My old friend and sometimes teaching colleague, John
Meakins, picks me up at 7:30 AM for the trip to Shore. John and I exchanged
jobs in 1982. He and his wife Wendy (and baby) came to US in Cleveland, while
Mary and I came to Sydney and Shore. We have kept up all these years; indeed we
have seen each other as recently as August, when John and Wendy joined me on
Kiawah to participate in the PGA Tournament.
As Shore has been on Spring Break for the past two weeks, my
schedule is a bit sketchy. John has some rough plans that I will teach a few
History classes. He says the Chaplain is interested in having me speak in
Chapel, and I have been told that I will have morning tea with the Headmaster. I am confident that everything will fall together.
Good schools are opportunistic.
The one definitive event on the itinerary is that I am to
meet the first recipient of the “Peter F. Conway Scholarship”. He is an 11 year
old boy with the delightful name of James Trevelyan-Jones. James and his parents will have morning tea with
me and representatives of the school. I imagine that he will be terrified to be
on display before a bunch of strange adults. I would have been at his age.
For my part, I am a bit self-conscious about my name being on
the scholarship, but that is how Shore does things. Most of its scholarships
are named after the donor or honoree. However, I am thrilled to have
established it. It is a scholarship which fills a niche dear to my heart. It is
for sons of full-time Christian workers who are not clergy (Shore has other
scholarships for clergy). An example of the kind of family I am hoping to reach
is sons of missionaries who could never afford a private school. In the case of
young James, his father Warren is the choir director of one of Sydney’s oldest
churches – St. James. It has three choirs connected to it, one of which is
professional. Prior to starting his job
at St. James, Warren was on the full-time staff of Westminster Abbey. His wife Sarah
is a music teacher as well.
James and his family arrive at the appointed hour. He is
dressed in his school uniform – Turramurra Primary School, where he is in grade
six. He sips nervously at a glass of water while tea is poured for the adults.
It is all stiff and formal. We adults
make small talk while James stares nervously at his hands. At the prompting of
his mum, he looks up and makes a well-rehearsed thank you speech for providing
the scholarship. Giving it one last
shot, I ask him if he likes sports. WELL – he lights up at this and proceeds to
talk about ALL of the sports he plays. Cricket, soccer, basketball, athletics,
cross country, he does them all (and quite well too, says his dad). He wants to
know if he can play them all at Shore, and add rowing and rugby as well.
A classmate of mine asked me why I felt so strongly about
Shore. Why would I establish a scholarship? After all, I have been in Australia a small
portion of my total life, and not much at all as an adult. Ah, but the portion
of my life spent in Sydney were formative years indeed! My Australian visits as
an adult have always involved being on campus at Shore.
Why the scholarship? Simply put, I came of age while a Shore
boy. I arrived at Shore as an awkward 13 year old, but left at age 18 with a
purpose, a faith, leadership skills and an excellent preparation for college.
It was at Shore where I was inspired to examine my nascent faith and make it my
own. It was at Shore where I decided that I wanted to be a school teacher and a
coach. Finally, it was at Shore where I made of number of intimate friends who remain
so despite half a world’s separation.
Would I have made the same life choices if we had remained
in the States? God only knows. But the point is this - Shore was the crucible
for much of what has become the best of me. I want to give back by giving boys
of the future the chance to encounter the same challenges and opportunities
which confronted me.
Notwithstanding, I would never have considered establishing
a scholarship at Shore if it had not grown into a much better school than it
was in the 60’s. As wonderful as the outcome was for me, there were things I
detested about the Shore of my era. There was hazing, student to student. As a
foreigner I experienced it, and I witnessed many other examples of schoolboy
cruelty to anyone who was different. There were sadistic teachers who had no
business having a free hand, often with a cane, in the classroom. There were
incompetent teachers who not only had no business being in the classroom, but
who were sadistically tormented by us pupils. In turn, the Shore staff
contained some of the finest teachers I have ever encountered at any level –
iterations of Mr. Chips – whose examples I tried to emulate when I became a
schoolmaster.
In essence, from the Head down, Shore practiced a “school of
hard knocks” philosophy which sometimes tolerated cruelty in the name of
muscular Christianity. Shore teachers, coaches
and prefects often resorted to berating and bullying in the belief that breaking
a boy down is the best way to build up a man. Once I embarked on a teaching
career of my own, I rejected that view. Oh yes, like the Marine Corps, it can
work – for some. But the price is steep. Far too many of my Shore classmates
have wanted nothing to do with the school since the day they escaped the confines
of its halls. “Muscular Christians” would do well, in my experience, to apply more
of the golden rule and less of the rod of correction.
Shore has long since abandoned the cane and most of the
other behaviors that it symbolizes. The ideals of service, brotherhood and
teamwork now have the upper hand. The teachers actually seem to enjoy teaching
the young, foolish and impressionable, and respond with patience more than
petulance. If young James Trevelyn-Jones chooses to abandon cricket to concentrate
on the trombone, he will be respected by all. But somehow I doubt he will.
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