JOURNEYING WITH YOUTH
“Founding this school was an experiment, an audacious experiment,” says Riverview Principal Dr Paul Hine about the vision that led to Saint Ignatius’ College Riverview opening its doors in 1880. All photos: David McMahon
By David McMahon, Communications Manager, Society of Jesus in Australia
The Jesuits arrived in Sydney in 1878 to establish schools on the North Shore. What do you think their reaction would be here and now?
I think they would be astonished. In 1879, the Jesuits established St Aloysius’ College, a day school, and their idea the next year of establishing a boarding school so far down the Lane Cove River was either a stroke of genius or a stroke of folly. There was a clear conviction to ‘give it a go, but its chances of coming off may not be high.’
On that first day of classes in 1880, there were only 12 boys in the school. They were intrepid young men because many had come from across New South Wales. At a time when transport systems weren’t robust, they took a horse and cart from the farm, and then found a train station – however far away – then came into Sydney Town as it was then.
The 12 who started on day one became 26 by the end of the year, and by the end of the decade, the 26 had become 100. That was the early consolidation of the school as its reputation began to spread. There’s a beautiful memoir written in 1896 about the impact of Jesuit education in Sydney, with particular reference to some of the early graduates coming from here: “It will be the lot of many of the students under the care of the Jesuit Fathers, to hold in time to come, leading positions in all walks of life, and … I shall not be using the language of exaggeration, when I express my belief that from these walls will go forth not a few statesmen who will serve their country by their talent and profession.” What a portent those words have proven to be.
By reputation, the school expanded its mandate, its brief, its operation, but this was not without its challenges. The 1890s brought the first major drought in Australia and it looked as though a number of the boys would have to go back home. Instead, the Jesuits said, “No, you will stay. We will make sure it works financially for your families.” So the early years were rocky, to say the least.
There’s also a great story from a few years after Riverview was consolidated: a boy who was bound for Joey’s (St Joseph’s College Hunters Hill, a Marist Brothers school established in 1881) on the same ferry got off here because it was the earlier stop. When his mother found out that he was at Riverview many weeks later, she said, “Well, no, you’re supposed to go to Joey’s.” He replied, “But I like it here,” and he stayed on for his education. This is a true story.
What a history.
Oh, a very extraordinary history. It wasn’t until 1923, when the school had operated for more than 40 years, that Riverview became a day-boarding school. The intention was always to be primarily a boarding school rather than a day-school–with-boarders. Our oldest families span six generations, but they’re boarding families.
Founding this school was an experiment, an audacious experiment. Would it get off the ground? There was hope and prayer that it would, but the reality was that nothing was made safe for a couple of decades in the true sense because of the size of this site being so far up the Lane Cove River that it was virtually inaccessible in the early years. The Sydney Harbour Bridge wasn’t completed until 1932 and the whole of the North Shore road system had not been surveyed or developed. Later, it grew quite considerably, particularly in the aftermath of the Second World War, which saw a further period of consolidation for the school.
Father Joseph Dalton SJ, an Irish Jesuit, founded Riverview, where the chapel is named after him. How have you, as the Principal, managed to keep that 19th century vision relevant in the 21st century?
This is not a principal-dependent thing. It’s implicit to the legacy and ongoing presence of the Jesuits and the formation undertaken by staff. We are blessed with a very committed staff, people who take the mission of the school seriously. We have in-service activities that formally enculturate staff into the mission of the College and dedicated staff formation programmes that ensure that the foundational vision is a lived reality in the daily life of the College. This isn’t left to chance. It’s deliberately cultivated from within the staff. It’s those who are in classrooms each and every day, and in the delivery of the broad educational program that staff give witness to that through their own personal and professional lives.
This glass-topped table, notable for its wood-inlaid technique, was a gift from a former Riverview teacher who had a talent in woodwork.
Interestingly enough, this table that we’re sitting at contains the etched emblem of the school motto: “Quantum Potes, Tantum Aude,” which was the original motto chosen by Fr Dalton – “Whatever you can do, so much dare to do.” Again, it’s a statement of audacity, and it’s still a guiding principle of our ongoing story.
The importance of hospitality and welcome, particularly prominent in a school where boys come to live, makes this a little bit different from a day school. There is this sense of family, of hospitality, of warmth and welcome. But in keeping with Fr Dalton’s vision, we have to be a little audacious too, as he was in his day. If we were to put his Latin motto into modern vernacular, it’s all about, “Have a go”. I think it was best said to me by a parent who had a young man here, who told me, “When I knew my son was coming to Riverview, I said to him, ‘You’re joining the carnival. Get on every ride’.” It was such a good way of saying that there are myriad options available and to get immersed in the full life of the College.
A boy may or may not be a debater, may or may not be a musician or a rugby player, but at all costs have a go. I think that’s been one of the driving impulses of the school that really reflects Fr Dalton’s legacy. His remains are interred in the Dalton Chapel and the boarders are in that chapel every week. It’s a touchstone and he is part of the tapestry of school life and culture. Fr Dalton’s not a mythical figure plucked out of history. His is the story upon which the foundations were built – and that spirit remains.
