It is 21 years since I first commenced working at St Joseph’s and I am acutely aware and enormously proud of the cultural shift that has occurred during this time. It is most visible in the way boys treat each other but also in the way they treat female staff and female students who study on our campus.
I believe that our culture of respect for, and respectful treatment of women, is quite good but there is still much improvement possible. Good is the enemy of great and we can never accept that things are as good as they can be and cease looking for ways to improve them.
In recent weeks over 3000 young Australian women have made public distressing accounts of non-consensual sexual experiences which are sexual assaults. Many of these accounts identified secondary school-aged boys as responsible, many but not all of whom attended single sex schools. Over 23,000 people have signed a petition demanding that schools do more to educate young men on issues relating to sexual consent. This petition and the harrowing stories of abuse, remind us that we need to find ways to further educate our boys toward the elimination of sexual prejudice, discrimination and sexism.
The Executive Director of Edmund Rice Education Australia, Dr Craig Wattam writes:
“The powerful testimonies provided by the many young women in the online petition are disturbing and are an indictment on societal decency. We must all take brave steps in confronting these issues and engage in honest conversations not just with young men and women, but also with our families.
"All of us – schools, families, and the broader community – must carefully consider and revisit issues pertaining to sex education. More specifically, sexual consent education is required for both young men and women and we need to be providing this education in early adolescence.
“All our schools deliver personal development and health curriculum and offer a vast array of wellbeing and adolescent development programs, but the distressing information contained in these testimonies show that as a society, including school communities, we still have serious issues that we must address when it comes to how women are treated by men.
“As a Catholic education community, at Edmund Rice Education Australia, our collective aim is to partner with parents in helping them educate their children to be responsible, decent citizens who actively promote the dignity of each human person. We can only do this if we are prepared to have the difficult conversations with our youth about their awakening sexualities.’’
The education of young people is a shared responsibility with family and schools primarily responsible but we know that the influence of friends, the media and popular culture is a strong influence, and not always a positive one. Many of the sexual assaults are reported as occurring on occasions involving the excessive consumption of alcohol by young people. As a community, we need to consider the role of adult supervision and education about alcohol and drug consumption to help make sure our young people stay safe.
Currently, the College has a range of age-appropriate curriculum that is delivered to our young men along with full school programs including Respectful Relationships and ‘Be an Upstander’ not a ‘Bystander’, which includes a commitment to challenge any inappropriate comment or gesture that is sexist by nature. Lessons from the Victorian State Government Resilience, Rights and Respectful Relationships are also included in our pastoral care program.
Respecting Boundaries is addressed in year 7. In year 8 the boys are challenged to foster a sense of emotional literacy, learning to identify their own responses to situations and consider how their actions and reactions impact those around them. Essentially, the Waterford Campus learnings are set to establish respect and acceptance of all and to understand that gender does not alter that fact.
At Westcourt, year 9 students begin to engage in programs that more directly address sexual power, abuse and violence. Students undertake a six week unit of the ‘Sexual Assault Primary Prevention in Secondary Schools’ program, augmented by the curriculum in Units within the Respectful Relationships program and followed by the ‘doctors and teenagers’ program. In 2021 the Year 9 boys will also undertake ‘The Men’s Project’ from Jesuit Social Services which has a strong focus on eliminating toxic masculine behaviours.
At Mt Sion the ‘Building Respectful Relationships’ unit sequentially builds on this material and includes the elements ‘Building an awareness of Gender Based Violence’, ‘Barriers and Enablers to Consent in Relationships’ and ‘The Culture of Sexualisation in the Media Today’.
We also know that it is extremely easy for the current generation of boys to access pornography. Pornography plays a role in the foundational development of some boys’ sexuality and can skew their understanding and expectations of sexual relationships and women in the real world. Our Mt Sion campus program challenges the normalisation of pornography, focusing on its role in gender and family violence. Maree Crabb, Ritchie Hardcore and Melina Tankard-Riest have joined us as guest speakers on this topic in recent years and in 2021 we will be incorporating a five week program that requires students to explore power, consent and the culture of sexualization in our media.
We continue to educate our young men about respectful attitudes to women, not only in classroom settings but in social settings around the school. A series of Respectful Relationships posters are clearly visible in all parts of the College, one poster specifically targeting how inappropriate comments to female students and staff members are unacceptable. And gender-specific behaviours that demean or undermine staff members are widely condemned by our staff, and by a growing number of our student population as we work to support gender respect and acceptance. Through a shift in the way we perceive and value women, there comes a natural progression that allows culture to dictate a complete rejection of behaviours that do not reflect the respect and acceptance that we strive towards.
I hope that this summary of both the cultural expectations we have of our young men and the content of what we teach them gives some sense of the priority with the College treats these matters. We are committed to doing even better in the future, working with you to help eliminate any and all abuse, particularly toward girls and women.
On Tuesday this week, St Joseph’s hosted the inaugural Respect Cup at GMHBA Stadium in which our year 12 XVIII played St Patrick’s Ballarat as a curtain-raiser to the women’s game between Sacred Heart and Loreto, Ballarat. The winner of the Cup was Ballarat. This is a brilliant initiative and I would like to acknowledge the vision and leadership of Mark Kennedy and Leah Irving in bringing it to fruition. We look forward to this event next year when it will be hosted in Ballarat.
Last week I had the privilege of attending the ACC athletics carnival with our team. I was enormously proud of the efforts of our young men in the way they represented the College. The endeavour of each competitor and the sportsmanship on display made me very proud. One of the highlights was seeing one of our younger competitors, who has a background in athletics, showing a less experienced competitor from another school how to set up and use starting blocks immediately before their race.
Massimo Pantano and Darcy Harrington set new records in the U/15 100m hurdles and U/13 Triple jump, the team won the U/13s, U/15s and U/17s age divisions and finished 2nd in Division 1. Our equal best ever result since joining the association in the 1990’s.
Planning continues for our celebration of Edmund Rice Day. Covid 19 will make it a little different from normal but the student leaders are committed to making it memorable for all in our community and significant for the Kensekka community who rely so heavily on our support. I look forward to providing more details when we launch Edmund Rice Day 2021 in the coming weeks.
Stay well and God bless
Tony Paatsch
