Sep 12

Individuals making a difference – an Ascham Old Girl in Melbourne

With the buzz of last night’s moving Valedictory Dinner for our Year 12 leavers still ringing in my ears, and as our Year 12s prepare for their final examinations and for life beyond school, my thoughts turn to Old Girls and the enormous breadth of activity that Ascham Old Girls undertake. It would be impossible to select and describe a typical Old Girl; there are, though, many stories of incredible achievement and positive impact on the world.

Continuing a theme that runs through many of these blogs about how what individuals do can make a real difference in the world, I thought therefore that I would write today about the work of Kate Barelle and her partner in Melbourne. Kate – an Old Girl of Ascham – is a clinical and forensic psychologist with a fascinating CV; she is also one of the co-founders of STREAT, a food-focused social enterprise based in Melbourne. I met her in early August when I was visiting the city, and I was inspired by what I saw.

Fundamentally, STREAT is about making a difference in the lives of young homeless people, aged 16-25, who have multiple barriers in the way of allowing them to make positive change in their own lives. These barriers may stem from dysfunctional families, or from mental health issues, or from drug and alcohol abuse … whatever they are, they are hurdles in the way of personal success, and often these hurdles, without help to overcome them, can seem completely insurmountable. STREAT offers programs to train young people in the hospitality business; the profits from the cafes and coffee cart that they run are fed back into developing the programs. With careful oversight, nurturing, further program and not a few risks along the way, STREAT is proving extremely successful, and as each cohort moves through, and feeds back into both the enterprise and the wider world, so the success proliferates.

You can read about STREAT here. The personal link through our wider Ascham community aside, it is an inspiring story, because it shows what individuals can do to make a difference. It shows how ideas formed in other parts of the world can be creatively adapted to form the basis of projects closer to home. It shows how the human spirit is indomitable and how belief in this spirit can transcend difficulty.

We can learn an enormous amount from the lives and works of others; let us always keep our eyes open to what is around us, and we will be inspired ourselves.

 

Sep 07

Walking the world and keeping up the pressure: looking ahead to the International Day of the Girl

As has been well-documented in this blog, Thursday 11th October 2012 was the very first ever International Day of the Girl. It was a day that was celebrated across the world; in its honour the London Eye turned pink, as did the Eiffel Tower and the Pyramids. Plan, the international children’s charity instrumental in making the day happen, led a series of activities across the globe to celebrate, including in London, and I had the privilege to be there, as did some of my girls from my then school. After an early morning start on the London Eye, where the girls met inspirational women and were ‘speed-mentored’, they gathered in London’s Festival Hall to hear girls from the developing world explain why an education is so important to them and to their communities, and to hear what hurdles – poverty, violence, early and forced marriage – stand in their way.

It was a very special day – eye-opening for the students and a revelation to many about the circumstances in which millions of girls in the world are growing up. They heard and took on board the message that for so many of their peers, an education is not a right or an expectation, and as a result, I think that they valued their own education just that (important) bit more.

But the message of the International Day of the Girl cannot be limited to the efforts of one day. The message was both the culmination of, and the very start of, a series of initiatives which have always been intended to be for the long term, uncompromising in their focus on a future in which all girls, everywhere, have the right to expect an education and the support of their community as they learn the skills that will allow them in due course to make a positive and significant difference to that very same community.

This year, on Friday 11th October, the second International Day of the Girl, we will be leading the world in walking the world to support Plan to raise awareness and money for the education of those 66 million girls worldwide who are denied access to an education. The circumference of the world is 40,075km; if 4008 girls join together and each walk just 10km, then we will have accomplished the feat of walking around the world. We are excited already.

Watch this video of the International Day of the Girl in London last year. It is uplifting and inspiring. And remember to keep your sights, too, on a future where the girl child is valued and honoured for the considerable value that she can bring to the world.

