P.J.C at Redlands Part 1: To Think, To Learn, To Teach

Recollection and Retrospect: the post World War 2 school world.

Newcastle, New South Wales, 1950s.

Recall of the schooling years at Mayfield West Public and then New Lambton Boys’ School, Newcastle New South Wales until high school at selective Newcastle Boys’ High, points to the variability of those institutions. Mayfield West Infants’ to Year 2 was positive. Memories include being introduced to the abacus. Specially designed teaching by special female teachers.

The all-male Staff at New Lambton Boys’ Primary School were carefully encouraging, probably influenced by their post World War 2 lives, war-time service experience, and their professional standing being recognised socially at the time. To be Captain and Dux in the final year was an early taste of accomplishment, provided a strong sense of direction as of the value of education. However it also embedded a notion that learning was all too easy; no effort really required.

Over the adolescent years Newcastle Boys’ High regrettably did not imbue a sense of purpose, despite encouraging accomplishments in the Cadet Services and in some sporting areas. Some teachers were memorable, particularly in History, for the quality of classroom practice and rich enhancement of the core curriculum. However others were memorably poor in practice and outcome, affected possibly by what seem now to have been very large classes allowing little by way of personalisation or differentiation. Behaviour in class was not often created by cooperation between teacher and taught, but rather by the mythology of schoolboy ‘yarns’ – requiring the teacher to impose by example and routine active discipline constantly rather than its arising from clarity of classroom practice and defined purposes.

The fault lay not entirely with the school, obviously. Young male students such as I were most at fault – looking to the future without concentrating in the present, confident that the world would deliver and that right would prevail. Moreover single gender male environments did not then encourage co-operative, ‘learning for its own sake’ attitudes to teachers.

A complete confidence in the practical successful future without an education or with it, prevailed. The siren call of the FJ Holden, of girls, and of a world of post World War 2 triumph through military training dominated the day. It did not occur to some, including me, that each was part of all. The unity between today and all other days was not apparent to the enthusiastic Cadet and cream-bun eater at the Canteen.

Was the school day from 9 a.m. or so, until 3.30 p.m.? Yes. In retrospect, were results of the school indicative of a bright-boys-only staff? Yes. Were the teachers likely to be as bright as their pupils? In some cases, yes, but in others they existed as journeymen classroom practitioners only; “by the book”. The future days of the boys did not overly concern them.

Were they State employees, guaranteed a salary fortnightly for all their working years, with excellent superannuation to follow? Yes. But of course for the brightest boys encouraged at home and school jointly, the results could be different: access to Medicine, Law and BHP Scholarships in Mining and Metallurgy was available. The problem with this approach – visibility of the apparently brightest and most encouraged – is that talents not perceived or uncovered, in any field of appropriate endeavour, are lost. They may never be found again.

Moreover the class consciousness of Newcastle – then essentially a ‘blue collar’ hardscrabble congregation centring on the BHP, mining and associated steel manufactures – meant that the education offered at school was serviced by teachers who not surprisingly were of the same background and same level of aspiration: Newcastle and the Beach.

This was an easier life: the city and its lifestyle argued for the simplicities of BHP, City and the Beach. Defined living, defined income, guaranteed wages each week or fortnight, and being comfortably aware of ‘certain certainties’. This was probably an outcome of Newcastle’s being settled second after the First Fleet, being an initial coal-mining settlement in support of Sydney, and in the 20th century being populated by Welsh and other UK immigrants who brought their steel mill skills to their new home. Blue collar, admirable, solidly assured of the rightness, perhaps rigidity of things as they were, living in ‘Pommy Town’, able to walk or to ride bicycles to work at the BHP or similar steel enterprises.

On the other side of the earth, from their birthplace. A long way from ‘home’.

How then in such a context would Shakespeare or Coleridge or Milton be taught as informing the core of life? Were they even relevant? Would Australian authors, scientists, historians be relevant to learning and teaching in Newcastle?

How are ‘beautiful minds’ revealed and nurtured? How to persuade boys and girls to understand Mathematics as the finest language possible, other than to operate micrometers at the BHP? How then could French studied widely, Latin studied by State dictate, be understood by teachers or pupils as ‘relevant’? How would the ‘master switch’ of an internationally active life, filled with possibilities able to be chased down and understood – be flicked to ‘on’? What knowledge and subsequent thinking provided furnishing as for a life well lived in years to come? Could a man or woman teacher, schooled in Newcastle and then teaching in Newcastle, reveal and beautiful world? Wholly to the child listening?

Why was Sons and Lovers not written in Newcastle Australia rather than in that mining village in the United Kingdom? Was the stoicism which strengthened a life of ‘cold rolling’ steel at the BHP, mining coal underground throughout the Hunter Valley unlikely to give rise to Lawrence in Newcastle rather than in Eastwood in the United Kingdom?

Was it all, finally, a function of money and a deep disrespect for the ‘high falutin’ ideas which could attend a life better lived than was imagined in Newcastle?

