By Frank Moore (Principal)
There has never been a policy against competitive sports at Preshil. What there has been is a general aversion to imposing competitive sports on our children and young people. If the wish to play a competitive game arises from the student body we applaud that and encourage it. The crux of the school philosophy is to recognise and collaborate with all genuine grass-roots impulses, wishes that take flower within the student body. Let me illustrate. A week or two ago we ran a Q&A evening for the general public. It was voted a great success. Two past students joined the panel. They were Rachel Nordlinger, Senior Lecturer in Linguistics at Melbourne University and Liam Santamaria, teacher at Greythorn Primary School. Rachel graduated in 1985 and Liam in 1997. The focus of the evening was around the theme ‘Achievement at Being Yourself’. When Liam left in 1997 he developed his talent as a basketballer and went on to play at a national level. I asked him how this had come about. The following is a transcript of what he said at the Q&A:
When I was in Years 8, 9 and 10 over at Yallambee (former school site opposite Arlington), myself and a whole bunch of mates, we all played a lot of basketball. We played before school and at all of the breaks and on the weekends and we all played for teams on the weekends and, well, we wanted to put together a team, a school team. We thought, well a lot of other schools have school teams and they think they’re pretty good, and well we think we would probably be better than them. And so we approached the teachers and said we want to put together a Preshil basketball team and play against Xavier and Carey and eat ‘em. And, you know, the response was ‘OK great’. There never has been a Preshil basketball team before, but let’s do it. And you know, looking back, I realise that there was a potential for the response to be – there’s never really been a Preshil basketball team, it’s not kind of what we do here, so…er, maybe something else. But that wasn’t the response. The response was OK great, so what are you going to do to make that happen? And so we went back and said, gee, it’s not as easy as we thought. And so we approached the staff about getting the funds from the canteen for a couple of weeks to buy uniforms, which was okay, and so we designed the uniforms and I got on the phone and ordered them. They came in. I ran tryouts and then we worked the phones and we went to Xavier and we played Xavier and we went to Carey and we played Carey. We went to Trinity… Voice: Did you beat them? We beat all of them (laughter) and we consider ourselves, the, you know, basketball champions of Year 10, 1995 of all those different school systems because we beat everybody. And to me – that was us…and we missed some class time to do that, just like you would do if you were at one of those other schools, and to me that was us driving the school, running the school.”
This is a good illustration of what has happened many times during my long relationship with the school.
Bringing out the essential giftedness in a child is something that is more likely to happen through letting children make choices in a stimulating environment where there are lots of options rather than tying them down to a prescriptive curriculum of adult design. In the 1970s, Ivan Illich, a Viennese social philosopher, came to Melbourne briefly and gave one notable public lecture at Melbourne University. I was sitting in the front row. He has been described as ‘an archaeologist of ideas – someone who helped us to see the present in a truer and richer perspective.’ Illich described two kinds of human societies – convivial and manipulative. Convivial societies have no end in mind except the celebration of life whereas manipulative societies have a particular end in mind.
That end may be quite benign: a law-abiding citizen, a particular set of values and so on. All this is laudable but if it becomes the major focus of a school then manipulation of one kind or another will occur in order to get the desired outcome. And often the desired outcome will not be achieved simply because of the natural human wilfulness that we all feel when confronted by somebody else’s agenda for us. A celebration of life is something a school does together, in a gathered way. Across the two campuses of Preshil on an average morning there will be conversations going on, class discussions where all the issues that are concerning that group are brought out and talked about. These are added to by the forum times when an entire section of the school will come together for more conversation. Preshil children know how to talk and be articulate in public. Liam Santamaria’s wish to mount a basketball team had its first airing at a school forum.
In the weekend Age a couple of weeks ago Martin Flanagan wrote an article about an ex-Preshil graduate, Mischa Merz. Mischa is a boxer as well as a writer and a painter. In 2001 she was the national champion in her weight division. She wrote a book that year entitled ‘Bruising’. I can assure you that nobody introduced boxing to Mischa at Preshil. Flanagan writes ‘Merz went to Preshil, an alternative school that emphasised individuality. Preshil should be delighted with Mischa.’ We are indeed, Martin, because in some sense we paved the way for Mischa to find herself. So coming back to competitive sports – no we don’t stand in the way of any initiative from the students to play in competitions. There’s a big stir for soccer going on at Arlington at the moment. I’m sure it will lead to something.