60 Years of Outward Bound NZ - The Story So Far

Kurt Hahn was born in 1886 into a wealthy Jewish family in Berlin, where his father had a large steel business. He attended several German universities and he also studied at Oxford University. While at Oxford he suffered a severe attack of sunstroke which left him permanently afflicted and unable to endure bright sunlight. The experience was to cause him to have a very real concern for the health of his pupils and to personally experience how to make a disability an opportunity. Hahn’s sayings are not those of a man removed from the reality of turmoil and struggle – they are the wisdom based on experience.

Two days after his return from Oxford, Great Britain declared war on Germany. He was assigned to the German Foreign Office as an advisor on English affairs and eventually he became private secretary to Prince Max of Baden, the last Imperial Chancellor.

Prince Max persuaded Hahn to found a school and in 1920 he provided space for a school in his castle of Salem on the shores of Lake Constance. Hahn set out to train young people to have moral independence, an ability to choose between “right and wrong,” and an improvement in their physical health. Salem flourished and Hahn’s ideas spread both in Germany and abroad. Unfortunately, during this period Germany saw the rise of Adolf Hitler and National Socialism.

In 1932 there was a particularly brutal murder committed by a group of Nazis. Before their trial, Hitler sent them an open telegram of support and demanded their immediate release. For Hahn, this act defined the hour when men of honor must declare themselves. Hahn replied with a telegram to all former Salem pupils demanding they break either with Hitler or with Salem. "It was the bravest deed in cold blood that I have witnessed," said a Briton teaching at Salem at the time. Thereafter Hahn was to make open criticism of the Nazis in public speeches and the press.

He was struck by the similarities between his training methods and code and those of the Hitler Youth – fitness, initiative, self discipline etc.  It led him to ask what the difference was.  What was the essential ingredient in the Salem code that distinguished it from the Hitler Youth code?  His answer to this was concern for others and the need to act with compassion in the service of all.  “We need to be able to feel that as a people we are just and kindly. On this consciousness depends our inner strength.”

It was inevitable that once Hitler came to power Hahn would be arrested and imprisoned. Influential friends and colleagues, many of them former associates at Oxford, objected strenuously to his arrest. Following pressure from the British Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald and other eminent people Hahn was released and he moved to England.   

In the first months of his exile he was profoundly depressed. At the age of forty-seven he had lost his homeland, his school, the battle for German youth. Once a man of means, he had overnight become a penniless refugee. Worse, his spiritual resources were depleted. When he was asked to found a new school along Salem lines, he lacked the will to do so.

Discouraged and emotionally exhausted, he decided to return to Moray in the north of Scotland, where he had recovered in the summer after a sunstroke suffered in his Oxford years. He met old friends among the fishermen and crafters in the district. On the wharf in Hopeman Harbor, he listened to fisherman Danny Main tell tales of common men who displayed uncommon courage against forces of the sea. His fortitude began to return. With another friend, he inspected the partially empty castle at Gordonstoun, badly in need of repair. As a possible site for a school, its vistas seized his spirit and he knew again in his own experience the truth that he would so often summon in guiding others: “Your disability is your opportunity.” Less than a year later, in April 1934, Gordonstoun opened as a school for boys.

During the Second World War, the British military requisitioned Gordonstoun and Hahn moved the school to Wales, and it was here in 1941, in association with Lawrence Holt, chairman of the Blue Funnel Line, that he co-founded the first Outward Bound School at Aberdovey. Holt had been very worried by the inability of young seamen to survive in lifeboats once their ships had been sunk by German U-Boats, while older seamen with more life experience held on. Holt felt that Hahn’s physical training methods coupled with the emphasis placed on initiative, tenacity and compassion could help young men prepare themselves for such an ordeal. Thus began Outward Bound - an educational endeavour not just for those in the military, but for young men from all walks of life. (In the early days it was a male-only enterprise.)

In 1946 the Outward Bound Trust was formed and since then Outward Bound schools have been set up in many parts of the world.  Hahn retired as headmaster of Gordonstoun in 1953 and received an Honorary Degree from Edinburgh University.

1956 saw the inauguration of the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award Scheme. The basic concept for this was the Moray Badge Scheme, which Hahn had started at Gordonstoun before the war when Prince Philip was a pupil there. Then in 1962, at St Donat’s Castle, in South Wales, Atlantic College was founded.  This was the first of a chain of international sixth form colleges now known as the United World Colleges.

Plus est en vous. There is more in you was a Latin inscription by Pintar found on the wall of a family home in Belgium before World War II. It became the motto for the school Kurt Hahn founded in Britain, Gordonstoun, and the theme of his philosophy: that each of us has more courage, more strength and more compassion than we would ever have fathomed.

