The "smart casual" rebellion at Kew’s Trinity Grammar had me pondering the question of "character," what it means and who gets to have one. Pondering, that is, as I guffawed and snorted, the scenario being so gloriously Pythonesque. An old-school deputy headmaster named Brown (yes Brown!) takes scissors to a boy’s hair in defence of Trinity’s grooming rules, and arguably civilisation itself. For this, the school sacks him after 30 years of service, with the council chairman spouting the corporate-speak to which we’re becoming accustomed about Brown’s actions being "inconsistent with community expectations in this day and age".
Then the Old Boys weigh in with what I suspect will be overwhelming fire — as in, donor — power, issuing ultimatums for Brown’s immediate reinstatement and the principal's and councillors' scalps (three have since resigned) and the airing of elegiac sentiments about the school’s changed direction in recent years, away from an emphasis on "holistic" development, towards one centred on "exceptional" ATAR scores, growth and profit.
On the substance of this dispute, I resent being cajoled into holding a view at all. Just as the society murder gets more clicks than a killing in struggle-town, so too the battles of public school parents in modest postcodes for basic educational infrastructure rate poorly against a dust-up in a bluestone establishment that charges nearly $30,000 in fees. I’m still grimacing over the feverish coverage six years ago of the Methodist Ladies’ College board sacking principal Rosa Storelli over her admittedly not insubstantial entitlements.
On the other hand, the $5 million-odd in recurrent government funding that Trinity collected in 2016 — the most recent accounting on the My School website, which I find useful only for what it reveals about government handouts to the nation’s wealthiest schools — arguably entitles me, and you, to have an opinion. So OK: Brown overstepped with the scissors, the school over-reacted with the sacking, over-reacting with sacking being the new way of things.
I’m more intrigued by the Old Boys’ claim that Brown represents the school’s "traditional values", which placed building character above harvesting high ATARs. While it’s easy, nay irresistible, to poke fun at the Etonian-style attachment to starched collars and regimented hair, in truth the 19th-century idea that fanatically-enforced uniform codes will tame wild youth into discipline, humility and self-abnegation prevails across the education sector, to ludicrous and sometimes depressing outcomes.
I’m thinking of the two Bentleigh Secondary students from South Sudan who were last year told to take out their braids so they would look like everyone else, namely white. In February, St Albans Secondary sent home 17 students for wearing the wrong socks. For sure, standards matter: I’m just not sure these standards matter. How do strict uniform codes, with their implied deference to institution and tradition, acclimatise our kids to an inside-out Trumpian world?
Back in Kew, MP Tim Smith, says Brown was sacrificed "on the altar of political correctness," characters like him bringing "a certain level of rigour and indeed discipline to school cultures". In an open letter from Trinity’s former student leaders to the school council chair and headmaster, Brown is described as "wholly dedicated to the wellbeing of the school’s students," unlike the new executive team that’s overseen this dramatic shift from "Trinity’s position as a non-elite, non-selective school to ATAR factory".
“In the eyes of many Old Boys,” say the former captains, “Rohan (Brown) stood in the face of that new direction as a champion of the school’s traditional values.”
The school is not one of the “top-drawer elites like Melbourne Grammar or Scotch”, explained a parent in the Herald Sun this week, “But what sets Trinity Grammar apart, and justifies the top-dollar price tag, is the emphasis on character and not just academic results.”
The Trinity men are inviting scrutiny of their character, so for this reason alone I’ll oblige. Fellas, Trinity was never “non-elite” and “non-selective”— schools charging astronomical fees are already elite and selective because rich kids have an academic advantage over poor kids. And for all the angst about the school’s “new direction,” in truth Trinity has become slightly, so very slightly, less elite in recent years. A decade ago 95 per cent of students came from the most advantaged sociological bracket, 1 per cent from the bottom middle quarter and none from the bottom quarter. Last year, by contrast, 76 per cent were rich — educationally speaking — 4 per cent poor and 1 per cent dirt poor. In 2009, 17 per cent of students came from a language background other than English; by last year more than a quarter of students fell into that category. Is this the problem? An influx of tiger mothers wanting the emphasis on academic results and not just character?
Only certain schools get to rhapsodise about forging “character”; the others, the public schools where a majority of Victorians educate their kids, get Tim Smith’s critical eye on their results, their "cluttered" curriculum and indeed their character, which his party thinks is too welcoming of sexual diversity and insufficiently "Australian".
I hate talking this way, but if the buffed shoe fits: for the Trinity men and their like "character" is cover for white male privilege of a kind that can afford middling ATAR scores because, after all, there’s always the Old Boys’ network to fall back on.
Julie Szego is a Fairfax columnist.
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