Principal
Principal
Mr Tom Batty – School Principal
The magic that lies between the‘ 0’ and the‘ 1’
MR TOM BATTY SCHOOL PRINCIPAL
Around the time of Family Day, I learned via national radio, that, after 40 years at the taps, Australia’ s oldest publican, 93-year-old Mary Crawley, had pulled her last pint and was selling her pub, the Tattersalls Hotel in Barringun, NSW, one kilometre from the Queensland border.
When asked for comment on changing times, Mrs Crawley mused that people used to have more time to bump into each other and discover that which was of interest in those they met, noting,‘ A terrible lot of people today don’ t appreciate the natural beauty that God gave us. It all goes past.’
The following day, I found myself heading to Kyneton to visit the pre-Foundation Day Concert Music Camp with a telephone call to make. I announced this to my car, and after a brief engagement with a very polite voice that increasingly controls my direction, the call was made.
Completing this brief trilogy, two days later, I found myself perusing all on display at the opening night of the Family Day Design and Technology exhibition. Stunning traditional pieces were surrounded by those borne of the needs and opportunities of a connected generation, as boys of the Year 10 Scotch Enterprise Project joined those engaged in VCE Product Design and Technology and Systems Engineering programmes, in taking up the challenge of solving problems through consideration of the needs of others.
In addition to a lovely folding table and a beautifully crafted ukulele, on display were a water bottle top with an inbuilt filtration system to deliver clean water to people in Third World countries; a cheap, easy to assemble prosthetic leg for victims of land mines; a wheelchair driven by movements of the transportee’ s eyes; a system for the retrieval of‘ men overboard’, based on a signal from a wristband launching and directing a flotation device; and a sprinkler system automated by information gleaned by a weather satellite and a sensor detecting local soil moisture content – to note but a few.
The world is increasingly one of immediate, ubiquitous communication. It is dynamic, exciting and full of seemingly endless opportunity, as all are instantaneously connected to whatever and whomever they choose.
We relish the challenge of tailoring an education that best prepares Scotch boys for the opportunities of their age, but the risks posed by Mrs Crawley are real. In a world defined by communication, we want Scotch boys to help ensure connected airwaves do not deliver disconnected people. As the world shrinks, our boys must be careful not to follow suit and isolate themselves from the attributes which make each one of us different, and, hence, of interest.
That such threat is increasingly likely to occur without their explicit knowledge, only heightens this generation’ s vulnerability to its persuasion. As, with growing intelligence, Big Data feeds the appetite for affirmation, Scotch boys will need to challenge the desire to become encamped only with those with whom they share opinions and behaviours.
It is by placing values and principles above causes that they will resist such drift to binary‘ yes / no’,‘ right / wrong’,‘ them / us’ positions, and promote our democratic traditions of consensus.
In addition to empowering boys for the flow of a digital world, we must help ensure their judgement remains grounded in that which is above any law or code – the dignity of each person. Such judgement as that exhibited by Huckleberry Finn when tearing up the letter that would have met his prescribed obligations, but condemned Jim back to slavery and the hangman’ s noose, and noting:‘ All right then, I’ ll go to hell’.
In planning such education we draw on our Christian faith and Scottish heritage, referencing a primary principle – the inherent value and beauty of each person; and a primary question – how did the world come to be as it is, and how might it be made to evolve for the greater good?
Our commitment to such education can be seen through recent initiatives, including the embedding of relational learning and academic care strategies; the establishment of a Centre for Learning with increased provision for learning support; the growth in breadth and complexity of our challenge programmes and elective offering; and the Big Ideas lecture series in Years 8 and 11.
It flows through the increased language choice in Years 7 and 8; the shift of focus in Year 9 and Year 10 English to creativity, individual choice and extended writing; the provision of a new coding elective; our partnership with Shore School in Sydney on the National Emerging Leaders Programme, which sees
6 Great Scot Number 152 – December 2017