Government funded education in Newcastle in the 1950s to early 60s retrospectively looks desiccated and careless, from the standpoint of someone who has been directly involved widely in local, then international schooling and post-secondary education from graduation onwards. After University of New South Wales College studies then with a post-graduate Diploma year at Newcastle Teachers’ College in Union Street, an altercation with the Head of the Teachers’ College led to applications being sent to independent schools in Sydney. Having a job to go to actually mattered, repaying a Scholarship ‘bond’ essential.

Fortunately the renowned Headmaster at Shore, “Jika” Travers OBE offered a post in teaching English and History, with sub-appointments in Divinity and from time to time in Latin. For a man from Newcastle to arrive at Shore as a resident assistant Master in Robson House, the difference in education context, plan, style and management was a revelation. Admittedly differences between the experience of Newcastle Boys’ High School and then University and College, and suddenly the daily demands of a mixed boarding/day fee-paying conservative school for boys may have been exaggerated; North Sydney seemed to be in detail different from Newcastle. It may have been equally different had appointment to Normanhurst Boys’ High School been taken up. Normanhurst Boys’ High may have been equal to Shore School. However such were the free choice times that Shore School seemed to call to a freedom devoid of the “How to teach” manual issued by the Department of Education NSW.

Sydney Church of England Grammar School, ‘Shore”. Late 1960s.

Residence in Robson House, with predominantly rural-based boys, as assistant to the Housemaster of Robson who had served the school for more than 30 years, proved to be invaluable. Duty reduced hubris, a key gift from the House. Relaxed friendship with the Matron, sharing with her a growing sense of the satisfaction fostering the good in boys isolated in Term time from their families, was important.

Teaching at Shore meant immersion in that professional life implied by readings in the history of education. Each day lived meaningfully, to the full, given abilities: that seemed to be the model being suggested to the student boy, and the neophyte teacher.

Responsibilities unexpectedly included in the year’s teaching included Rugby coaching, Cricket coaching, Rowing coaching, Small Bore Rifle Club supervision, RAAF Air Training Corps officer participation. The load of teaching other then in the classroom was considerable but manageable, ultimately enjoyable, and ultimately powerful in improving the classroom.

Intentional, sometime piecemeal integration of classroom with co-curricular activities was probably designed to encourage a close-knit education model that encouraged each boy to approach his living and thinking holistically.

Initially the appointment to Shore seemed hard to fathom: how could the service to each boy, boarding and day alike, be so different from that demonstrated at Newcastle Boys’ High School and at the schools at which Teachers’ College practicum was conducted?

Was it all to do with fees? Was it all to do with presumptions founded on money?

Was it all to do with teacher professional training, with vocation before vacation?

Camps equivalent to that at the National Fitness Centre on the Hawkesbury River, available selectively to State school children, happened annually through the Cadet and non-Cadet system for each secondary studies’ boy at Shore.

Some choice of activity was encouraged, as was breadth of activity, though a structural ‘hierarchy’ operated: Tennis, for instance was not equal in life, to Rugby.

Was Chapel essential to knowledge, or did it solely warm the participants’ compulsory spiritual life?

How could the quality of school experience in the teenage years be so different? Was it about School Fees? Was it only about Staff remuneration? Only about protected tradition?

Or was it about non-government, perhaps entrepreneurial leadership and service in the context of a potentially satisfying professional life applying a close, privately funded working relationship between school and home, teachers and parents, philanthropy (scholarships) and access?

So many questions; answers were not at all clear, not instantly revealed.

Two insights did emerge from the intense teaching/educating model of that late 1960s experience: 1. if Shore were education, then Newcastle’s model was much less; 2. a teacher teaches himself or herself. He or she represents to the student the outcome of learning: he or she carries into the teaching relationship the entire history of culture, of education. Improvement in the teacher, wholly, is improvement in teaching. This is correctly, daily, a high demand professional life.

Naturally for the abrasive male teacher in his early twenties with success came concomitant arrogance exacerbated by energy and the over confidence of early, acceptably independent professional education practice. Therefore unlike some friends and colleagues, rather than leaving to go into a different working world – which one? – the necessary choice was travel to Europe. Kindly, thoughtfully the Headmaster offered a period of leave, and a temporary appointment at Christ’s Hospital in the United Kingdom. One year mutated into years.

Christs’ Hospital, Horsham, Sussex UK. Late 1960s-early 1970s.

As the Galileo Galilei ship sailed from Darling Harbour on its seven week voyage via the Cape to Europe, crucial memories travelled also. “Jika” Travers: ‘Go to England to learn to be a schoolmaster”. Grandmother: “To go to England is to go home”. Parents: “War and oppression in Europe and the Middle East are endemic; so what?”

Christ’s Hospital was founded by King Edward Vl and the London City in November 1552. Having succeeded his father Henry Vlll, the young Edward was aware of ‘lost’ children in London. Therefore he made possible the establishment of the school in the former Greyfriars Monastery in the City of London.

Some 380 children started at the school, provided for by charity funds. “CH” as the school became known, continued as a co-educational charity school with generous ‘Governors” providing funds per student, for his or her entire schooling.

