Fights, Facts, Fantasies and Frenzies
out of the heart come evil thoughts….
Matthew 15:19-20
these are what defile a person
Dear Students, Parents and Carers
We have just experienced a three-day media frenzy focused on Shore before the carnival has moved on to other alleged sensations. The event at the centre of the storm was only newsworthy because it was at Shore, an elite school. Worse happens in many schools, and worse happens throughout the country on the rugby, rugby league and AFL fields every Saturday. Boys have been engaged in fisticuffs for millennia. The concocted shock/horror fits a particular narrative about schools like Shore. I am not attempting to justify or excuse violence (which is actually very rare at Shore), but rather to place it in a context for our community.
The event at the centre of this matter actually occurred a little over a week ago. It has taken some time and persistent interviewing to get to the bottom of it. The boys concerned are actually from the same friendship group. They had, and still have, no grievance against one another. They succumbed to strong peer group pressure to exchange blows. Thankfully, no-one was hurt.
Some of those who wish to interpret the incident as a means of condemning Shore’s boys (all of them), seem to be suggesting that a game of chess is so inherently fascinating that a considerable group of boys would watch its every move and, indeed, so enthralling that they would video it. This is, literally, unbelievable. Of course, it was a “set up”, contrived in advance to erupt when the cameras were rolling. It certainly made good film.
As we have unravelled the situation, we have become concerned not about these two boys who were simply (and literally) pawns in the contrived chess game and have been rehabilitated within the School; rather, our focus is on the bystanders who did nothing, those who inappropriately had their cameras in their pockets, which they used to film the incident for social media so that they could create an amusing diversion. Our main concern, however, will be with those few who cynically set up the scene, or who applauded it. This is unsatisfactory, to say the least. It is not Shore. Such conduct is beneath us.
The Police, at our invitation, have provided salutary input to all of Year 10 about the illegalities of violence and of filming people without their consent, the latter really being a crucial issue in why the incident occurred at all. The Police have spent additional time with the bystander group stressing their moral and protective obligations to either discourage, intervene and/or go for assistance. Well is it said that the standard we walk past is the standard we accept. In this instance, once again, our adversary is in one sense social media, which has made the whole fiasco possible and extended its range. These days, anyone can be the producer, director or star in their own movie. We need to redouble our efforts on teaching digital citizenship and we need to take (and have taken) more steps in terms of supervision of out of bounds areas.
Strangely, those furthest from the situation, who have no connection with Shore, have been quick to contact us with scathing comments about School culture. They claim to be able to make a judgement on the whole school from the actions of a few boys over a few minutes. Many of them are the regular brigade who make it their business to attack all independent schools on any pretext. The mood amongst our families, whom I and other Executive staff consulted extensively at Saturday’s sport and co-curricular events, is calm and supportive. They understand the culture of the School is positive and strong, and that these outbreaks at Shore are rare and, far from defining its culture, are atypical outliers.
A few within our community have made contact, with the proposition that such issues should not arise in a Christian school. This is right, but it is wrong. It is certainly right in terms of our ethical position, but wrong in thinking that we can thereby create some kind of paradise. One is reminded of the proverb about leading a horse to water. Jesus himself advanced the unpopular idea that we are not perfectible for, as he said ‘out of the heart come evil thoughts….these are what defile a person’ (Matthew 15:19-20). It would, therefore, be naïve to believe that we can eradicate all such incidents. Our intention is to provide appropriate positive instruction, complemented by sufficient negative sanctions, to maintain comparable outbreaks at the level of rarities, infrequent events that do not define but are in fact intolerable departures from our culture.
We would be foolish to attempt to cover all this up. In fact, we shared the information, once we understood its dynamics, with parents of Year 10, which ironically is how the media got hold of both the story and the video. We then shared the information with parents of the whole school. We would also be foolish not to understand that we are living in a new age, manifestly so because of the power and reach of cameras on iPhones and of social media. We will again insist and continue to enforce that our policy is that phones, if they must be brought to School for reasons of safe travel, are in lockers during the day. We will also reinforce that the overwhelming majority of our boys are fine young men who will not be tarred by outsider characterisation of them as people of ill-repute. We will reject the notion from some outsiders that masculinity is inherently toxic, especially in large gatherings as a school. Our boys are growing into fine young men. We see it daily through their many endeavours. We will insist that they call out any inappropriate action in connection with the School and not submit to the cowardly role of bystander. Courage, ethics, goodwill, tenacity. Enduring values of kindness, and contributing to the common good, need to define us.
Dr John Collier
Headmaster