If they haven’t already, Australian schools are closing this week for the end of the school year. There are farewells to be had, reflections to be sought, speeches to be made. Some will be full of praise – some will, like the one from outgoing captain Sarah Haynes at Ravenswood school in Sydney, be a lot more contentious. Was she right to have a go? And if you are older, maybe wiser, what would you tell your school if you had the chance now? Guardian Australia writers go back in time to say goodbye once more.
Van Badham: My school never demanded perfection
To Port Hacking high school, Miranda, New South Wales
At my interview to attend PHHS, the then deputy principal, Mr Jones, leaned back in his chair after a couple of cursory questions and said: “At Port Hacking high school we believe everyone is good at something. It may be maths, it may be English – it may just be being a really good friend. And we see our role here as to find out what you’re good at and help you to do it.”
I was 16, rebellious, and I’d just been kicked out of a state selective high school in a fireball meteor of resistance to conformity. I’d been failing subjects for years, skipping class for days at a time and, after the last altercation with authority devolved to a swearing match with the principal, I thought my education was finished. Port Hacking – the co-ed comprehensive down the road – was the school of last resort.
Thank god for that. Mr Jones’s pledge was a sincere one: my entire cohort of new teachers nurtured my talents with patience and kindness, both eager and equipped to coax out the discouragement I’d internalised from my previous school.
Whatever I have subsequently achieved in my life, the most significant achievement was the turnaround of my academic performance at Port Hacking high. Mrs Giordano the English teacher, Ms Jackson the art teacher, Mr Jakes in modern history ... Yes, even you, Mr Anthoness in ancient history. Even you.
I live my life empowered with the daily gratitude that I attended a school that served all its students so nobly. My education was rigorous, detailed and inspirational, and the skills of intellectual self-motivation and self-reliance I learned at Port Hacking have served me life-long. My school never demanded perfection. It never asked me for anything. It gave – knowledge, encouragement and pride. Such is the mission of public education.
I think anyone sending their child to a private school should seek better investment advice.
Kristina Keneally: Let’s be grateful for the nuns
To Notre Dame academy, Toledo, Ohio
We leave an all-girls high school, a school run by women. OK, we think of them first as nuns, but deep down we know that they are, like us, women. And women are in charge, from the principal down, all female. And so too is every single student leadership position in this school, every sports captain, every top-ranked academic student: all female.
We leave as young women, confident and assured that nothing can hold us back. But let’s be honest. We are about to enter a world that is, frankly, still run by and for men. We are also Catholics, so let’s also acknowledge that our church doesn’t really treat our teachers, us or any women as equal partners in our faith. At times in the years ahead it will be a surprise to us that the rest of the world is not like high school.
So let’s be grateful for the nuns. Yes, it was annoying when they sent us to the principal’s office when our skirt was above our knees. But they educated us. They taught us about trigonometry, Chaucer, ancient history and birth control. They inspired us, challenging us to never accept the status quo and to remember, always, that to whom much is given much is expected.
They were role models, strong leaders who succeeded not by undermining others but rather by hard work. They were saints, for by their generosity and example they implanted in us a strong sense of social justice. For four years they gave us a small taste of the world we want to create one day: where it is unremarkable when remarkable women lead and succeed.
Brigid Delaney: In a ghost school, social sorting goes both ways
To St Ann’s, Warrnambool, Victoria
In a few years people will ask where you went to school, and you’ll tell them, and they won’t know it – and that’s OK, because it doesn’t exist any more. It’ll be a ghost school.
It’s not posh, and in a few years it won’t even be there because it got amalgamated with the Christian Brothers school down the road. But it’s a fine school. It looked after you when you where there, and it took you where you needed to go. It’s a school made up of all sorts: girls of millionaires, girls of farmers, girls of the jobless. Don’t underestimate the quiet power of this mix; it means you can be comfortable with everyone – those who have nothing, and those who have a lot – and everyone is equal.
Later on you’ll meet people who will judge you on where you went to school, how much money you have, where you live and your job. And as your school no longer exists they may judge you and move on to the next person. And this could depress you. But actually it should make you pleased, because the social sorting goes both ways.
You’ll instinctively avoid these people because you don’t recognise those values. And this will free you from so much; you can hang out with really interesting people who don’t use private schools as a barometer of worth.
Then there are the women you went to that ghost school with. You are all still friends – good friends – years later. They remain some of the most important people in your life. Last week you were back there in your home town to celebrate your birthday with your old school friends. You are in a restaurant and the plates have been cleared and there is a bottle of wine on the table and none of you are talking because you are playing Uno, and it’s getting quite heated.
Some of you have been friends for 30 years. In the candlelight, in each other’s company, you are all ageless and this thing you all have is eternal.
Mike Ticher: PS Shame about the insecurity and immaturity
Just as you have to stop blaming your parents at a certain age, there comes a time when you can’t pin every misfortune in life on what happened to you at school.
But not just yet.
Addressing my school-leaving peers would come a long way down on my time travel to-do list (just below killing baby Hitler). But if pressed, my message would be about entitlement.
I went to a moderately posh private school on the outskirts of London from the age of 11. To my knowledge no one raped or tortured any boys (needless to say they were all boys) or even administered official corporal punishment. But it was a complacent, self-satisfied place.
I don’t think it felt the need to force values on us, or even demand extreme academic effort. If anything it assumed a lazy kind of conformity in its privileged pupils. I nurtured quiet contempt, leaving with high exam scores and equally high levels of insecurity and immaturity.
Now that my own children have had the benefit of an Australian public school education, I would like to tell my long-forgotten peers about that distant world – one that (in my experience) effectively instils values of tolerance and respect for difference, as well as academic achievement. A bit ragged around the edges perhaps, and not nearly as picky about neatly worn uniforms, but a much better primer for real life than my narrow instruction.
But I don’t think they’d be that keen to hear about it.
