Grammar Gazette_Issue1_2025

Do we have the will to navigate it robustly and proactively, with optimistic and radically responsive care? Here, Dr Addison referenced Sir Charles Lilley’s characterisation of the establishment of Brisbane Girls Grammar School as a ‘bold experiment’ (educating women!), calling on staff in this milestone year to rethink the modern challenges around encroaching AI, conventional assessment models, and teaching pedagogies that are all too often embedded in 19th century thinking. This inspired the topic for this year’s debate: ‘In the School’s Sesquicentenary year, it is time to take the `bold experiment’ to the next level by ditching traditional assessment and embracing pop culture.’ The Debate proved entertaining, but powerfully thought-provoking as well, unpacking both sides of the topic. Staff speakers supporting the statement were Dr Tony Cupitt, Ms Emily Levett, and Mr Jack Saunders. Student debaters were Leni Kruger (12E), Ciara Clunies-Ross (12R), and Jacqueline Loh (12E).

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incomprehensible, but impressive nonetheless, and it stopped the opposition in their tracks for at least a minute. The student team supported conventional educational models, albeit with some tweaking. And they expended considerable debate time attacking elements of the staff case, most notably their glaring lack of knowledge around pop culture. The audience response to the students’ many sallies was both positive and deafening. The student team based their case on current real-world needs, and the responsibility of educators to focus on the now, not the future, readying students for the demands they will face when they leave school. They argued ‘out there’ had to change before schools should. At this point, we cycled back to the conundrum at the heart of the Great Debate: Do schools exist to prepare students for the world that exists now? Or do they aim to educate for a future, anticipating where advancing change will take society? Or, perhaps more radically, should schools themselves be the agents of change for a future society, producing flexible, resilient and deep-thinking young adults, with whatever pedagogy best meets this need. Quite a challenge to consider.

So, what did both sides have to say that left us chuckling and thinking?

The staff team focused on where a new `bold experiment’ could lead. They advocated doing away with traditional assessment, along with its preoccupation with outdated ideas such as ‘facts’, and embracing pop culture. At this point, bafflingly, a parrot was referenced, which caused the opposition to erupt in indignation and robust mockery about Mr Saunder’s pet. He countered with the proposition that pop culture would drag education (kicking and screaming) to learning in the context of cultural artefacts, focusing on creativity, personalised learning and critical thinking. The student team were incandescent, firing off broadsides mocking the staff team’s rudimentary knowledge of all things pop culture (which apparently in itself is a sadly ‘old-person’ term), and their failure to recognise its superficiality. Dr Cupitt wowed the audience with phrases such as ‘the ideology of delivery’ and the ‘associated processes of datafication and metrification’ as the basis for his team’s argument that this ideology limits the space for students to explore ‘creative expressions of agency’, hence the need for a shift to pop culture. It was all completely

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Captions 1 English teacher Mr Jack Saunders was met with howls of protest when he brought a parrot into the debate (figuratively, not literally), on stage with student team Jacqueline Loh (12E), Leni Kruger (12E) and Ciara Clunies-Ross (12R) 2 Extolling the benefits of embracing pop culture were staff team Dr Tony Cupitt, Mr Jack Saunders and Ms Emily Levett 3 Hundreds gathered at lunchtime to watch the annual staff-student Comedy Debate

17 GAZETTE • ISSUE 1, 2025 |

Brisbane Girls Grammar School