As a result of infants’ having to be cared for, another facility at Hartford was founded. In 1902 this became the girls’ Christs’ Hospital, the boys’ ‘marching out’ to a purpose built school in Horsham, Sussex. CH continues in the present century as a co-educational charitable school. The girls were transferred to Horsham in 1985, the Hartford site sold. The reasons were financial problems of the early 1980s; financial ‘business’ determined a return to the ‘co-ed’ model first necessarily chosen as a core value of the school in 1552. In later years, the same crises had the same outcome for SCECGS Redlands, Sydney.

In 1968 to join the Teaching Staff at “CH” was to enjoy being a part of the charitable Bluecoat School, so-called as a result of the Tudor era uniform worn by all students. It was also to be among teachers whose overt purpose, over years, was to educate children from financially poor backgrounds. One overt goal was to suggest selection for university including the rarefied specialities of Oxford and Cambridge.

Purpose was always clear at CH: provide an education, detailed with depth, that would assist a young person to choose a rewarding way of life, would reduce social class borders, and would promote altruism as a central social value. Plainly CH was not founded to serve the aspirations and advantages of the moneyed classes. Notably, CH was the in the early 1970s among the ‘top ten’ independent schools in the United Kingdom by numbers of acceptances into Oxbridge Colleges, paralleling Winchester, many Grammar Schools, Rugby, St Paul’s London and other well-known schools. To teach towards such ‘outcomes’ was exciting, but also underlined the life-time power of a well-formed education that provides knowledge, insight, skills, breadth and possibly, in the end, wisdom.

The newly inducted teacher at Horsham boys’ CH became aware that from 1552 onwards, some well-known, influential and in some cases very famous men had been at “Housey”:

Sir Barnes Wallis – 1887 – 1979: Scientist, Inventor. Dirigibles, airframes, bouncing bombs 1942/43. RAF Foundation Donor Christ’s Hospital, Worked on Parkes telescope project in Australia. Geodesic airframes design a crucial achievement.

John Flamsteed – Astronomer Royal 1646 – 1719 – Greenwich Observatory.

William Wales - 1734 – 1798 – Part of James Cook’s First and Third Voyages.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge – 1772-1834 – Romantic Poet.

Leigh Hunt – 1784 – 1859 – Essayist and Critic English Literature.

Charles Lamb – 1775 – 1834. Essayist – Essays of Elia.

Edmund Blunden - 1896 – 1974. Professor of Poetry Oxford.

Michael Wilding - 1912 – 1979. Actor and writer.

Sir Colin Davis – Conductor – 1927 – 2013 – BBC Orchestra, The Proms.

Constant Lambert – 1905-1951: (son of George Lambert, Australian painter). Composer and conductor.

Dennis Silk – 1931- 1998: Cricketer and Headmaster Radley et al.

John Snow – 1941 - . Cricketer and schoolmaster. Packer’s Teams in Cricket.

Bernard Levin - 1926 – 2004. Writer, journalist, broadcaster.

John Middleton Murry - 1889- 1957 - Writer. (Husband of Katherine Mansfield. Marxist. Literary Editor – Lawrence, Eliot and others. Garsington Circle member.) Girls of fame? Add.

CH has at time of writing chosen to offer the International Baccalaureate Diploma in parallel with the more traditional GCSE and A Level studies.

Shockingly the public record reveals that a number of men who taught at CH have in recent years to 2018 been charged and gaoled for paedophilia. Some had taught there for many years. Their crimes have come into light, fortunately, but gaol does not expunge or resolve the offence against the child.

For the Australian educated teacher, on the single level of learning how to teach and searching out what to teach at CH was lastingly helpful, partly a revelation. English teaching directly from the text, similarly in History, early publishing of student original work through ‘Matrix” a small magazine within the school, and teaching with sequential improvement the Oxbridge Term demonstrated why a firmer commitment to teaching was possible, honest, even desirable. Clear evidence emerged that studies in English, History and languages other than English made genuine meaning every day. Other key studies in the Sciences, Mathematics, Arts and Games (Physical Education) could be seen among the student population to be doing the same.

Movingly personally and professionally, teaching so many boys from impoverished backgrounds and hearing their anecdotes embedded a commitment to both opportunity in education, and to justice through education. As one senior boy – a ‘Grecian” as the final year was known, put it: To go home to the east end of London (Stratford housing estates) each vacation was to be derided for his ‘Housey” accent, for his ambition correctly assisted by schooling, and for his enlarged difference from his family as a whole. He went on to Oxford. The years may well have been kind to him and his fine English language intellect; he may have “climbed the stairs to his family flat” eventually without so much sense of privilege and dislocation.

Sweden, centred on Kalmar. Early 1970s.

When the CH years closed in 1971 appointment was accepted as Lektor within the British Council in Sweden. Kalmar, south-eastern Sweden, a comfortable, attractive ‘baroque’ town centred in large part on tertiary education, including a Master Mariners’ College and also a Teachers’ College subsequently transformed into a university.

