Grammar Gazette- Issue 2, 2013

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Educating Girls : Leading in exceptional scholarship ARTICLE

ON A BRIGHT SPRING DAY IN EARLY SEPTEMBER, BRISBANE GIRLS GRAMMAR SCHOOL WAS HONOURED BY THE PRESENCE OF THE GOVERNOR-GENERAL OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA, HER EXCELLENCY THE HONOURABLE QUENTIN BRYCE ao cvo , TO OFFICIALLY LAUNCH EDUCATING GIRLS .

were denied opportunities in the past. Educating Girls is a celebration of more than a century of reform in women’s education, which has been the greatest achievement of the women’s movement of my generation. It is an elegant persuasive argument, not a logical, dry, linear chronology that these pages hold. The story is a proud, uplifting, enduring narrative of scholarship, care, opportunity and inspiration for young women.’ Educating Girls highlights the passion for scholarship and the desire to produce the very best in every girl that is Brisbane Girls Grammar School’s philosophy.

Commissioned by immediate-past Principal Dr Amanda Bell and written by Australian educationalist Professor Erica McWilliam, Educating Girls is a revealing account of the struggle for educational equality set against the historic backdrop of colonial Queensland’s aspirational society. At the launch, Professor McWilliam expressed her heartfelt thanks to her ‘remarkable mother’, saying that her mother’s ‘lifelong love of the written and spoken word’ began when she was a Girls Grammar student, and that she passed this gift on to Erica. Her Excellency warmly congratulated the School on the book’s publication. ‘ Educating Girls is a major scholarly body of research, eloquently presented, and a significant contribution to our knowledge of Queensland and our social, cultural and political history — those struggles, those disappointments, the lost potential of women who

IMAGE (L—R) Chair of the Board of Trustees Ms Elizabeth Jameson; Dr Amanda Bell; Governor-General, Her Excellency the Honourable Quentin Bryce ao cvo ; Professor Erica McWilliam; and Ms Jacinda Euler at the launch of Educating Girls

GRAMMAR GAZETTE