CGGS NEWSLETTER 24 - 22 AUGUST 2008

MESSAGE FROM THE PRINCIPAL

Year 6 Father/Daughter Dinner

In last week’s CGGS Newsletter I spoke about the Father/Daughter Dinner which marks the transition of our Year 6 students into the Senior School. I would like to offer a section of the speech made by Alan Behm, father our of Junior School Head Girl, Phyllida, on the evening.

Our daughters have self-esteem: they are comfortable in their own skins. "Know thyself" is usually attributed to Socrates. In fact, "Know thyself" was one of two inscriptions above the entrance to the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, the home of the Delphic Oracle – a woman, of course. The other was "Nothing to excess". Together, these define what it means to be at home with oneself, to be proud of who we are, to value how we are, and to acknowledge the worth of others without envy. And if there is one thing that these remarkable young women have in abundance it is this: they are confident – they know who they are and they like who they are."

(Alan’s full speech can be viewed here:
http://www.cggs.act.edu.au/pages/images/Y6%20Father%20Daughter%20Dinner%2008%20A%20behm%20speech.pdf)

Student Leadership 2009

I particularly wanted to highlight Alan Behm’s speech because I am currently interviewing students who have applied for leadership positions within the School. I have been impressed by the resumes provided by the students and their ability to articulate their reasons for seeking a student leadership position within the School.

In my interviews with the students, the themes of making a contribution to the School and developing positive relationships between all Year groups have become evident. It is evident that all students who have applied for student leadership positions are enthusiastic and articulate young women. During Assembly this week, the students made presentations to their fellow students and staff. I am confident that our Student Leaders of 2009 will make a valued contribution to the School.

Women as global citizens in the 21st century

At this year’s Alliance of Girls’ Schools Conference, Susan Ryan AO, Chair of Human Rights Act for Australian campaign, delivered the following address. The theme of the conference was Broadening the horizons for girls and the speakers provided much food for thought.

"This new century has seen renewed debate about the meaning of citizenship in Australia. At the same time, our responsibilities to the rest of the world have come into sharper focus with wars, famine, dictatorial regimes and civil unrest.

When such things occur, women with children suffer most.

Young Australian women can consider and participate in our debates about Australian citizenship. They could actively consider if a human rights charter could strengthen citizenship. How could girls and women contribute to such a charter?

As we work harder recognising and protecting human rights at home, young Australians could make links with world bodies dedicated to human rights protection everywhere.

This year marks the 60th anniversary of the UN Declaration of Human Rights, the document which is the foundation of all modern human rights laws. An American woman, Eleanor Roosevelt, was largely responsible for the declaration. An Australian woman, Jesse Street, was also directly involved in developing this seminal document. What similar actions are available to Australian women 60 years later?

You are all involved in a unique experience in the history of the human race. You are teaching girls at a time when the circumstances of the lives of women and girls, particularly in first world countries like Australia, are different and better than they have ever been. You are teaching the first generation of girls who will move into a society where discrimination based on sex has been illegal for a quarter of a century. In the 21st century in Australia as in the rest of the developed world, women are not officially barred from any occupations, professions, courses of study or training.

The range of lifestyles for women acceptable to mainstream society has never been wider. Women can marry, remain single, live in a same sex relationship, have children, or remain without children. None of these actions provokes societal outrage, or excludes them from jobs or community life. Women now live longer than at any time in recorded history and in better health. Economic independence can be enjoyed by most women and is certainly available to all your students as they move into adult life.

The full range of career options is quite visible to schoolgirls, should they choose to look. They can see females in political leadership, at the top of all professions including as judges in the High Court. They can see a woman who is a police commissioner, a woman who is the CEO of a major bank. They can see female school principals, professors and university vice chancellors. Women artists, writers, film producers are no longer trivialised. When they watch television your students can see female journalists reporting from war zones and other areas of crucial importance to all of us.

In September of this year, they will see a distinguished Australian woman, Quentin Bryce, become the first woman to hold, as Governor-General, the top role available to an Australian citizen under our Constitution.

As I list these instances of female progress, I do not have to point out to this audience how recent these developments are, how even one generation ago, girls faced much more restricted opportunities in education, work and lifestyle. Very few of the examples I have just listed would have been available. Discrimination in the workforce, in the provision of services, in education and training was legal. It was widely practised and accepted by society as normal, acceptable and the way things were. Many women, especially if they were mothers, were of necessity dependent on a husband or on the state. Women who sought childcare services for their infant children were accused of gross maternal negligence. All that has changed, overwhelmingly for the better, for women themselves, and for the entire society.

Of course I could, and maybe should qualify this optimistic presentation of what is possible for young women today by noting that poverty, inflexible work demands, popular culture with its oppressive stereotypes about body size and shape, and the persistence of male prejudice can and do make the lives of many younger and older women miserable.

