From the Vice Principal

The Purpose of Education

A former principal of mine once said to me that 'education is subject to fads like no other profession'. It's hard to argue with him. Accounting, the law, medicine, engineering, these professions have very stable approaches to their discipline and evolve slowly, carefully, deliberately. Education, by contrast, is debated throughout the media, at the dinner table and between educators relentlessly with both passion and conviction. 

There are many reasons why this is the case from the structural and who holds power and control over what we learn as a nation; to the scientific and advances in understanding of how we learn; to the technological and what is possible. Education, it seems, is a profession constantly in a state of flux. 

Professor Gert Biesta from The University of Melbourne has contributed to this discussion by framing the challenge of schooling through the lens of two competing purposes: school as fulfilling a function for society, families and students, and school as an institution of society that guards, protects, and perpetuates across generations a safe space for children to engage in the journey into adulthood. This twin purpose, he argues, is both complementary and a source of tension. Fundamental though is the concept that what both purposes desire is that children emerge from school with a sense of identity, a sense of purpose, a sense of how the student exists in their world as an adult. Weighty stuff. 

Biesta's point resonates, I believe, with Huntingtower's commitment to a broad, holistic education where learning in the classroom is supported by learning at the debating lectern, learning on the stage, learning on the oval and through the myriad other activities that constitute the life of the school. It keeps us all busy, no doubt, but it keeps us connected with not only our lives but our broader sense of our own identity. 

The full article can be found here:

Cameron Bacholer

Vice Principal (Teaching & Learning)