Cadets, Co-Curricular and Citizenship

 Therefore I do not run like someone running aimlessly; I do not fight like a boxer beating the air. ²⁷ No, I strike a blow to my body and make it my slave

(1 Corinthians 9: 26-27)

Dear Students, Parents and Carers

In 33 years of being a Headmaster across five schools I have seen tens of thousands of students make the journey from children towards adulthood. Sadly, some of these young people have been adrift in life with no clear anchors, no discernible purpose and no apparent hope. They have been at war with society, with the adult world and with themselves. At its most extreme this has led to vandalism and other anti-social behaviour, substance abuse, teenage pregnancies and even gaol.

I am delighted to say what I see at Shore is very different from this. I see young people who are mostly confident in who they are, expressed in self respect and respect for others and sufficient self confidence to embrace life’s challenges, mostly with equanimity. This is no doubt the result of excellent parenting, with good nuclear and extended families, but experience tells me school has a part to play in that as well. Increasingly, research is saying the successful development of young people to fully functional adulthood requires significant other adult mentors, in addition to the role of the parents. Anyone with teenage children knows that sometimes these children set at naught the advice of the parent as a matter of course! Parental allies are rather useful.

Teachers and coaches are often these very mentors. They do spend a lot of time with young people and often are the subjects of respect, even admiration, rapport and emulation. Teachers are familiar with the important role of being in loco parentis, that is standing in as parent figures while the actual parents are off the scene, earning the money to pay the school fees! This is part of pastoral engagement of the school with its students.

Over the last week, I have experienced a range of these significant points of contact between students on one hand and teachers and coaches on the other: our splendid Musical, a bevy of sports dinners – rowing, basketball and cricket; sporting matches – basketball, cricket, swimming, tennis and water polo, and a Cadet dinner, followed by a Cadet parade. Sporting matches so often saw Shore come back from the brink of defeat to win the game, or Shore students, through determination and committed effort outscoring their opponents. Similarly, our current Musical has required agility to shift to an outdoor mode. What students learn from this is to subsume their own identities in a cause greater than themselves; the value of team and support of team members; perseverance despite the odds; resilience amidst hardship and grace and dignity, whether winning or losing. Shore’s barracking, like the play on the field itself, has been highly enthusiastic but also appropriate. I have witnessed an abundance of self discipline, so important by adulthood, and respect for players and coaches and teaching staff. At the Cadet functions I saw excellent discipline, ability to abide by structures, traditions, protocols and rules, and what I liked most of all, an easy and natural rapport between the Wenona girls and Shore boys in the Unit. These are wonderful formative experiences for young people, as indeed all of our co-curricular and sporting activities are part of our character building program, Building Good Men. We see this through our Christian prism.

²⁶ Therefore I do not run like someone running aimlessly; I do not fight like a boxer beating the air. ²⁷ No, I strike a blow to my body and make it my slave (1 Corinthians 9: 26-27).

This is reminiscent of what Sir Donald Bradman said, at first instance surprisingly, when asked to describe cricket: ‘Cricket is a game played in the mind.’

Mastery of self, as the Apostle Paul indicates, is an essential prerequisite of most successful activity. Our program provides ample avenues for boys to flourish, and acceptable ways for them to burn off energy and channel the aggression which is part of the hormonal development of teenage years. It enables them to develop control of self by channelling emotions in ways which are constructive, not destructive. These life development processes are a direct outcome of the activities, which, while enjoyable and worthwhile in themselves, have a larger purpose and value. Part of this is to develop a tremendous sense of belonging within the wonderful cultural and familial entity which is Shore.

The Apostle Paul of course had spiritual disciplines in mind in his letter to the Corinthians quoted above. We hope that our Christian Education program, which is part of our character building, enables our students to think through world views as they appropriate the messages in Chapel, in Christian Studies classes and elsewhere in the school. We hope the whole program will equip them to stand against life’s inevitable buffeting.

We should greatly value the multiplicity of opportunities provided for our boys. To say the least, they are very wholesome and formative. Research suggests that students who invest deeply in the total program of the school actually do better academically than those who fail to do so. At first glance this is counter-intuitive, as one would think co-curricular and sporting activities take students away from their studies. What the research suggests is that students who commit deeply to the co-curricular program at their school gain a huge sense of identity and commitment which spills over into all their school activities, which includes their studies. Of course there is limit to this in terms of how much can be accommodated, as each day has only 24 hours. It would appear that some of the discipline learnt on the sporting fields, on the stage, in bands, orchestras, choirs and ensembles carries over into studies and the rest of life itself.

The Shore ‘glue’ of all of these activities certainly appears to hold teenagers together in a way which produces fine men. The manner in which our boys are both confident and respectful is in my experience strikingly unusual and indicates something here, here meaning Shore in all its activities and manifestations, as well as in families, is very good indeed and to be celebrated!

Dr J Collier
Headmaster