson: Stay Baby Stay
• E9Sir Tyrone Guthrie: Off to Philadelphia
• E10James Cameron: Berlin - The Haunted House
• E11Margaret Drabble: A Place Called Exile
• E12Claud Cockburn: One More River To Cross