What does Jesuit education mean to you?
It is an education in faith and the teachings of the Christian gospels. That’s pretty much it. That’s its wellspring and as you know, they get variable expression in the different eras and periods of time but I’m very conscious that we need to interpret this in a contemporary sense. This is best expressed through the importance of a faith committed to justice in a Jesuit school.
I have taught in De La Salle schools, Dominican schools and Marist schools, and while service is a requirement of all Catholic schools, it has a very particular expression in a Jesuit school – one which is non-negotiable. In various contexts, social justice and faith in service programmes are lived out in different ways. Here at Riverview, I have never written a school testimonial for a student, be it to universities in the United States or to UK universities such as Cambridge and Oxford without commenting on service. I will always list the service activities in which that young man has been involved, particularly if they have been involved in overseas immersions. The reality is when they do that, they participate at the deepest levels in what a Jesuit education is about.
Service is about going beyond the individual, subjugating the needs of the individual to the needs of others. It’s a very profound human experience, to surrender oneself to the needs of another. We ask our boys to do that, and many of them do it with honour and integrity. They take a step into a frontier that they are unfamiliar with and one that they will become confronted by in some instances. We know that. It’s asking them in their own rarefied world to go to the margins. And we’re not just asking; we are requiring that. How far they go into that is of course a statement of choice, but many go into it many times more than we ask, which for us is rewarding. The other distinctive thing about Jesuit education is that it speaks to a scholastic tradition in the Church, which is quite unique.
Unique in what sense, Paul? And I ask this despite – or perhaps because of – the fact that I was educated by Belgian and Canadian Jesuits.
Let me read to you just two sentences from this book (‘A Jesuit Education Reader’, by George W. Traub, 2008). “In all of its endeavours, Jesuit education is distinguished by intellectual excellence and academic rigour. Because of this, the schools set demanding standards for both students and faculty.” Some very clear directives are contained in those words.
But there is a requirement that excellence emerges in all human endeavours. For example, we have First Nations boys here who do not have the institutional background in schooling that many of our other students do. We have boys in our Inclusion Programme who have significant psychosocial needs. We have refugee boys and one of our most recent is from Ukraine. But we ask those boys to embrace that impulse and aspiration in exactly the same way, and to the level that they can, as everybody else.
In the case of the service programme, our boys with special needs have to do the required number of service hours. If there is a Year 9 challenge, which is physically tough, all boys need to ride 100 kilometres on a mountain bike on difficult roads and paddle 60 kilometres down a river. Physically and psychosocially, some boys don’t have the conditioning for that, but we put them into a team with three other strong boys so that they all get across the line.
“The importance of hospitality and welcome, particularly prominent in a school where kids come to live, makes this a little bit different from a day school. There is this sense of family, of hospitality, of warmth and welcome.”
At the other end, we’ve had boys of considerable academic and sporting ability who have successfully entered Oxford, Cambridge, the London School of Economics and Ivy League universities in the United States. So that’s the top end, but there’s another group of boys for whom securing their HSC is an enormous achievement. We say here, “If a C is your Everest, climb it!”. Do the best that you can, according to the aspiration and spirit of the school with its requirements that are varied based upon context and individual needs. Riverview is not an ATAR factory nor a Rugby or Rowing academy. We are a school that is comprehensive right across the board. And to value that diversity speaks to a different kind of school, not better or worse, just different. We will never go to the top levels of the ATAR passes because with First Nations boys and inclusion boys with special needs, it’s never going to happen. But it doesn’t stop them fulfilling their obligations to what Jesuit education requires of them. It is not about being the best, but their best.
More importantly, it doesn’t stop them aspiring.
Correct. So that’s what I believe Jesuit education is: education and faith; education and service; and education and aspiration – based upon the fact that we are a school of learning. That’s why they come here. You go to a hospital if you’re not well and you want to get better. You come to a school to learn. You need to learn. You need to honour the primary impulse that sits within the vision of the organisation.
You once said, “Contemporary Ignatian educators share and continue Saint Ignatius’s dream of transforming the lives of young people, particularly those who suffer marginalisation and adversity.” It’s an interesting statement and that is your touchstone, isn’t it? I read that in everything you write.
Yes, it is my touchstone. I come from the western suburbs of Adelaide, and my Dad worked at General Motors Holden all his life. He was a tradesman. People like me were never meant to come to schools like this, let alone run them. The power of education can be quite transformative. None of our family had ever been to university or anything like that. Those that sit on the margins are the ones who need our most intensive support, whoever they may be.
Once, we had a boy who came to us because he was living in a caravan with his mother. His father had passed away many years earlier and he hadn’t had much institutional schooling. But he was referred to us by an Old Boy as being perhaps a young man of potential. At the time, he was quite hooked on computers and he was into gaming. We thought, “Is this going to work or is this going to be a recipe for disaster?” Originally, the application was for the boy to join boarding at the start of Year 11, but we thought that might be a big ask, making an adjustment from a remote community in NSW.
