Every boy and girl is familiar with the school song, yet very few are aware of the school motto and many do not even know that there is one.  Actually it cannot be missed.  It is placed on the front wall of the Senior School, just above the entrance.  It is the subscripting to the school coat-of-arms registered at the College of Heralds.

The motto is : “Studia clarum efficiunt”.  The meaning is : “Studies make famous” or “Studies achieve renown.”  It is a stimulating motto to urge the school to greater effort to equip the pupils with the requisite intellectual equipment for the battle of life.  What is the derivation of this motto? Who selected it?  What is its significance?

Many school mottoes are chosen from the ancient classics.  This motto was adopted by Thomas Arthur Savage, Headmaster of the school.  He selected it from Bacon’s essay on “Studies”.  Francis Bacon was one of the earliest and greatest essayists.  Bacon’s “Essays” is generally considered one of the greatest books ever written.  Here is a relevant extract from the essay on “Studies” :

'Studies serve for delight, for ornament and for ability…….. the general counsels and the plots and marshalling of affairs comes best from those that are learned.’

Why did Thomas Savage choose this motto?  He wished to emphasis the academic side of school life.  Far too much importance was attached to games and too little to scholarship.  The school produced “muscular Christians” but only average scholars. What made Savage make his choice from Bacon? Savage was a fine Shakesperean scholar and in the Bacon-Shakespeare controversy in the beginning of this century, he was a stout Baconian and believed that Shakespeare’s plays were not written by so poor a scholar as William Shakespeare but by the eminent Lord Chancellor, Francis Bacon.

With this knowledge and background, let us then follow with zeal and fervour the school motto: “Studia clarum efficiunt’, “Studies maketh famous.”

Rev. Canon Oscar H. Brown
(From the 1977 Cathedralite Magazine)