Preface to Student Magazine

October 1997

I must, first and foremost, thank the Proprietress of Chinkelly Schools for asking
me to write the preface to this most fitting collection of educational facts, efforts
and ideas. A most cursory glance at the magazine, Greater Heights, advertises to
one the superlative quality of the Chinkelly Schools more than a hundred
signposts would. The magazine is not only a gold mine of information, insights
and wit; it is a refreshing spring of spirit and idealism in a world of collapsing
standards.

If there is one central impression I have from reading Greater Heights, it is that
despite the all-encompassing gloom of materialism, corruption, academic fraud,
popular juvenile indiscipline, the deification of mediocrity and the subordination of
the visionary to the mundane, there is a brave little army of Chinkelly children
being prepared to assault the darkness of our degenerating society. They are
armed with nothing but beacons and faith, beacons which they must place on
mountain tops to guide the faltering steps of a benighted civilization.

As I visualize their Proprietress, a woman completely at home in the world of
books, telling these little ones that light cannot be overcome by darkness; as I see
them drawing inspiration from her phenomenal mental energy, I feel a
tremendous sense of sadness and joy: joy that there still exist these last ditch-
stands of quality education, sadness that the diamonds twinkle and that the
sounds chink in a very dark, silent night.

I find this bright collection of thoughts, this statement of faith in a greater future,
very touching indeed. This is a magazine that should awaken in us something that
has slumbered for a very long time: the truth that great heights are not material
riches but sound and comprehensive education. In consonance with the National
Policy on Education, the Chinkelly Schools strive at “the inculcation of the right type
of values and attitudes for the survival of the individual and the Nigerian society.”

Survival for the enlightened is the art of managing short-term discomfort with the
goal of creating long-term comfort. Chinkelly is on this path. Chinkelly is the
school to beat and Greater Heights the magazine to read.