But my purpose here is to project forward, to discuss some of the ways in which the girls you teach can become effective citizens. I would like to refer to the new challenges for your students, accepting for the moment that most of the old ones have been tackled with some effectiveness.

It is a truism to say we live in a global world. It means, in practice, that your students are likely to live and work in societies all around the world. None of the big issues facing Australians are restricted to our national borders. Climate change has made even the most parochial of us aware that we live in one world, as has international terrorism. Issues of human rights have become much closer to home. As a consequence of wars and civil disturbances on the other side of the world, our ideas about citizenship are challenged.

It is relevant to my theme that we are having a big public conversation about citizenship now, more than a century after the states of the colony federated and we became a nation. Throughout all the last century, refugees, asylum seekers and regular immigrants came to Australia. With little public controversy or discussion, most of them became Australian citizens. Now suddenly we have a new citizenship test, and lots of controversy around this notion.

Why? It seems that in recent years, we have tried to redefine and make new rules about citizenship, not to help those who want to become citizens, but because we want to exclude some from this benefit. Those we want to exclude are culturally very different from us, and usually victims of horrific circumstances in their land of birth. I am referring to Muslims from the war zones of the Middle East and to refugees from places like Darfur and other parts of the Sudan. I suggest we need to reconsider our national tendencies to exclude these human beings. We should, I suggest, consider their circumstances in the context of human rights, overseas and here in Australia.

If today’s schoolgirls focus on the proposed new citizenship rules, they could consider the arguments against these rules by successful immigrants of previous generations. Vast numbers of Greek and Italian migrants, for example, became outstanding citizens without knowing anything about Donald Bradman.

What has changed? The world has, in that we are all trying to deal with global terrorism, and rightly trying to find effective ways of protecting our own society from it. But does the Don Bradman test help us here? What other notions of citizenship would better reflect the world in which our students live? Already the are part of a society made up of people from every culture, race and religion in the world. Some of these adapt to our system readily and thrive. Others find huge difficulty and experience rejection and discrimination. Their human rights are not recognised.

What does such behaviour mean for 21st century notions of Australian citizenship? Can we do better? Can we define citizenship in ways that will help everyone feel included and enable everyone to make a positive contribution? I hope your students become involved in such considerations, and when they do, make their suggestions to those who are making the rules.

In Australia we have no national law defining and protecting human rights. In 1948, when the world community was struggling to recover and rebuild after the horrors of the second World War, it was an Australian Foreign Minister Dr Bert Evatt who, as first president of the United Nations, presided over the securing of the International Declaration of Human Rights. The driving force behind the declaration was Eleanor Roosevelt, and she was assisted by Australian activist Jesse Street. Since that historic Declaration, all advanced democratic countries have introduced human rights laws based on its principles. Australia has not.

The Rudd Government has announced its intention to hold a national public inquiry into questions about a human rights law or charter. Such charters are already in place in the ACT and Victoria.

It is extremely important that young Australians get involved as they will, if such a national human rights law is enacted, live all of their adult lives under it. If there is no such law, then they will live all their adult lives in a society vulnerable to the many conflicts and problems that develop when human rights are violated.

If we look to the world’s trouble spots, we see that women and children suffer most in wars, famines and dictatorships. It may be easier for young Australians to feel distress about the vicious oppression of women by the Taliban than examine the treatment of Muslim or African women in some parts of Australia. Human rights are universal, and their protection should be a top priority of every civilised society.

My own view is that as Australians we would enhance our democracy if we achieve a national charter of human rights. I remind you of what Eleanor Roosevelt said: "Documents expressing ideals carry no weight unless the people know them, unless the people understand them, unless the people demand that they be lived."

Susan Just
Principal

MESSAGE FROM THE HEAD OF SENIOR SCHOOL

Senior Council Elections

Nominees for the positions of School Captain, Vice Captain and SRC Chairperson had an opportunity to present a short talk (maximum of 2 minutes) at Assembly on Tuesday. All the candidates spoke extremely well and provided an insight into their potential as leaders in the School.

As it is the first time I have been through the voting process there has been some small technical problems with setting up the voting on the Portal and we have had to delay the vote until Monday of next week. Voting will still run for three days from Monday 25 August until Wednesday 27 August.

Surveys

Stephanie Hawke began interviewing students this week as part of her PhD studies at ANU. I spoke to a number of the students after the interview and they found it an extremely interesting process. They were impressed with the range of questions, even though they said some were difficult to answer. Stephanie has chosen a really interesting focus area in ‘popularity’ within a peer group and the impact this may have on students and they are keen to see the final report when Stephanie has completed her PhD.

This is an important survey and I would encourage you to return the form to Millie Paton in the Principal’s Area. If you have not seen the information regarding the survey, please ask your daughter to pick up a copy from Millie. The more students that participate in the survey, the more relevant the results will become.

