Forward Together recollections by Dr Ruth Jackson Ravenscroft

What does it really mean for education to change a person? In her Forward Together reflection, Dr Ruth Jackson Ravenscroft invites us to explore that question through the very particular, very Sidney moments that shape who people become.

She remembers arriving on H Staircase in Chapel Court, part of an ‘unlikely but harmonious gaggle’: five women, all of whom were classicists or theologians, and three men, all of whom were engineers. The other thing was that four of them were northerners, and the other four were not. It was, as she puts it, ‘unexpected, sometimes dysfunctional, ultimately rather fabulous’. And that, she says, is exactly what makes Sidney transformative: the way difference becomes community.

Ruth draws on Plato’s idea of education as a ‘reorientation of the soul’, and on Audre Lorde’s reminder that difference is a ‘fund of necessary polarities’. At Sidney, she sees that every day: in supervisions where contrasting viewpoints sharpen thinking, in rituals that bring people together, in students learning to live alongside people whose experiences and assumptions stretch their own.

She also reminds us that Sidney has always had a flair for invention, from the legendary Venetian canal built through Hall Court for a May Ball, to The Cambridge Foundation Year, of which she is a Director of Studies, that now welcomes students with fresh ways of seeing the world.

Her invitation to the audience is simple and hopeful: if you’ve ever wondered how an education changes someone, look at these small, specific moments such as the staircase groups, the shared spaces, the unexpected friendships.

They are the quiet engines of transformation.

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