Relevant experiences included teaching Shakespeare (Hamlet in particular), tutoring in a drug referral centre on Oland near the Viking Gravfelt, guiding studies in John Donne, wide-reading in Shakespeare, linguistics and actively observing the thinking formed by Swedish government socialism from 1934. Hospitality, the social generosity of colleagues, associates and families in Kalmar and Stockholm were boundless.

Eventually it was time to ‘come home’.

After some obligated time back in the UK teaching English in the ‘foreign students’ schools in Sussex, one of the first 747 ‘Jumbo” flights lifted off from Heathrow. Back to Shore as Head of Department, English, in mid-1972.

“Shore”, North Sydney NSW. The 1970s.

In due course, by agreement and action of the Headmaster some former UK colleagues were invited to join the English Staff at Shore. They made a significant difference to the philosophy of and quality of goals in teaching English: in particular they emphasised original authors rather than any use of ‘critics’ or ‘cribs’. In those mid-1970s much of the discussion among teachers was of ‘examinations’ and ‘teaching to examinations’. By contrast with the apparent UK model, there was far too much reliance on formulaic teaching: if in doubt, be frightened and ‘go by the crib’.

The Whitlam years brought the Schools Commission to life; it seemed that independent schools could well be ‘at risk’. Published performance was key. Nonetheless by emphasising original writings and therefore close reading of text, with responses developing, still proved – as in the UK – the only educationally sound approach. Examination results and student thinking, the first measured by State dictate the second by daily teaching relationships, improved over time. The key point is: method revealed potential in both procedural testing, and personal independent thinking.

English teaching continued to be a valued part of the school, enhanced by its association with the expansion of practical drama production. A close working association with Wenona. North Sydney, brought girls into drama/theatre productions at Shore. It is important to note that teaching staff across Disciplines volunteered in producing and refining drama productions on stage; volunteer assistance knew no Staff barriers, no hours. It was essential, exemplary.

Shore continued to offer the ‘holistic’ education, through integrated academic and extra curricular daily design noted (above). Traditions continued to be admired, but enhancement achieved in facilities, teaching methods, inputs across the school, and therefore outcomes for the individual student boy. The school continued to be favourably known throughout Sydney. The English Department through its teaching talent, professionally strong Staff, wide involvement in overall school life including boarding Houses, and the ‘mission’ to render luminous English central to every boy’s daily life, contributed.

The Armidale School (TAS). The late1970s to early 1980s.

With the active support of ‘Jika” Travers in late 1978, appointment to be Deputy Headmaster of The Armidale School (TAS) New South Wales was confirmed. Elizabeth and I arrived there in January 1979 to take up residence at the school. TAS was then a single-gender boys’ school, essentially a boarding school in regional Australia. Its physical condition generally and Armidale’s more widely, was represented in our arriving at a small fibro cottage, in winter with removalist deliveries dumped on the floor. There was no hot water; possums had invaded the house; Elizabeth, a teacher also by profession, was dismayed but the times ahead taught vital lessons to us both.

There was real work to be done.

As the early days elapsed it became clear that TAS was in the grip of the Independent Teachers’ Association (the Union) with obvious consequent sluggishness of the Common Room, low expectation of students’ results, and lower than expected enrolments of ‘Day Boys’ from the university-oriented town. The main management aims necessarily were clear: to support the work of long-time respected Headmaster Alan Cash, to become active in the Armidale education community, to lift the morale of the Common Room and reduce the influence of ‘union thinking’, and above all to lead for improved HSC results. The latter spoke loudly to the Armidale community.

Over the period of some three years these goals were achieved. Teaching staff morale improved, those afflicted by union-led lethargies in the working day were supervised closely for their improvement, teachers who were part-time farmers as well started to give more professional service than had been their way previously, and with the improvement in HSC results through improved classroom practice allied with better curriculum management, Day Boy enrolments increased. Boarding Houses were well led by committed Housemasters and their families, with supervision being 24 hours across each school day of the school year. Misbehaviour was corrected. The years enjoyably family, personal, professional and in results were productive.

Particular among the indications of pathways to quality through diversification of education experience came from close observation of the role of Games (sport) and co-curricular activities such as Cadets, Student Woodworkshop, Drama, music theatre in the traditional TAS manner, Library service and Bushfire Unit service. In the rural context external courses such as Small Motor Maintenance, Wool classing, Joinery and other future skills played a large part in the harmonious dynamic of the school. Form Master leadership across Boarding and Day Boys, in alliance with the Boarding Housemasters and resident Staff, was also crucial: knowing each boy each day was an essential component of the school being ‘alive’ for each. None of this was special to TAS: active, supervised daily integration of all the elements to be a complete school education experience for boy or girl was, as always the key.

Being constantly ‘around’, if unexpected or unheralded, was the lock.