 

Aug 30

Protecting our young people from alcohol-related violence

UPDATED June 2020 – I received an email this week from Rehab 4 Addiction, with a link to their website. While not wishing to endorse the organisation directly, because I can’t speak for exactly what they do, I did think that the wealth of resources on their website was impressive, and – especially in this pandemic – I wanted to be of help. So, if you or someone you know are in need of advice on alcohol addiction, please look at this site 

It can often be tempting for schools to focus inwards – on the timetable, on academic examinations, and on practicalities associated with making sure that our students are well-organised and have everything lined up for them to take the next steps in their educational career. Good and great schools, of course, recognise that their responsibilities stretch far further, and we spend time focusing on the wider purpose of education, ensuring that our students understand that their role is to make a valuable and significant difference in their world and the world of others. In fact, I would argue that this is an incredibly important part of our vision for them.

Beneath this, however, lies an aspect of their education which schools must also not forget, and that is to teach our students – in partnership with their parents – to recognise and avoid the dangers they may encounter in their daily lives beyond the school gates. At the end of every term at Ascham, teachers reinforce with our Junior School girls what they should do when they are out and about, and how they can stay safe. Stay with parents, be aware … and if they are lost, turn for help to a police officer or (perhaps more realistically) a mother with other children. Through our personal development programs at school, we talk to the girls at every stage about keeping safe, looking out for one another, looking out for younger students, and being very, very aware of the dangers that exist, particularly those connected with alcohol and drugs.

Our role in schools is also one of advocacy, however, and we have a powerful responsibility – and platform – to make sure that we support and lead work that is being done to make a difference at a local, state, national and international level. I was reminded recently of this, and I was reinforced too in my commitment to seek to make differences in the world that will also protect them, as well as empower them.

In early August I was visited at school by the parents of Thomas Kelly, who was murdered in a central nightlife area of Sydney in 2012. Thomas, who was just 18, was killed as the result of an unprovoked alcohol-fuelled attack at around 10pm on 7th July 2012, which led to horrific and fatal injuries. His parents were forced to turn off his life support two days later. Since then, to honour their son and to prevent future tragedies, his parents have created a Foundation whose goal is to raise the issue of alcohol violence with Federal and State governments, and push for more proactive measures to make city streets safer.

Recent research reveals that each year in Australia, there are 70,000 victims of alcohol-related violence, 20,000 victims of alcohol-related child abuse, 14,000 alcohol-related hospitalizations and 367 deaths caused by the drinking of others. In the UK, research shows that an estimated 600,000 incidents of alcohol-related violence occur each year in and around licensed premises, and an estimated 19,000 alcohol-related sexual assaults occur each year in England and Wales. Very recent research conducted in NSW estimates the cost of alcohol abuse to be $3.87bn per annum. These figures are just a sprinkling of the figures available, and they focus not on the economic benefits of the consumption of alcohol, but rather on the human cost; but then, the human cost is what directly affects our children, and it is what we should be very, very concerned with as parents and as educators.

Mrs and Mrs Kelly have a mission: to tackle the alcohol-fuelled violence that has crept up into becoming the norm in our society. They are asking us all – individuals, communities, law-makers – to adopt zero tolerance for anti-social and violent behaviour. They are supporting education measures, preventative measures such as CCTVs, and legislative change around liquor licensing. Their personal tragedy has translated into a community mission, and their passion is inspiring. They are powerful advocates, with a simple message, and they have clearly made significant progress – progress which will help protect young people. I said that I would pass on details of what they are doing with their work, and this can be found on their website here. They are officially launching their Foundation on Wednesday 18th September 2013.

There are many people and organisations in our world working towards worthwhile and positive outcomes for others, and it would be impossible to support (or even list) them all. From time to time, however, there will be issues that we can and should share – and share widely. Our final year school students are amazing young people who have their futures ahead of them. We educate them, we give them boundaries; we can also stand up for their rights not to be exposed to danger.

