If the events of the last few years, drought, fire and pandemic, have shown us one thing, it is that to survive and thrive we need to adapt and evolve as a society. Schools are places where we can nurture an understanding of the need for change to meet our new circumstances and work with the leaders of tomorrow who will provide us with the “answers” for our evolving challenges.
As a school that looks to the future and learns from the past, St Columba supports our country’s future leaders by offering them access to a view that offers hope rather than despair.
We can do this by focussing on:
Understanding our Context: Education, being a social institution must serve the needs of its society. It must operate in a way that is sustainable and evolves to meet the challenges of our local community and a fast-changing and unpredictable globalized world.
Allowing our students to ask the big questions and look for answers: We have to offer our students the opportunity to grow in ways that will allow them not only personal success but the opportunity to make the world better through their efforts. We cannot accept that the current ways of dealing with challenges are the only ways, and live in cages created by our currently held attitudes and limitations.
Confront fear: In a world that seems to lurch from crisis to crisis and where doubt is constantly cast on our leaders’ behaviour and our social structures, it is too easy to give in to fear and despair. Our schools have to be beacons of hope.
Leadership: it is not enough to critique leaders. Schools need to focus on creating new leaders, who are willing and able to support and lead their communities into the future.
Structural thinking: A successful future will rely on our ongoing capacity to evolve our structures and institutions, so that they address the world of today and tomorrow without being dragged back by antiquated or dysfunctional thinking. We owe our young people the opportunity to develop ideas and innovations that will save us from ourselves.
Teaching and learning: Education and schools have to be able to offer students an exciting, powerful alternative to boring, incremental ideas and processes. As the world changes, so must education.
If we are to offer a sustainable future to our young people, these must become essential aspects of education!
 | Mr Terry Muldoon Principal, St Columba Anglican School |