Hahn saw around him a society suffering from what he called the modern declines. Declines in: fitness, due to modern transport; initiative, due to the widespread disease of what he called ‘spectatoritis’; skill and care, due to the weakening tradition of craftsmanship; self discipline, due to the availability of stimulants; memory and imagination, due to the confused restlessness of modern life; and, above all, the decline in compassion, due to the unseemly haste with which modern life is conducted. Whilst many of these ‘declines’ are couched in rather old-fashioned terms we can see that they are still relevant to society today.

To address these declines, he made use of several devices which at the time were fairly revolutionary. To foster self discipline, pupils were encouraged to follow a so-called training plan – a simple set of routine tasks such as a short run followed by a shower every morning.  There was also a great deal of trust placed in them with very few checks, and the older ones were expected to look after the younger ones.

Then there was the daily break from the classroom for athletic training to encourage fitness.  Remember that when Salem started, Germany was shattered by the First World War and many of Hahn’s pupils were in poor condition. Today, PE is a regular part of many education systems.

There were the regular expeditions which encouraged the spirit of adventure and exploration. At Gordonstoun there was the seamanship scheme to encourage sailing and group work skills, as well as other projects which all pupils undertook.  It was a basic Hahnian principle that local skill and tradition should be made use of as much as possible.

But perhaps the best known feature of Gordonstoun was its rescue services: the Coastal Watchers, the Fire Service, the Mountain Rescue, the Surf Life-savers and, later, the Community Service. Possibly the most salient feature of Hahn’s theory was his belief that young people would display their best qualities in service to others; it gave a justification for the other qualities of fitness, skill, initiative, etc; and above all, encouraged compassion which he maintained was the essential difference between his code and those of totalitarian state youth movements. But any service had to be for real – playing at it was not enough – hence, the services had to be integrated into national organisations. 

It was in the Rescue Services that those not gifted academically or athletically could shine.  And here Hahn emerges as the champion of the ‘non-achiever’ and the late developer. At Salem and Gordonstoun, athletic and academic prowess was removed from the pedestal on which they were placed in most English public schools. This is not to say they were denigrated – Hahn himself was a keen athlete and hockey player, encouraging team sports – but there were no cups awarded and no marks or prizes given for academic work. Instead, each pupil always carried with him a chart on which were recorded grades awarded for work relative to industry and ability. 

There was a staff meeting once a month at which every pupil in the school was discussed and awarded an overall grade. Hahn was constantly looking for fields in which those making slow progress could achieve. There was one small boy at Gordonstoun who seemed quite hopeless at everything until Hahn discovered he was quite good at woodcarving. Hahn had great faith in this lad and eventually persuaded an Oxford college to accept him despite his complete lack of academic qualifications. He later became one of Britain’s leading brain surgeons.

Hahn's Legacy

The spirit of Kurt Hahn is embodied in the motto of Outward Bound: “To serve, to strive and not to yield.” Hahn believed that the virtues of fitness, skill, initiative and self discipline count for little by themselves. Their true value is to be found in how they are exercised in the compassionate service to others. Hahn’s philosophy is still very much in evidence today and his key principles and leading values guide Outward Bound New Zealand at both the philosophical and programme levels.

In the early 1960s a number of dedicated people were instrumental in the formation of the Outward Bound Trust of New Zealand, based on the ideals of educator Kurt Hahn. It was a dream of the then Governor General, Lord Cobham, who in turn challenged Woolf Fisher, Warren Johnson, Fergus Taylor, Hamish Thomas, Alex Black and Sir Roy McKenzie to make it their dream too. A committee was formed and for over 18 months they searched New Zealand to find the most suitable location to establish the Outward Bound School.

What attracted them to Anakiwa and the Marlborough Sounds – its relative remoteness, natural  beauty and closeness of the sea and mountains – are the same features that Captain Cook found so appealing on his five voyages tothe area in the 1770s.

Where the Outward Bound School dining hall currently stands was a 20-room guest house belonging to the Hazelwood family, descendants of Craddock Beauchamp, who owned the property from 1864. The Beauchamp family home was extended into a guest house in 1928.

In 1962 the property was purchased and transformed under the watchful eye of Hamish Thomas, the school’s first warden. It was then that New Zealand’s first and only Outward Bound School was born. Governor-General Lord Cobham opened the school on 1st September 1962 and shortly after thirty-six young men were welcomed on the first course. October 1973 saw Outward Bound welcome female students to Anakiwa for the first time, followed by the innaugural course for physically disabled New Zealanders delivered in 1978.

Over the years the school in Anakiwa has grown significantly with the original guest house being replaced with new buildings in 1980 and the addition of a new watch house, new staff accomodation and a new safety launch from 2018 onwards as part of Project Refresh, a major building campaign to future proof the school.

60 years on, Outward Bound NZ continues to use the same mountains, bush and waterways of this special part of New Zealand to help individuals reach their full potential. Through challenge and adventure, participants are given the opportunity to reflect, step outside their comfort zone, and find their future direction. Outward Bound welcomes people of all ages, cultures, abilities and backgrounds to the school at Anakiwa.