As Mrs and Mrs Kelly put it, “The idea that a young man, with a bright future, could walk down a city street minding his own business and looking forward to a night out with some close friends and be dead from horrific head injuries two days later is simply not acceptable.”

They are quite right – and we need advocates for change.

Aug 23

What Every Parent Should Know About School: Book Review

The author of this new book, Michael Reist, has spent his working life in education – in schools for 30 years and then, for the last 10 years, in tutoring children one-to-one. There is no doubt that he is passionate about the subject of schools and their failings, and while the book reads in parts much like a treatise on how schools could and should be in an ideal world, discerning parents who care about what goes on in school will find much here to interest – and potentially excite – them about the possibilities that might exist in schools if we only put our collective mind to the subject.

The reader does not need to delve far into the pages of this book to understand that the author is deeply critical of the status quo that exists in schools. He describes them as a “hermetically sealed world” that is “not open to public scrutiny and certainly not outside criticism”. Principals of forward-thinking schools are likely to disagree with this appraisal; but then they, like I, will most likely agree with many of the points that Reist makes about the purpose of schools and the need for us to focus in schools on children, rather than on systems (including curriculum and assessment structures) which have been built up over the years into seemingly inviolable structures.

Schools, says Reist – and he is right – should be about serving two main interests: that of the individual, and that of the common good. “Next to the family, school is by far our most powerful and influential social institution”, and there is a need therefore for schools to be “intentional communities”, providing for a more “holistic and fluid” preparation for the future. In some ways he advocates a return to a common core in schooling, but in many other ways he is arguing for a radical (or perhaps not so radical, depending on your perspective) move forward: “The traditional model of the teacher at the front of the classroom will need to come to an end”. Students learn best, he writes, when they are given a voice and the freedom to choose their own activities; “If the curiosity of the child could be harnessed at an early age, the process of learning would take care of itself.”

We have heard this before – the progressive education movement in the early years of the 20th century taught us to place children rather than schools at the heart of education, and to focus on the unique abilities of individual children as worth nurturing and growing. Although the language in Reist’s work reads in places like an antagonistic call to arms (he even uses the term “a children’s liberation movement” in the latter chapters), his desire to engage parents is well-intentioned and right. His reasoning is sound, based as it is on the work of Dewey et al, which in turn grew into the practices seen today in many educational settings around the world, and lived, not least of all, in a Dalton Education.

Parents are right to want to know what is going on in schools, and the more they can learn about how schools work, the more they can ensure that they will play a valuable role in the shared endeavour that is the education of the next generation of our society.

What Every Parent Should Know About School, by Michael Reist, was published on 17 August by Dundurn. 

Aug 17

Telling the stories of our lives

I was very struck yesterday to hear how our visiting speaker at the senior school assembly described her job. Professor Mary Crock, Professor of Law at Sydney University, and a specialist in immigration law, described her work as the telling of stories about people’s lives, and said that she felt honoured to be working in a place which stood on a site where indigenous peoples had told and shared stories for thousands of years previously. She painted immigration law – both its use and its abuse – almost as a weathervane, indicating how a society functions, and emphasised the importance of people and their life stories within these structures.

She asked us all to stand up; those who had been born abroad were asked to sit first, then those whose parents had been born abroad were asked to sit, and then those whose grandparents had come from overseas were asked to sit. By this time, there were few – very few – left standing. The stories of these ancestors, and the journeys that they had undertaken, hung in the air.

Later yesterday I watched a series of amazing Year 12 drama performances that had been prepared for the HSC examination. The group performances were innovative and challenging; it was in the individual pieces, however, that I saw, picked up again, the strands of the same power of story-telling. Such was the strength of this story-telling that as an audience we were drawn, forcibly, into the lives of others – an autistic child dying of cancer, a French madam, a disturbed juvenile, amongst others. We were confronted, challenged, moved, repulsed, captivated … The power of the drama led us to experience a glimpse of different lives, different stories.

