Page 54 - The Gonzaga Record 1986
P. 54
music and debating, in all of which the school attains a remarkably high
standard.
The Future: Fr Provincial spoke of meeting future challenges. To do
so the school must develop: not to do so would be to die. I should like
to look at two areas, the social and religious, where the school is being
and will continue to be challenged.
This school is a tightly-knit community. It is fee-paying and
academically and religiously selective. The boys are all above or well
above average ability and come from families that are overwhelmingly
professional and higher managerial. These families supply a supportive
environment for the boys. The parents are highly educated and know-
ledgeable. They value education and support their children's educational
efforts. Certainly in all these makes the school an easy one to teach in.
There are occasions when I ask myself whether the school does in fact
provide a sufficiently broad social experience for its pupils. Two very dif-
ferent facts prompt me to ask this question.
In an uncommonly reflective political speech a member of the Dciil
recently pointed out that in our post-affluent society there is an
estrangement - I would be inclined to say a hostility - between those
who have the ability, the initiative and opportunity to gain material
wealth and those who lack that ability, initiative or opportunity. There
follows, on the one hand, an incapacity to understand the process or even
the need to create wealth, and on the other, an insensitivity to the plight
of those who have not been blessed by material success. There has
resulted from this estrangement a divided society which is not just, com-
passionate or Christian.
All institutions and individuals must seek ways to remedy this state of
affairs. If they find themselves disinclined to do so, then the contem-
plation of the horrific consequences of a divided society should surely
persuade them.
The other fact which prompts me to look at the social context of the
school is my observation of young idealists leaving this school and others
like it whose idealism has been corrupted by romanticism. They develop
a romantic view of groups other than their own and reject their own
group or class, they have an impatience with those who create the wealth
they wish to see shared, an inability to see that a life of Christian idealism
could be lived in the world of business, commerce or administration.
They do not see the social role of the managerial class (it is to the
dedication and commitment of many in this class and to their ability to
keep a business going in these harsh times that many owe their
employment and households the existence of a bread winner). They select
professions which often avoid the more abrasive contact with those
whose cause they espouse and with whom they identify. They become a
source not of reconciliation but of division.
Should the development of the school not take cognisance of the
possibility that the close-knit nature of a school's community and the
52
standard.
The Future: Fr Provincial spoke of meeting future challenges. To do
so the school must develop: not to do so would be to die. I should like
to look at two areas, the social and religious, where the school is being
and will continue to be challenged.
This school is a tightly-knit community. It is fee-paying and
academically and religiously selective. The boys are all above or well
above average ability and come from families that are overwhelmingly
professional and higher managerial. These families supply a supportive
environment for the boys. The parents are highly educated and know-
ledgeable. They value education and support their children's educational
efforts. Certainly in all these makes the school an easy one to teach in.
There are occasions when I ask myself whether the school does in fact
provide a sufficiently broad social experience for its pupils. Two very dif-
ferent facts prompt me to ask this question.
In an uncommonly reflective political speech a member of the Dciil
recently pointed out that in our post-affluent society there is an
estrangement - I would be inclined to say a hostility - between those
who have the ability, the initiative and opportunity to gain material
wealth and those who lack that ability, initiative or opportunity. There
follows, on the one hand, an incapacity to understand the process or even
the need to create wealth, and on the other, an insensitivity to the plight
of those who have not been blessed by material success. There has
resulted from this estrangement a divided society which is not just, com-
passionate or Christian.
All institutions and individuals must seek ways to remedy this state of
affairs. If they find themselves disinclined to do so, then the contem-
plation of the horrific consequences of a divided society should surely
persuade them.
The other fact which prompts me to look at the social context of the
school is my observation of young idealists leaving this school and others
like it whose idealism has been corrupted by romanticism. They develop
a romantic view of groups other than their own and reject their own
group or class, they have an impatience with those who create the wealth
they wish to see shared, an inability to see that a life of Christian idealism
could be lived in the world of business, commerce or administration.
They do not see the social role of the managerial class (it is to the
dedication and commitment of many in this class and to their ability to
keep a business going in these harsh times that many owe their
employment and households the existence of a bread winner). They select
professions which often avoid the more abrasive contact with those
whose cause they espouse and with whom they identify. They become a
source not of reconciliation but of division.
Should the development of the school not take cognisance of the
possibility that the close-knit nature of a school's community and the
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