Year 10 Semi Formal

I have been most impressed with the work done by the Year 10 Semi Formal Committee this year. Notes went home with Year 10 students last week and the organisation of this important evening is almost finalised. The Committee has done almost all of the work as I have taken a back seat and let them drive the entire process. All seven students have made valuable contributions and they have worked together as a team, well led by Sarah Williams as the Chairperson. The other members of the committee are Sarah Dobbie, Tessa Dunlop, Nikki Gouvoussis, Margaret McGrath, Grace Minehan, Bridget O’Donnell and Ourania Stamatis. This has been a wonderful learning experience for them and I am sure they have enjoyed the process.

Weekend Parties

As a teacher over many years I have often been disturbed by reports that I receive regarding student behaviour over the weekend. It can often be surprising to hear the names of the students and even more surprising when you hear the types of behaviour that occurred. As a parent of a nineteen year old daughter and a sixteen year old son I have been extremely lucky that they have not been interested in getting too involved in the ‘party scene’. It is an extremely difficult time for parents as they watch their children ‘grow up’. One of the things I enjoy doing the most in my position is talking to students and I will often discuss some delicate issues with them. This week, a Head of House came to me in shock as she had been talking about smoking with some of her students. She asked me to have a guess at the number of students in the School who would smoke cigarettes. Looking at students from Year 9 upwards I gave the answer of probably over 60%. From her discussions with the students she agreed with this estimate. The majority of these students would be ‘social smokers’ but we have a number of students in the senior years who know they are addicted and can’t go a full day without a cigarette. Most of these students have been smoking since Year 8.

The ‘party scene’ becomes most dangerous in Year 9 where the idea of drinking alcohol and smoking a cigarette becomes extremely attractive to them. The amount of peer pressure placed on students at this time is enormous and it takes an extremely strong person to resist the temptation. We can educate the students about the effects of alcohol and cigarettes on the body and this is done well over many areas of the School. However, the responsibility of the students’ behaviour over the weekend is not something that, as a School, we can do much about. Often we have to pick up the pieces and work closely with the students because of incidents that occurred over the weekend.

There are a number of simple guides regarding parties -

If you are holding a party for under 18s:

1. Have an invitation list with numbered tickets. Only people with a ticket can enter the party.
2. Ensure the party is in a contained area. Don’t allow people to wander out the front of the house or away from the property.
3. Make sure there is enough adult supervision that is always active.

If your daughter has been invited to a party (especially a sleepover):

1. Check with the parents that the party is invitation only.
2. Ask how many adults will be present.

The most important thing to remember is that peer pressure on your daughter is a very powerful thing. There can often be decisions made by them that surprise you and seem to be out of character. Be proactive in minimising their opportunities to make bad decisions.

Student Achievement

Congratulations to Rebecca Giffard (12B) on winning a $16,000 AFS Scholarship to study in Argentina next year. Rebecca will live with a host family, learn a new language and have the opportunity to see the amazing Andes Mountains, the plains of the Pampas, lush rainforsets and the kilometres of breathtaking Atlantic coastlines. For information on other AFS Scholarships go to: www.afs.org.au.

Bruce Handley
Head of Senior School

MESSAGE FROM THE HEAD OF JUNIOR SCHOOL

This week has been a very exciting week in the Junior School. A fascinating range of characters appeared on Monday morning for the annual Book Week Assembly - fairies, bananas, pirates, ladybirds and a wide variety of other inspiring creations. We even had fairies of a more mature age flitting in and out of Reception and Footloose wannabes of an equally dubious age doing their stuff on stage in front of an empathetic but delighted audience. The highlight was a special visit from some understudies to Li Cunxin, the famous Chinese Dancer, now residing in Australia, who has inspired many readers of Mao’s Last Dancer and The Peasant Prince which was nominated for an award this year. These understudies, teachers, David Kemp (Y5) and Brett Bacon (Y2), had studied the grace and charm of Li’s style all last weekend to produce a thrilling and uplifting performance of Flashdance, suitably dressed in colour coordinated spangles and stubbies.

The theme of Book Week this year is Fuel your Mind and the focus of all the celebrations of the week is on the ways we can ensure our minds are fully charged and functioning to their maximum potential, including, of course, feeding them with a variety of literature and information books. Book Week in the Junior School extends over two weeks and special events have been arranged until 29 August. They include author visits by Mark Carthew, Sherryl Clarke, Christina Booth and Kate Forsyth and special visits to the National Library of Australia and an author seminar at Sts Peter and Paul in Garran by groups of students.

A Book Fair has been set up in the Library until Friday 22 August and the final event will be the wonderful Pyjamarama in the Library on 29 August for the students and their families from Prep to Year 6. Our thanks go to our two teacher librarians, Barbara Selleck and Corrie Bennett, for the stimulating program they have arranged for the two weeks.

IMPORTANT DATES