Each insight into these lives changed us slightly – it gave us an alternative perspective on the world, on history, or even on who we are. As we were wrenched from one life to another, made to see the world through different eyes, I was reminded of the words of Professor Mary Crock, and what they implied for us in this political age where it is easy to sanitise the world by parcelling people into groups – including asylum-seekers and refugees. I certainly can’t pretend to have the answer to the problem of the boats and the people-smugglers; yesterday, however, reminded us all in school that when we take the time to look inside people’s lives, and to appreciate fully who they are and how they view the world, this can create change in ourselves. Out of this change – who knows? – we may find our creative solution that ensure that the weathervane of our society is pointed broadly in the right direction.

I learn every day; it is a huge privilege to be sharing this and guiding young people on a great learning journey through their lives, as they write their own stories, and as they contribute to the stories of others.

 

Aug 10

Learning leadership from the most impoverished of women

I recently attended a dinner in aid of The Hunger Project and their work in seeking to end world hunger by empowering people – and especially women – in poverty-stricken areas to make change happen. In the course of their work, they have discovered something that should not surprise us, but might nonetheless challenge our view of the world: that the women leading change in developing communities, poor and deprived by our standards, have an enormous amount to teach us all about leadership.

Some of the hurdles faced by women in rural villages in India, from where one of the key speakers on the evening came, seem insurmountable. Violence and the cultural exclusion of women might stand in the way of many a strong individual, but the lessons learned from observing these women, empowered by the ‘I can/we can’ approach of the work of The Hunger Project, are remarkable. Community workers on the ground begin the process, seeking to build self-reliance, to empower women as change agents, and to forge relationships with local government to enable effective partnerships; from there on, the women move forward, translating into action their determination to bring water, health and proper education to their villages. They need strong motivation, but also creative thinking, and an absolute commitment to their cause; when this is seen in action, it is incredible what can be done.

Women in rural India who are empowered to seek change are actually effecting change, and in this there are great lessons for us all, wherever we are in the world, and whatever our circumstances. Women make a difference; no hurdle is too great to overcome in pursuit of a fundamentally important goal; working together we are stronger than working alone. Crucially, too, when we reach out beyond the self to understand others in life, we can transform not just our understanding, or their understanding, but the understanding and activity of entire communities.

Change is powerful; and although these women have few resources, they teach us that change is always possible. These are lessons we need to make sure that all of the next generation learn – wherever they are in the world.

 

 

Aug 03

Countering bullying on and off Twitter: why learning how to behave well is an essential part of education

A Twitterstorm has been in full flow this past week or so, reacting to revelations that Caroline Criado-Perez has been subjected to appalling threats of rape and violence through the medium of Twitter. Ms Criado-Perez led a successful three month campaign to bring a female face – that of Jane Austen – to the new UK £10 note; when the news was announced, this sparked a venom online which included, in her words, “up to fifty threats an hour” over a sustained period of 12 hours. This venom was extended to her defenders, including Stella Creasy, MP for Walthamstow, who has a great track record in standing up for what is right. Two people have since been arrested, and Tony Wang, the General Manager of Twitter UK, has since apologised and promised to make it easier for users to report abuse; the fact remains, however, that – idealistic though this may sound – in a civilised society, this kind of behaviour should never occur. That it does so is of grave concern, particularly to those responsible for the education of our future generations; it indicates to us that we must place a high value on education in how to behave with others, and how to change behaviour that is unkind or bullying.

This is not simply a question of etiquette online, although teaching our young people how to behave in their online interactions is essential as part of this process; this education reaches far deeper, into how we respect and treat ourselves and others. Since the days of Aristotle, who observed the innate ‘goodness’ of human beings, but who emphasised that this ‘goodness’ needed to be developed through practice into habits and character, philosophers have wrestled with how to enable people to grow into the best of themselves, in a way that allowed them to develop and contribute to a harmonious society. Sanctions and punishments alone are not the answer, although there is intense value in learning that actions have consequences; the real opportunity lies in changing behaviour through intervention and education.

