Shore School’s muck up day: there’s a lesson for us all

The Australian columnist Nikki Gemmell.

Imagine growing up in a narrow and homogenous world that primes you for paths of leadership, power and wealth. This might be stated implicitly rather than explicitly throughout your school years, but you know the system is readying you for a cosy relationship with the gatekeepers of power.

Would you ever question this right? Ever think about that little-examined quality known as fairness? Ever cultivate a sense of empathy for those different from you? Ever think with a chill that the world mightn’t be quite so accommodating of your ways in the future? Could you ever imagine an astonishing world where being an old boy of your school may be considered a liability in some quarters?

I’m talking, of course, of the recent school leavers from Sydney’s Shore School, who brought shame on themselves with a curious little document detailing their muck-up day challenges. Shore is an elite establishment run under the auspices of the Anglican Church; the Archbishop of Sydney, Glenn Davies, is the president of the school council. Six clergy members appointed by the Synod of the Diocese of Sydney are also on the council.

Foremost among the student challenges were: spit on a homeless person, defecate on a train, “get with an Asian chick” and “sack whack a complete random walking past” – i.e., suddenly hit a stranger in the genitals. What values have been instilled in these boys, from not only the school but its parent body?

As the ABC news presenter Juanita Phillips tweeted when the story broke, “My son goes to a public high school where there’s no uniform. He wears his hair long with a beard. Some dye their hair blue or shave their head. Nobody blinks… Boys, girls, LGBQTI, everyone mixes in friendship groups. Obvs they get up to your standard teenage stuff. But I have never, in 6 years, heard anything like the poison we saw from Shore this week. Sounds like they need a lesson in diversity and inclusion.” Ah, diversity and inclusion.

The extremely conservative Sydney diocese opposes same-sex marriage and doesn’t allow women to be ordained as priests or bishops. How do these values sit within a modern Australia? And what of the Christian qualities of empathy and charity, of generosity of spirit?

Yes, these boys are teenagers – the scaffolding is still up on the construction of their brains. But the toxic little Shore challenge points to outdated ways of thinking that don’t sit comfortably within our modern society. And the problem for these elite institutions is that they’ve always relied on the old boy network to brush uncomfortable truths under the carpet and smooth their boys’ way through life – but the future is roaring at them. Women are increasingly in positions to hire and fire, to make decisions on college admissions and scholarships. And Shore boys may now have to work a little harder than others to get a foot in the door, to prove they’re modern men who believe in equality, tolerance, empathy and compassion.

St Kevin’s College in Toorak has recently undergone a similar reckoning, and appointed a woman as its new principal, blowing away decades of tradition in a single stroke. Schools harbouring toxic attitudes of elitism and misogyny need more females in position of leadership, to demonstrate to their boys what the wider world is now like. Because increasingly the gatekeepers to power and privilege are not the pale male model these schools have known for generations.

The old ways are crumbling. The Shore muck-up day challenge was a tragedy for the school; for its boys of the future heading into the world. Because when employers now hear the words “Shore boy”, certain perceptions may be hard to budge – and they won’t necessarily be glowing ones.