Success in managing against a negative Union influence in the school was probable when a few representative members of the Union including the Deputy Headmaster flew privately in a four seater aircraft from Armidale to Sydney and return to attend meetings, piloted by one of the teaching staff. It became clear that a majority of teachers was keen on independence, their own and the school’s, and were engaged deeply, well in daily commitment from Kindergarten to Year 12. This independence of mind in individual staff members is a vital component of a school’s success in offering the best, personally chosen opportunities for those in its care. Freedom of mind allows knowledge, possibly then wisdom, to develop in students and teachers alike. The golden quality of so many of the TAS teaching staff proved the point.

To offer a different, leading model of action outside the usual school practices, during those TAS years Elizabeth and I arranged and accompanied vacation-time expeditions to Sydney to allow senior boys wishing to do so the chance to have a week of theatre, drama, city life, to hear academic thinking in an urban context. Theatres both traditional and innovative were flourishing in Sydney at the time in venues like the Nimrod, Ensemble Theatre, the Opera House and the Old Tote Theatre at the University of New South Wales. Nourishing entertaining, intellectual experiences for thoughtful boys. Nurturing of higher level English studies. Encouraging thoughtfulness, not just as a bye-product.

In 1980 to assist in the arrangements we borrowed the SCEGGS Redlands, Cremorne, mini bus. We did not know the school, other than by name and address. This kind loan occurred through the help of acquaintances among Redlands’ parents who had also been parents at Shore. The Ford Transit Mini bus was useful, but in early hours one morning during the week, after boys were dropped at their billets throughout Sydney, the bus broke down. NRMA assistance came. Comments by the mechanic showed that the maintenance of the bus has been poor. As a ‘thank you’ from TAS to Redlands a new battery was installed, bus returned to Cremorne in better order than when it has been borrowed.

This incident proved to be a metaphor of what followed in the path to becoming Headmaster from May 1981 at SCECGS Redlands, by the mid to late 1970s the school being in deep trouble. It had been since 1945 a part of the SCEGGS Council Girls’ Schools, an organisation within the Sydney Anglican Archdiocese. Between 1975 and 1980 the SCEGGS Council girls’ schools collapsed financially, the plan becoming the closure of all but one. The one was not SCEGGS Redlands. It was to close and be sold for real estate value.

It came to pass then that from about 1976 onwards, Redlands needed a ‘new battery’, just as its mini bus had required.

The energy of the school, that late 1970s battery, was being provided by selfless leadership involvement of parents at SCEGGS Redlands. They saved the school from being closed, real estate sold. Teaching Staff loyalty added confidence where there could have been none.

Collapse of the Anglican Girls’ Schools was widely reported in the press from 1975 to 1977. It was viewed askance by teachers in independent schools. We all recognised the tragedy for families and girls alike. There was some sympathy apparent, some readiness such as at Shore School to absorb some SCEGGS Darlinghurst and other displaced girls should schools finally close. The problem ‘played out’ from 1975 until 1980.

In Armidale these matters were of passing interest until an advertisement called for applications for the Principal ship of SCEGGS Redlands, a newly independent co-education school in Cremorne, on the lower North Shore, lifted by the determined action of a small group of well-informed parents from the financial ashes of the collapsed school group.

During those short Armidale Deputy Headship years the role of parents in the life and quality of a school had become sharply apparent. Among the parent and former students’ involvement in active support of the school’s defined work were service on the Council, the annual Music Hall production, voluntary but supervised coaching of Games, assistance with Work Experience placement, hosting Boarders on weekend leave, School Library, constant presence at and catering for Saturday sport fixtures, Sunday Chapel attendance from time to time, archives assistance. The presence was always important and – without serious exception – welcome.

Sydney Church of England Girls Grammar School, “Redlands”.

In an application for appointment to SCEGGS Redlands, parent involvement in school enhanced life had to be an easily accepted value because 1884 old school had been saved from closure by the action of parents whose only formal contact with the school had been through the Mothers’ Canteen and possibly the Old Girls’ Association. Suddenly thrust into a role well outside their daily professional employment, those parents and their families had secured the right to control and operate SCEGGS Redlands. A new Principal or Head would need to be entirely at ease with the history, able to set aside the persistent view of School Principals as being unapproachable polymaths who knew better than a parent the education needs of each child. Especially given the myths of Mr Chips, the god-like eternal Head of School, illustrated by Winston Churchill’s comments that “Headmasters have powers at their disposal with which Prime Ministers have never yet been invested” (My Early Life: Harrow. Chapter 2), the new Principal would need to practise the tenets established by the remarkable, commercially independent rescue of the school. Help to consolidate the pieces that had been picked up; lead and listen equally. Know what bankruptcy and debt require, to be resolved and then left behind.

No school exists in any form until a child, hand-in-hand with his or her parent walks through the gate. At that gate – or front door in inclement weather – should be waiting the Principal/Headmaster/Headmistress on occasion and more often a key Teacher to welcome him or her into a secure environment in which the honest underpinnings of future living can be made available to the child. Such a gift can only be offered in concert with the parent across all relevant years, who can confidently then leave the child in the conscious care of the school, turn and go about daily business.