And we need to spend more time on this in schools, in active programs, but also through role-modelling, intervening, exposing and discussing values, and helping our young people to grow. As the Dalai Lama pointed out in his recent public talk in Sydney, in words that will resonate with most belief systems throughout the world: we spend time learning letters to enable us to be proficient readers; why then should we not expect to spend time learning about how to be in relation to others? Studying – and practising – good behaviour is essential to our development as human beings. We need to learn how to interact with others if we are to grow a civilised world, and this is particularly important when our young people do not have the strong messages or role models around them in society to help show them what they should be doing. Bullying and unkindness abound amongst those in the public eye, and violence and cruelty are to be found represented in the media at every turn.

Writing assemblies for young students is a very good discipline. When I was planning my beginning of term assembly for Kindergarten to Year 2, I knew that I wanted to tell them about the Dalai Lama and the messages about values that he had to communicate when he gave his public talk in Sydney. I knew I had to distil into a few simple words what he wanted to communicate – messages about values that the girls would understand and remember. I wanted to make sure that they were at their very simplest level, so our children could understand, and this was what I came up with:

  • Naturally, people are very kind.
  • We often hear things around us that make us less kind – we read stories about unkind people, or watch television about unkind people.
  • This all makes us forget a bit that we need to be kind.
  • So we need to remind ourselves all the time to be kind.
  • And – all the time – we need to practise being kind.

If we all learned to abide by these messages – and it will require discipline and action for us to learn to do so – we would go a long, long way to making the world that better place that we all know it can be.

 

Jul 27

“When did protecting guns become more important than protecting people?”

I don’t think I have ever written specifically about gun control before, but I am moved to do so by a link I was sent recently to a new video on YouTube. In it, a former National Rifle Association member, now living in Australia, expresses his deep disappointment and concern about the position that the NRA in the US is currently taking on guns, in the name of ‘freedom’. As he puts it, “when did protecting guns become more important than protecting people?”

This is an issue that directly affects women. According to 2010 FBI data, reported in the Huffington Post in May this year, almost two thirds of women who are murdered each year die at the hands of a family member or partner. In fact, in situations that involve domestic violence, “having a gun in the home makes a woman eight times more likely to be killed.”

This infographic is stark and clear – Women in the U.S. are 11 times more likely to be murdered with guns than women in other high-income countries; the presence of a gun in domestic violence situations increases the risk of homicide for women by 500 percent; people with a history of committing domestic violence are more likely to subsequently murder an intimate partner, and firearms significantly increase the risk of homicide for women.

When it works properly, the background check system keeps guns out of domestic abusers’ hands; the proof lies in the statistic that in US states that require a background check for every handgun sale, 38 percent fewer women are shot to death by intimate partners.

With such a strong link between domestic violence homicides and firearms, it seems only commonsense that doing what we can to make it more difficult for people to own guns will go some way to reducing deaths of women. In this context, it doesn’t make sense at all to oppose universal background checks.

Chris Komor’s message in his YouTube video is simple – this issue affects us all. His approach is an entirely commonsense one, as is his call to action. Wherever you are in the world, do try to do something about gun control.

Jul 19

Online or offline – preparing girls to manage social media

At Ascham this past week we held an excellent CyberSafety Forum, led by Susan McLean, well-known for her no-nonsense approach to how we protect children from the dangers on online activity. Her presentation and the subsequent discussion, while looking at all the possibilities for online engagement which lie in wait for young people, had a few simple messages – parents need to be aware of what is out there, parents need to be involved with what their children do online, and parents need to be prepared to say “no”: “no” to underage use of Facebook, “no” to unlimited access to the internet, “no” to online technology in private spaces like bedrooms.