So we encouraged the boy to come in the last term of Year 10, just to feel the momentum of school life. Well, this boy walked in and hit the ground running. He surprised us, finishing tenth in the year level that term. Also, he became very committed to the faith life at the College. He’d often attend Mass on Thursday mornings and he had a go at everything. Eventually, he graduated from Year 12 with a score of 98.6 and undertook the study of Pure Philosophy at the Australian National University. He has since graduated with Honours, and is now working in Sydney, but also giving back to communities along the way.
Photographer’s note: The statue of the Sacred Heart in the forecourt-garden of the main building of Saint Ignatius’ College dates back to 1888. It was reportedly purchased by Fr Joseph Dalton SJ and originally placed in the quadrangle not far from the chapel. It stood there for 40 years before being moved to the rose garden in front of the college. The day I visited the College to interview the Principal, Dr Paul Hine, this condensation trail from a jet overflying Sydney was a perfect visual statement in the clear blue sky. As a photographer, I was lucky that the statue stands on a fairly high plinth, giving me a chance to frame a shot without any extraneous features encroaching on the subject.
You talked about being principal and having taught in other schools before you came here. But what elements – intellectual, administrative, planning, logistics – in your background did you bring here?
That’s a good question. I think you always bring the crucible of life experience. Invariably, you bring some subsumed technical things with you: knowledge of governance, strategic planning and all those skills that you’ve learned. But I think it’s more your sense of experience with what life presents in those situations. There are things you simply cannot plan for. Each day of one’s personal and professional life, you’re ambushed by something and it’s how you then make that work.
It took me probably three days to find out after my first principalship that if you sit in an office and get stuck with policy documents and external authorities and the like, you know nothing about what’s going on in the school. You need to get out and walk around, and you need to get to know the teachers and the students and the parents. That’s where I think the learned experience of it lies, rather than technical and administrative skills. Because when there are critical incidents, there’s no manual you can refer to as it is the people and the community who need to be managed.
In traditional Jesuit terminology, cura personalis aims to provide care and support for the whole individual. A lot of your writing deals with that both directly and obliquely. How does one do this best?
This is one of the great challenges in schools because cura personalis is about individuating care. Equivalence is not equity. They’re different things. So to do the same things across the board for different people would have deleterious effects on some. It’s about best understanding what needs there are. That sometimes means there is a rule with two sub-sets: one for one and one for another. That can be the cause of criticism, but we’re not dealing with the same people, same circumstance, the same needs. And I think that’s where cura personalis addresses individual needs to try to understand and customise responses to students.
That’s why we’ve spent so much time on the pastoral system here. There are more resources spent on pastoral care, or at least as many resources, as any other aspect in the school. Each and every day, each and every boy needs to go to their Head of House and eyeball him or her and say, “Good morning.” That exchange often become the window into: is there something wrong? And then, every day they meet in small groups with their mentor, who is a teacher. That’s in addition to the morning hello and check in with their Head of House.
We all bring our life experiences to the work that we do. My view is that if you want to be a man for others but you’re not doing it in your own environment in the school, you’re not going to do it outside either.
You once said in an interview that when you look back at Saint Ignatius’s story, he wasn’t actually convinced that education was the place he wanted to go. He wanted to go into prison ministries. He wanted to save young women from prostitution. But the First Companions persuaded him, as did factors that surrounded them at the time, including I think a bit of papal advice, to go down the path of education.
This is why I think Ignatius was aware of and responsive to the needs of his time. And again, there’s a bit of audacity here. He ventured into the realm of education, which at the time was more exclusively the preserve of the rich and the wealthy. In opening the first Jesuit school in Messina back in the 1540s, he created a world where children whose families could not afford to pay for their education would nonetheless receive schooling that would be paid for by benefactors instead.
This was quite a novel and revolutionary idea. Ignatius believed that if you educate young people in their formative years, you can shape them in a way that will make a substantial difference to their adult years. Ignatius did not apologise for encouraging his students to aim high for influential careers beyond school and joining the upper echelons of society, for it was here that they could be agents of change in their world.
He believed that if there was the opportunity, it would set the stage for the most dramatic change to occur. I’m sure you’re aware of liberation theology: if you’re going to be liberated, what are the forces of oppression that hold you back and how do you delimit those forces of oppression in order to be truly liberated? I wouldn’t say he was an early liberation theologian, don’t get me wrong. But this idea of being able to influence people with a spirit and a belief that they could – and can – make a meaningful contribution and a difference to their world by removing barriers as a result of their education has seen graduates of Jesuit schools all over the world do exactly that.
This depiction of Riverview’s Dalton Memorial Chapel is an enlarged print of one of five paintings in 1996 by John Haycraft, a professional artist who was a Riverview parent at the time. College archivist Catherine Hobbs said, “He gifted the originals to the College and they were displayed as part of the 25th Art and Craft Exhibition that year. Limited-edition prints of the paintings were on sale at the exhibition.”
The artist’s website is johnhaycraft.com