At TAS, purpose-built in 1892, imposing façade and Houses set in wide green grounds, the truth of this was never more apparent than when boys were involved in accidental injury or, worst of all, a fatality. Bricks and mortar do not call the school into being: the presence of the boy or girl and family does. At its finest, the school is adjunct to but also instrumental in family life. Should the school come to regard its existence and being as separate from such active engagement, it fails. No amount of ancient stones will make more relevant the child’s daily waking ready for thinking, the reliance of the parent on the school’s working to provide the child with the best tested thinking, learning and insight available.

Such gives a school a lasting involvement in lives, to the last of days. The better the school’s humility, the better the child’s likelihood of living well and bringing more to the world than he or she takes from it.

However the built existence of the school does provide a ‘voice’ for the child and parent, as they walk through that gate or front door. Values can be writ large in the architecture and regulated maintenance of the school buildings: tidiness, cleanliness, unbroken widow panes, centres of calm, well-resourced classrooms and learning retreats such as libraries, safe perimeters, decorative colours encouraging contemplative learning. Not necessarily to reinforce the Steiner concept of ‘rounded’ built school spaces, but rather to seek means to bring softer light, positive purpose to hard surfaces.

“Jika” Travers said often that in order to know whether a school is operating soundly, look up at the eaves. He was correct.

The force of a school’s physical ‘presence’ for each child is captured for me in the single well known photograph of a Christ’s Hospital boy sitting in the soft light of a Library bay window, reading Coleridge. The school dated from 1552; the neo-Jacobean bay window only from 1902; the poetry from 1830; the boy from 1970, with the conjunction of all illuminated by sufficient light, the future influence on the individual’s life a multiplier.

With all this in mind a supported application went forward. From Armidale it was not apparent how controversial the process was to become: some 31 hours of interview followed, the most difficult being those which centred on the wish of some Council (Board) members to reinforce the Anglican evangelical character of the school. Being from Newcastle by birth, Welsh and English by heritage, the son and grandson of metal workers one of whom cold-rolled hot ingots of steel, the other a Gallipoli veteran, and whose local church experience other than through school Chapels, was at best routine at worst confronting, such values did not warrant dishonest assertions. Honest Christian values, the song of the Valleys, non-intrusion into the individual’s pursuit of well-shaped life – these mattered.

As a result appointment was not offered initially, but the effort to re-build the damaged school on the remaining two and one half acre site on Military Road, Cremorne was fought out privately at the SCEGGS Redlands Board. Eventually the Chairman rang to ask offer appointment as General Manager. Without a moment’s hesitation, it was agreed. This was the winning moment.

Subsequently, appointment was offered and accepted. Elizabeth and I left The Armidale School and New England region with gratitude for three short years of family life with children, school life, professional growth, abundant kindness and insights.

There was work to be done. Again.

That extraordinary, often brilliant story including time-line of the rescue and then reconstruction of SCEGGS Redlands, to become co-educational SCECGS Redlands can be read elsewhere on this web-site.

To professional teachers wishing to learn more about Principal ship and Head of School essential skills, including ‘parent power’ at the extreme, and especially the ‘business’ of independent school benchmarks, reading is recommended.

The Redlands Years: Looking outward. High Country Campus and Snowy Mountains Grammar School.

By the early 1990s SCECGS Redlands had become a strong organisation both in community and finances. Acquisition of vacant Cremorne Girls’ High from the State Government had meant better ground area, recreational areas, teaching spaces and acceptance of enrolments. The latter had been a problem from the mid 1980s. By 1989 application lists for enrolment has passed 4500, with relatively few Places able to be offered each year. Cremorne Campus responded to, and encouraged also, enrolments’ growth.

As new facilities were integrated into the daily life of the school, essential thinking had to turn to innovative methods of educating for the possible future for each child. Differentiation, a response to individual needs and talents, had long been a core value and ‘test’ for curriculum and teaching at the school. Now was the time to look for previously unimagined suggestions for learning, for each child.

The International Baccalaureate was introduced between 1987 and 1989, coinciding with the purchase of Cremorne Campus on the far side of Military Road. The aim was to offer a proven alternative to the Higher School Certificate (NSW) for those who wished to do the further qualification during Years 11 and 12 and then in the “IB Term” similar to the “Oxbridge Term” well recognised in the United Kingdom. The introduction of the ‘IB” was detailed, and from the start with one student presenting, the numbers selecting IB as well as HSC grew. It was not until 2001 that selection of either the HSC or IB was permitted in the school.

Why? At centre, the planning of the school’s educational, academic strategic plan considered the intellectual, physical, spiritual and social child as one. Empirical evidence was irrefutable: the child individually walked through the school gate. The educational, the pastoral ‘model’ encouraged daily must take account of the whole child, the entire young adult. Mens sana in corpore sano is always a simple, but not sole, guiding ideal.

Equally ideal was an earned willingness of the entire school to ‘look outward’.

Central to this philosophy is the classroom’s being just the pivot of a model that urges each child throughout the school years to embrace the relationship of the classroom, no matter its furnishings, to the world as a whole. In essence: what does the world offer wholly, that can be correctly and effectively brought into the ‘model’ available to the child?

