The girls are reminded regularly that they can come to see me at any time. Unless I’m in the middle of another meeting, my door is always open and some pop in regularly for a chat, while others clearly have to screw up some courage to do it (and then typically offer a backhanded comment along the lines of ‘you’re not nearly as scary as I thought!’). At the end of last term, quite a few Year 12 girls came by my office to say a personal goodbye, including one who told me, with artless honesty, that a personal meeting with me was ‘on her bucket list’.
The one thing that came up with every girl as she discussed her time at Queenwood was Assembly. It is an important half hour each week. Most of us will have pretty clear recollections of our own school assemblies, and perhaps can even dredge up the words of school songs and other ceremonies. There is something about the ritual of coming together which goes beyond the weekly round of announcements, congratulations and performances – important as they are. Simply coming together regularly creates memories which bind. It reminds us all that we are part of something bigger, and is a key mechanism to build culture.
For me, as Principal, it is an important time to communicate with the girls. Like many schools, we use some assemblies to present key messages, including from visiting speakers, but at Queenwood we also do something slightly unusual, in that we choose really meaty topics simply out of intellectual curiosity. A sample of topics from this year:
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The 10th anniversary of the Apology to the Stolen Generation – in which we looked at the historical events, and the ongoing repercussions.
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The 75th anniversary of the Battle of the Atlantic – and in particular the remarkably simple mathematical principles used by the Allies to win it. (We looked at the fact that doubling the circumference of a circle quadruples its area – which had a direct impact on the way the Royal Navy assembled Atlantic convoys. And the calculation of the midpoint in coordinate geometry, and how this revolutionised bombing strategy against German U-Boats.) This was the beginning of what we now call Operational Research. (So next time Year 10 says ‘when are we ever going to use this?’, there’s a nice clear answer…)
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A talk on spirituality by Rabbi Krebs – in which he argued that spirituality is not a detached, theoretical exercise but something that underpins everything we are and do.
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The 50th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King – its context within the American civil rights movement, and its influence on civil rights in Australia.
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The latest research into Neanderthals, and how the scientific understanding of the evolution of homo sapiens has changed over time.
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The colour red – everything from its role in Aboriginal culture (eg use of ochre in trade and art), its significance in mediaeval art, the impact of improving technology making new pigments available over many centuries, up to modern-day use of Pantones to define colours and the role of colour in fashion and global commerce.
The only criterion for an Assembly topic is that it must be interesting. Doing this kind of talk well takes substantial preparation. It’s also not the easiest gig – the audience include girls aged 11 through to 18 – and on any given day, some of them won’t necessarily be in the mood to listen. But it interested me that in their final days of school, these Year 12s all talked about things they had heard in Assembly – even from four or five years ago – and each of them mentioned something different.
They talked about an Assembly from 2014 on the status of women in Saudi Arabia. They talked about one in 2015 which looked at the impact of the Royal Navy on the English language (‘turn a blind eye’, ‘at loggerheads’). They remembered the one on Aboriginal land management from 2016, and another on how preferential voting works. They remembered the story of Creswell Eastman and how he saved the lives of millions through the use of iodine, or the time they first learnt about the Atlantic slave trade and how it had been facilitated by the pre-existing African slave trade. On any given day, the message of an assembly will resonate more with some than others but over time it can make a profound impact on how they think and how they see the world.
Some argue that we should engage children by making things relevant to their world, couching everything in terms of that which they already like and understand. I disagree. Our job is to draw our girls into the unfamiliar. We do not seek to make things easy and comfortable: instead, we expect all of our girls to engage with serious (and interesting!) ideas about the world. Set the bar high and – as those Year 12s showed – they will rise to it.
Ms Elizabeth Stone
Principal