Grammar Gazette- Issue 2, 2011

grammar gazette SPRING 2011

A twenty-first century educational renaissance?

In times of radical change, the learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves perfectly equipped for a world that no longer exists. Eric Hoffer

intellectual breadth and the agility to navigate disciplines and connect ideas are 21st century necessities, We aspire to marry inquiring minds to individual responsibility; we do not wish them simply to critique society but instead to imaginatively and wisely constitute it. In fact, we propose a 21st century Renaissance in learning where exceptional scholarship, imagination, wisdom and integrity pervade teaching and learning. Finally, to be humanistic—to live humanism—in an educational context means that we must assert anew the importance of the teacher. Not as a seat of all wisdom but as guarantor of balance in learning, protector of diversity and research, and guardian of the importance of yearning for truth and beauty—in all their manifestations. Our 21st century ‘renaissance’ girls will apply systematic curiosity in contemporary learning places with judicious engagement and a commitment to life-wide learning. The young women of our school will benefit hugely by having transferable talents that enable them to navigate complex issues and problems , write and speak with clarity, and think deeply.

What an amazing time to re-design educational experiences for our young Grammar women! As our world vectors towards a new enlightenment, how do we respond, how do we prepare to inhabit this world and grow, rather than shrink, as human beings? At this School there has always been a humanistic underpinning to education─the sort of ideas which Don Markwell identifies as ‘a large and liberal education’— ideas which act as a constant reminder of who we are and the commonalities that bind us. Now, as the School works towards its new aspiration to lead in exceptional scholarship, we believe that this humanist approach to education is required more than ever. Humanism provides a basis for our girls to change with technological advances rather than be changed by them. The discipline of the humanities must truly be a discipline again: a way to be fully committed to the pursuit of higher order thinking, diverse concepts and truth—all the while cognisant of truth’s myriad complexities. This philosophy is applicable and necessary across the curriculum and challenges a falsely demarcated world. In fact, a transdisciplinary approach to learning is one of the principles which will drive our educational Design at Brisbane Girls Grammar School because we know that

just the wider accessibility of ideas contained in ancient texts but argued in The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962), that technology is not simply an invention but a revolution unto itself which exerts “a gravitational effect on cognition which in turn affects social organisation and perceptual habits”. Today’s exemplar of a comparable revolutionary phenomenon is, undoubtedly, the Internet. This digital Gutenberg has rendered access to voluminous information and global communications instantly—and has done so with more democratic universality than the original. It has had the impact of tectonically shifting history’s trajectory; the result is a world of possibilities, hitherto unimagined realities, breakthroughs in perception that offer possibilities both good and bad. This is the modern day Renaissance.

he School’s new Strategic Design underpins the next phase of our educational delivery at a time of radical change in the accessibility of information not dissimilar to that of that of a much earlier era, the Renaissance. As we know, the technological marvel that drove the first Renaissance was the invention of the mechanised Gutenberg printing press. Books became available to those beyond the literate elite; copies of the Bible and Latin and Greek classics reached a wider audience who could draw personal, rather than officially mediated, messages from these texts. Marshall McLuhan, the renowned essayist of culture and “prophet of the electronic age”, had much to say on the impact of mass media long before the reality of a World Wide Web or social media. He believed the key development that led to the Renaissance was not

MRS MARISE MCCONAGHY, DEPUTY PRINCIPAL

REFERENCES Hoffer, E. (1973). BrainyQuote.com . Retrieved 8 September 2011, from BrainyQuote.com http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/ quotes/e/erichoffer109153.html Markwell, D. (2010). Remarks for a forum on The end of liberal education , Otonabee College, Trent University, Ontario, Tuesday 9 February. McLuhan, M. (1962). The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man . Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

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