Hence the core integration of curriculum with co-curriculum actively pursued at SCECGS Redlands from 1981 onwards. Whatever enhances fine life, individual thinking, should be suggested to the child. Not ‘pastimes’ and ‘hobbies’. Active, positive influences in every life, enlarging learning, enhancing thinking, increasing happiness. The previously unknown, perhaps unimagined or feared, should become part of the ‘every day’.

To this end over planned years Games (sport) became extensive, Rowing introduced, Sailing established as a recognised school Game worthy entirely of close attention and training. Clubs and Societies flourished; Music and the Performing Arts shone brightly. The Adventure Programme, for children at extreme risk, allied with the Duke of Edinburgh ‘external’ programme worked their own ‘magic’.

At the centre: the child to become adult.

Support from the many active families within the school allowed Redlands actively to look outward, imagine the possible, the different, achieve better.

Some philosophy developed from the physical, some from the metaphysical. In many instances, action followed. In particular matters, examples such as Geelong Grammar School’s Timbertop suggested options to be considered.

The ideas associated with experiential education were not new: some were explained in James Darling’s Richly Rewarding (Hill of Content Melbourne 1978), some from the earlier work of Kurt Hahn at Gordonstoun School.

Drawing on these sources and others, “Curriculum Camps”, named to ensure an understanding of their integration into the whole curriculum of the school from Kindergarten to Form 11, were a feature of school life from 1982 onwards. They reflected, originally, the experience provided in the National Fitness Camps (see above), but slowly gained their own character and embedded activities. The willing attendance of professional teaching Staff was recognised always, as here. Vital.

During a vacation family visit to Jindabyne and the Snowy Mountains, we all saw in Thredbo during walks the Snow gums, native to the region growing strongly where other plants could not. One in particular above Thredbo grew from a fissure in bare rock, reaching upward whilst keeping the roots also firmly implanted in the rock face, finding new sources of nourishment. The fact as much as the metaphor impressed deeply. An idea emerged about the special character of learning possible, if noticed and reinforced, by the High Country. Not only rural, not only four seasons, but also particular in itself. Children could well learn experientially as much as academically in such places.

Fortunately the Board of Redlands understood the possibilities for education drawing on such differences as were obvious between urban and rural life, between Sydney and the Snowy Mountains, between the city clouded night sky and the crisp constellations at night in the mountains. Acceptable, structural, beneficial thinking progressed. The community of teachers at Redlands participated fully as they wished to do.

To mention him respectfully as a matter record, in generosity Mr Loren Tinworth of the Seventh Day Adventist Church unexpectedly called in to Redlands one day. He suggested that since there remained land for youth development allocated at the time the Snowy Mountains Scheme was completed in the 1950s, would the school be interested? The SDA Church intended to establish a site there: would Redlands think to do the same? Such foresight so long ago as the 1950s were had been lost, but Loren said the land was still available and would be suitable for residential life.

Inquiries confirmed Loren’s advice. The SCECGS Redlands Board determined that should land become available it should be purchased for future use in “Outdoor Education”, subsequently known more widely as ‘experiential education’. Over a short time donations were received from The Mothers Canteen, the Redlands Association and The Redlanders. With private donations the funds donated permitted the purchase of 168 acres a short distance north of Jindabyne. The purchase excited many in the school community because they saw the potential for enhanced education experiences, across the age range at Redlands. Gatherings on the land helped to show the many picnickers from the Northern Suburbs of Sydney how ‘different it all is’ in the mountains.

Subsequently in the early 1990s a parent rang one morning to advise that the Woden Valley Hospital Canberra was for sale by tender. It was a multi-transportable hospital on which the Federal Government had refurbished for $5.6 million, so all buildings were in good condition. The parent felt that it would be possible to purchase the hospital and transport its buildings to Jindabyne. Tender for purchase for $130,000.00 was finalised. The Board confirmed the expenditure, so with this success of Redlands’ tender the hospital was purchased and moved by trucks to Jindabyne.

In the same period a group of parents in business in Jindabyne had approached Redlands to inquire whether the school would be prepared to establish an independent school in Jindabyne, with the support and active involvement of local parents whose children otherwise had to travel to Cooma for senior school HSC studies. The Chairman and Board at Redlands flew in two aircraft, suitably insured to Cooma to consider widely the question of the High Country and its meaning for Redlands’ education as for other communities which may be considered. They decided that whatever could be done, should be done for Redlands’ students, as for local Jindabyne and other local students.

This was a golden time, optimistic, innovative, filled with positive decisions all focused on one goal: better education at Redlands than any possible elsewhere, extended to children in Jindabyne and surrounds whose parents wished to choose independent, local and all-year secure education and schooling. Mutual exchange programmes were considered appropriate.

