our staff conduct action research projects on matters relating to our strategic intents; and our work with the International Boys’ Schools Coalition.
It can be witnessed through the growing number of extension activities, exchange programmes and partnerships, including that with our dear friends at Tiwi College. It was evident at the Science Oration and Foundation Day Concert, and at the launches of the Michael Robinson Boarding Scholarship and Tony Briggs Indigenous Scholarship. It was to the fore when Year 12 boys gathered to discuss and confront issues of homophobia, misogyny, racism and discrimination against those with mental illness.
It is quantified through research, analysis, survey and review, and is rooted in an embrace of opportunities beyond prescribed curricula.
And, of course, it takes physical form in the nature of the learning spaces in the Sir Zelman Cowen Centre for Science and the Design and Technology Centre, which engender the coming together of minds and bodies in debate, collaboration and advancement.
The coming months and years will see us continue to garner the fruits flowing from the conversations initiated when intellects collide. We will continue to progress the Scotch Enterprise Project model and the possibility of cross-age electives. We will expand our recent initiative of involving young Old Boys with particular interests in innovation to work alongside boys and teachers.
Our trial of the Year 11 Immersion Programme which sets boys’ service within communities will be embedded, and we will build on the momentum established by this year’ s graduating class to enhance the projection and impact of boys’ voice. We will redevelop the Keon-Cohen Building into a cafeteria / dining room for boys, to form the hub of a precinct that will be home to their voice. We will plan for a Centre for Enterprise that will empower boys with the skills necessary to take good ideas to the marketplace, while progressing opportunities for social enterprise through outreach and innovation.
In all such initiatives, we seek to unearth passions and help boys become as good they can be at that which rattles their cage, so that, in turn, they might share their God given talents, be it across a paddock fence, court of law, trading floor, operating table, design studio,
ABOVE: PRINCIPAL, TOM BATTY, WITH TONY BRIGGS(’ 85) AND THE‘ 4’, DESIGNED BY SCOTCH’ S INDIGENOUS STUDENTS, SYMBOLIC OF THE SUPPORT PROVIDED BY MATCHING GIVERS IN THE TONY BRIGGS(’ 85) INDIGENOUS SCHOLARSHIP CAMPAIGN.
building site, family dinner table or over a chat with a stranger in the Tattersalls Hotel in Barringun.
In so doing, we seek not to tell boys what to think, but that they should think, and that the most important voice is oft that which is different to their own.
Great advancement has been made, and will continue to be made, by harnessing the logical power of the two-state switch, but the risk is noted. We must ensure Scotch boys resist the trap of the facile, immediate response and opinion, and remain wary of the threat of a binary driven world making them binary of thought and company. We want them to embrace the magic that lies between the‘ 0’ and the‘ 1’.
In pondering such traps, I leave you with a scenario of binary logic to reflect on( with due deference to British mathematician and philosopher, Bertrand Russell, and his paradox).
Consider a group of chefs who only cook for those who don’ t cook for themselves. Suppose Jack is such a chef and that he doesn’ t cook for himself. Where does Jack fit in? www. scotch. vic. edu. au Great Scot 7