After a long wait, our belongings finally arrived from Houston on Tuesday this week. The house has therefore been transformed from an empty echoing shell into a chaotic, over-stuffed warehouse of randomly arranged, partially unpacked boxes.
In that context, it was lovely to have a break from the unpacking and attend, as an especially invited guest, the Valedictory Dinner for the graduating Year 12 students of St Paul’s Grammar School on Friday Evening.
In my capacity as a former Head of St Paul’s (having served there in that capacity from 1989 to 1997), I had been invited by the Head of School, Mr Paul Kidson, to deliver some remarks as a prelude to presenting one of the evening’s major awards. It was a great honour to be given this privilege in this, the 30th anniversary year of the founding of St Paul’s Grammar School.
It is now 17 years since I left St Paul’s, and very few of the people who were there at that time remain. Nonetheless, it was wonderful to reminisce with those long-serving teachers who were there, and to get to know many new faces.
It was also a privilege to be introduced to this year’s graduating group of students from China, and as you can see above, to be photographed with them. As the Chinese teacher, Mrs Ruby Li, and the Co-ordinator of Overseas Students, Mr Antony Mayrhofer, told the students, I was the one who initiated the program to bring Chinese students to St Paul’s on an ongoing basis following extensive negotiations from 1993 to 1997. I cannot begin to express how happy I was to see the program still flourishing after all these years and to meet this year’s fine group of graduating students.
At the end of the formal part of the evening, I was humbled by the comments of a parent I had never met before who came up to me to congratulate me and to thank me for my remarks. In essence, he said that when he first heard that a former Headmaster was to deliver a speech at the dinner, he inwardly groaned and wondered why such a person might have been invited to be part of the proceedings. After hearing my speech, he said it had been the highlight of the evening for him and his family, and he felt he was reflecting the views of many other families as well.
What were the remarks that provoked such a generous response? Here is a slightly edited version of my short speech:
“I would like to begin by thanking Mr Kidson for his very kind invitation to join you here this evening for this wonderful event. It marks an important life stage for everyone here – parents as well as students – and it is a privilege to be part of your celebrations this evening. The students here will be the only group in the entire history of the whole universe – past, present and future – ever to be able to say truthfully that they graduated from St Paul’s Grammar School in its 30th anniversary year.
About half the school’s history has now passed since I spent eight and a bit very happy, very challenging and very busy years as Head of this wonderful school. Most of my time since leaving St Paul’s has been spent as Head of international schools in various countries – New Zealand, Hong Kong (which is really China), and most recently, in the United States.
The opportunity to work overseas is something that I hope many of you will grasp in the years ahead. According to the statistical trends, most of you will do precisely that, and for some of you, you will move internationally several times. That is the reality of the world you will enter, and it is the kind of world that I believe St Paul’s has prepared you for extremely well, and that is so whether you have chosen the IB option or not.
Speaking personally, working internationally has given me totally refreshed view of our world, and I hope that it will do the same for many of you in the years to come. It has helped me to appreciate the significance of understanding and embracing the different perspectives that are found in other cultures, the importance of using unambiguous language to communicate, the potential for creative innovation when people from different backgrounds get together and pool their diverse insights, and the immense humanitarian needs and challenges in various parts of the world that we never hear about here in Australia. It has also helped me understand at a very deep level that irrespective of where young people come from, be it America, China, Russia, Israel, Palestine, Rwanda, Nauru, Syria, Western Sahara, East Timor, South Africa, or North Korea, they all want fundamentally the same thing – a more peaceful, a more prosperous, a more tolerant, a more sustainable and a more highly educated and better informed world.
Completing secondary education places you in the top few percent of the world’s population. In fact, being literate (as I’m told most of you are) places you in the top half of the world’s population, especially if you are girl (as I’m also told some of you are). My simple message is this – please don’t take your education for granted, and please use the opportunities it provides to you to make this world a better place. To quote Jesus’ words in Luke 12:48, which I am helpfully translating for you into English from his original Aramaic, “For those to whom much has been given, much will be expected, and to those who have been entrusted with much, even more will be expected”.
When Mr Kidson invited me to say a few words this evening (and knowing me well, he did emphasise the words “a FEW”), I immediately agreed on one condition. I wanted to meet some of the Year 11 and Year 12 students beforehand and get to know them by asking a few basic questions. I wanted to ask some Year 11 students what they would miss when the Year 12 students – you – had graduated. I wanted to ask the Year 12 students what they might miss about St Paul’s. I wanted to ask what they especially had liked about St Paul’s, and I wanted to ask if they were Head of School for a day what they would change. In summary, I wanted to know whether the students at St Paul’s today were as brilliant as the students were back in the days when I was Head of School. Are they as motivated, as curious, as articulate, as engaged, as studious, as respectful, as involved, as compassionate, as confident, as humble – and indeed, as good-looking, as the St Paul’s students I knew when I was here.
I would love to share what I found out with you., It was quite mind-blowing and I learned a great deal, but sadly, Mr Kidson has instructed me to confine myself to just a very FEW words for my address this evening . I will say this, however. While I naively thought that the graduating students might miss the canteen food more than anything else, that proved not to be the case.
So, what will you miss? I learned that more than anything else, you will miss each other; the relationships you have with each other and with your teachers. I heard you will miss the sport, the arts (in which you have been very involved), and even your closeness to the other grades in the school – including, extraordinarily, I thought, the students in Year 9 – but more than anything else , it is each other that you will miss.
And, do you know what? The words I heard from the students when I visited a few weeks ago could have been word for word what I heard from my students here back in the 1990s. And that was really encouraging for me. It means that even though there are new buildings, new facilities, different teachers and a less handsome Head of School today than there was back in 1989, the fundamental spirit of St Paul’s lives on, and it has matured and it has developed. And I would like to congratulate Mr Kidson, the teachers and every one of you for the part you have played in maintaining that essential spirit of St Paul’s Grammar School as a very special place.
In that context, it is an honour for me to conclude my remarks this evening by presenting a special award. The award is for students who have shown great courage and fortitude in rising to meet the challenges of their studies. I am proud to present this award because I think it reflects one of the most important character skills in life, which is perseverance. It is a skill that every one you will have cultivate throughout your lives if you are to thrive in a changing world, as I have found myself over and over again in my career in various countries.
The words of the St Paul’s mission statement are deep and full of meaning: “Inspired by Christian purpose and hope, St Paul's Grammar School enables teaching and learning for the “whole of life” to serve the world.”. That is what St Paul’s has always been about, and as I have seen, it is clearly still the school’s purpose, in whatever words one might use to express it. This award, the Rubicon Award, exemplifies the St Paul’s identity. It is awarded by the Director of Students and Family Services to the students who consistently go above and beyond in all aspects of their schooling life and have left no stone unturned in preparation for life after School.
It is my honour and privilege to present the Rubicon Award jointly to Heath Joukhadar and Alana Bradley.”