Faculty Report

Author Neil Gaiman suggests that “fiction gives us empathy: it puts us inside the minds of other people, gives us the gifts of seeing the world through their eyes. Fiction is a lie that tells us true things, over and over.”

On their own quest for the truth, our Year 7 students have embarked on a ‘career’ as professional travel writers. They have been tasked with the job of creating content aimed at a specific audience and through their travel experience, they have been prompted to think critically about each destination, focusing on culture and the environment. Keeping with this theme, our Year 8 students have been provided the opportunity to reflect on our world and to investigate the complexities of the human experience in the dystopian novel The Giver. In Year 9, students have delved into the nuances of heroism, debating the various attributes of ‘true’ heroism.

In the Senior School, there has been an overriding theme of texts that explore empathy woven through the curriculum. Through The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, the Year 10 students have taken a deep dive into the repressive world of Victorian London, with Robert Louis Stevenson exploring the complexity of human nature and reminding us that “man is not truly one, but truly two.” Our Year 11 students, in their study of Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, have been analysing the perils of capital punishment in 1959 middle America. Despite the heinous death of the Clutter family “in cold blood”, students are encouraged to question whether “judicial homicide” is an appropriate penalty rather than “pity… [and] mercy”. Finally, the Year 12 students, in their final assessment task for 2026, are investigating the difficulties of living in post-apartheid South Africa, offering the valuable advice that “life is full of pain. Let the pain sharpen you, but don’t hold on to it. Don’t be bitter.” 

While the texts studied across the year levels may be diverse, the various key themes of justice, hope, honour, forgiveness and redemption are timeless. Whether they be European, American or Australian, all texts have great literary merit in exploring the human condition and universal longings across the centuries. 

Clare Caldwell

Faculty Head Senior English

Kelsey Knecht

Faculty Head Senior English