This was a time which rewarded appropriately the ‘business approach’ taken at Redlands through guidance of the three ‘Trustees” appointed in 1974/5 by the parents of the then SCEGGS Redlands. Prudent, at times brilliantly constructed decisions and policies meant that the cash flows of SCECGS Redlands in the late 1980s and into the 1990s permitted a detailed, granular ‘vision’ leading to width with security in the educational offerings at the school.

The result was that a lease was taken on the empty Snowy Hydro Headquarters in Jindabyne, the Authority having moved to Cooma some years before. This meant that the old administration and workshop buildings became part of the new Snowy Mountains Grammar School, from 1995, whilst ground could be allocated to the establishment of boarding and teaching facilities provided by portion of the Woden Valley Hospital.

With the conjunction of the High Country Campus (Redlands) and Snowy Mountains Grammar School (under Redlands’ interim governance) it became obvious that unexpected opportunities had arisen. Unity of management of the two facilities would mean that those in either would have access to and advantages of both.

A newly appointed Head of Snowy Mountains Grammar School took up residence in Jindabyne, and early in 1995 with just 15 students, well below the recommended numbers of State Government documents, SMGS commenced teaching. With some small subsidies from SCECGS Redlands, planned for a maximum of three years but subsequently not needed for that length of time, SMGS throve from the beginning through the knowledgeable participation of the new Head and his Staff. Some experimental distance teaching by use of computer laboratories allowed children at SMGS to study languages such as Latin and French, supplementary mathematics and geography, provided by Redlands’ Sydney teaching staff provided with a timetable allocation to allow them to teach by distance.

Through the unity of SCECGS Redlands and SMGS, with the extensive personal assistance and diligent advice of parents in Sydney, among whom were many who knew the ski fields and the exhilaration of skiing as of the mountains and their different beauties, the Redlands Board approved a plan to introduce a new education activity known as Winter School. The model established was that children at Redlands and from other schools could apply to attend Winter School in Term 3 of any calendar year – the winter season – to learn each day to ski and then to attend formal school each afternoon to continue usual academic studies at SMGS. The flexibility essential to success had to be achieved by those ‘on the ground’, guided by the Head of SMGS.

Winter School attracted great interest, with enrolments from as far away as Perth. It started so well it was successful from the start, largely through the efforts of thoroughly involved Redlands and SMGS staff along with parents who understood the opportunities being offered to children for a finely resourced enhanced education.

Finance as always was carefully monitored. Parents who chose to send their children to Winter School paid additional fees for the Term. An important gain for children was experience of ‘boarding school ‘ life without the burden of ‘interminable years’ – the phrase of some boarders at Christ’s Hospital in the early 1970s. Both SMGS and Winter School continue to achieve results, more than 20 years later.

At the very heart of all is the concept of differentiation of education, the learning that comes from sharply defined seasons, growth through challenge such as exists in parallel and snowboard skiing, insight through interaction of cognitive with well-designed, human-based physical, felt experiences.

Above all, obviously, if the Romantics of the Industrial Revolution era – say 1780 to 1880s – had it right, then learning and examining through the natural world allow the poetry of life to develop in each child or young adult. The poetry of the snow gum’s life was a frequent theme of remarks guiding the work of both the High Country Campus and Snowy Mountains Grammar School.

In a very practical sense though in every school there are children enrolled for whom school is a burden, seems irrelevant, is a point of rebellion against societal norms and sometimes against parents and family. Redlands at no time was different from any school in this regard. Therefore programmes had to be put in place to attempt to re-define school and make it more attractive so that intellect would ‘switch on’ and future years be as enjoyably productive as ability, gifts and self discipline might allow.

The High Country Campus and SMGS jointly proved to be an acceptable addition to those efforts already made in past years: special camps conducted in the Colo Valley, with particular emphasis on ‘difficult’ boys, where physical challenge and daily tiring activity replaced classroom ‘tedium’. Learning experientially and differently. Much of this was very hard work for special purpose Staff and SMGS community members, including rebellion on site by some boys – memorably. Not violent rebellion just poor behaviour, dogged refusal, indiscipline, silent opposition. The full catalogue of active teenage rebellion and argument was applied by some, but the positive results of close care and attention, allied with the attraction of the mountains, of skiing, of the night sky - as two very difficult girls personally expressed it – helped to ensure many of these children could continue to attend school normally at Redlands, return from the High Country with vivid stories of residential student life in ‘open’ country.

In the best of results, a changed self-perception, improved social responsibility awareness and consequently improved self-esteem led to improved understanding, learning and behaviour at school, probably sometimes at home.

In some instances just ‘time out’ from home was enough to mend relations and attitudes. In others there needed to be counselling allied with studies allied with mountain activity allied with the care empathetic Staff can provide when welcomed.

So what?

Nothing was easy from 1981 to 2003, but much was successful in seeing young people go on shoulder to shoulder, enriching the individual purposes, into adulthood more confidently than may have been possible without the night sky and the sounds, the lessons of the mountains, including unexpectedly gentle human voices.

And going ‘home’ to Sydney.

Overall: think differently, think carefully, think sensibly, think better, act consequently. Then check and measure.

Always.

Peter J Cornish

April 2020.