Undoubtedly, there is much that is good about social media and the opportunities that easy connectivity brings; they are here to stay, and on balance – provided that we use them wisely and teach our children to do the same – then they can be a positive addition to our lives. When parents see how much danger and damage that lies within them when they are NOT used wisely, however, they are quite rightly shocked into action, and it is together, armed with the same messages and the same firm boundaries, that as schools and as parents we can work together most effectively to help train and educate young people in how to manage this aspect of their lives and to protect themselves and others from the cruelties and harshnesses into which the online space can descend when it is unboundaried, unmonitored and unregulated (as – to our shame as a society – it often is).

But our young people can be a source of pride in this respect too. A comment piece in last week’s Sydney Morning Herald from a Year 11 girl called for her peers to wake up to the damage that ‘selfies’ – those pictures of oneself, taken often in sexually provocative poses and posted online – can do. And when I heard two of our senior girls speak with an interviewer yesterday about how they managed social media – how they recognised the dangers (of timewasting, of inappropriate communications, of the dangers to their digital image) I was really proud of them. Admittedly, our girls at school are the product of an education in which we stress the need to be respectful of self and respectful of others, and responsible for self as well as responsible for others; we certainly want them to learn appropriate behaviour, and we expect them to do so. Teenagers in their early years, of course, will also make mistakes – sometimes huge and damaging ones – partly because they need to push boundaries, to test them, as a step in their growing up process; partly because they have yet to develop the cognitive, emotional and social skills necessary for them to be able to manage themselves and their relationships without making a mess of it. (While ensuring that the consequences they face are enough to ensure deep and lasting learning, as well as behavioural change, let us not be unremittingly harsh on them – adults mess up too and have to repair their lives.) The senior girls who spoke about their use of online connections have learned how to use the medium, they understand its potential and its pitfalls, and they have acquired a genuine sense of balance and perspective. They know that real life matters far, far more than online life.

The education of young people is not just about their Maths and their Geography, important though these are; education is about preparation for life, for being a strong, well-rounded, decent, valuable human being. Schools, parents and our wider society have a joint and collective role to ensure that we are laying the groundwork. And one of the privileges of working with young people is seeing the magnificent outcomes.

 

Post-publication note: the interviews to which I refer were for two articles in the Sun-Herald. They can be found here and here.

 

Jul 14

Girls need inspiration in sport, not abuse

Melinda Tankard Reist’s column in today’s Sydney Sun-Herald, ‘The ugly truth is rules are different for girls in sport’ (to which I will add a link when I can track it down) is excellent. Well-known for her forthright views on the premature sexualisation of girls in particular, Melinda is passionate about speaking out and making a difference in how we as a society portray women, and how we stop objectifying women as little more than sex objects. I enjoyed meeting her recently, and we clearly share a common purpose in this area.

The premise of her article is that we seem to have come to a situation where sporting excellence by women is undermined by the perception of the wider world that “Women judged to not possess hot bodies, or who fail to exude sex appeal to the ogling masses, are unworthy of sporting pursuits”. She reflects on two stories to hit the news recently in this respect – the personal abuse, directed at her appearance, experienced by Marion Bartoli after her Wimbledon success; and the Roxy Pro surfing promotion which has elicited comment because it focuses less on surfing, and more on the sexiness of the model.

Both cases – public discussion of how successful sportswomen look, rather than their sporting prowess – have been incredibly damaging (once again) to how girls perceive their own bodies, and to how likely they are to take up or continue sport. Why would they do this, if they are to face criticism directed at their appearance rather than approval directed at their achievements? Sport and physical fitness are essential to wellbeing in life; so too is a healthy body image. None of these are supported when we allow, as if it were a normal part of our society, such objectification. Our girls deserve inspiration, not denigration.

The only glimpse of positivity in this debate is that there is a debate at all. Not everyone has been taken in; not everyone, by far, think that either Bartoli’s treatment or the Roxy Pro advert is right. There are voices out there talking common sense – we need to listen to them, and add our own in support. Our young people – and our world will be healthier as a result.