I can’t drive past our community day schools, Alphington Grammar, St John’s College and Oakleigh Grammar, without feeling an immense sense of pride and achievement. Visiting Oakleigh Grammar the other day in order to conduct a creative writing workshop for the children of the Greek School there, I remembered a conversation I had with the late lamented Father Nicholas Moutafis, founder of the school, just a few months before he died in 2001. When I asked him the rationale behind the creation of the school, his eyes opened wide and grasping my hand tightly, he declared:
“The kids could have gone to school anywhere. But our people have an unbroken tradition of education that goes back to ancient times. And during the centuries of Ottoman slavery we kept that tradition alive. Was it not Saint Kosmas who said pull down the churches and build schools? That is how central education is to our identity. Education is not just a means of preparing students for their future careers. For us it is a perspective on life itself. And we, as Greeks, with the collective experience not only of learning but of suffering for our right to learn have something to contribute. We want our children’s learning to be imbued with those values that we managed to retain even when we faced annihilation. And we want their children’s children to also partake of that education in an unbroken chain.”
Moved to tears, I began to write his words down. Enclosing his hand over mine, he arrested my pencil. Gazing at me intently, he encased my hand in his fingers:
“Never forget one thing,” he whispered urgently. “Everything we have done has been achieved by sweat and blood. It is the people, migrants who came to this country with nothing but a suitcase, who had no language, nor qualifications and who could in the beginning, do barely enough to keep a roof over their heads, those that could least afford it, who gave up what little they had to create our school. Every brick, every piece of mortar is a testament to their sacrifice and their faith. Never take it for granted. But most of all, when I am long gone, fight to preserve it.”
The late Archimandrite Ierotheos Kourtessis founded Saint John’s College in Preston with a similar vision. He wanted to create an institution that would provide the children of our community with an education that would permit them to take their place within the broader mainstream, but imbued with the values of Hellenism and Orthodoxy. As a student of St John’s Saturday Greek school, I remember his eagle eyes running over each and every one of us as we stood at assembly. He knew all of our names and no matter how disgruntled we may have felt at attending school on a Saturday, we knew, when we marched past him, that we were part of something much bigger, much greater and infinitely more venerable than anything we could ever come across in our daily lives; that we were all connected in an unbroken chain of teachers and learning that began with Socrates, continued with Christ, the Cappadocian fathers, the Pandidacterion of Constantinople and currently rested in the hands of our educators. We belonged together and indeed, only made sense as a people, in learning.
It is this sense of belonging that a friend, a teacher in a public school cited, when rationalising to me, his decision to send his son to Saint John’s instead of the public institution which he serves. “The fact is that there are cultural nuances and ethnic aspirations in the way we view education that are not understood adequately by the mainstream. By no means do we want our children to be educated or socialised within a ‘ghetto.’ But almost uniquely, education and learning are a core element to our ethnic identity and form part of our national discourse. We have something very special to add to the mainstream curriculum and I want my son to be part of that.”
Other parents of the Saint John’s school community echo such sentiments. Rarely do they reference academic excellence future career prospects, or extensive networks that can lead to job or business opportunities as the main reason for preferring this school over others. Instead, they use terms such as “values,” “history,” “identity” and “community” to signify that they understand education not just as preparation for tertiary studies and careers but as an exercise in identity building and as a way of life.
Alphington Grammar is a school whose foundation almost financially destroyed the Greek Orthodox Community of Melbourne during the recession in the nineties. It took almost superhuman efforts to save it. Visiting its grounds since the mid-nineties when my sister rehearsed there as part of the Community Choir, I have witnessed with my own eyes how this remarkable institution has evolved and grown to be a valuable presence within its locale, committed to providing its students with a holistic education. When I was afforded the honour of addressing its students a few years ago at their 1821 special assembly, I was astounded at the way in which Alphington Grammar has continued to assimilate the mainstream education requirements within the Hellenic discourse in its own unique way while also managing to share this with its pupils of non-Greek origin in novel and relevant ways.
One of my classmates, for example, of Lebanese origins, was an ex-Alphington student. He studied Greek with us because he had been introduced to the language at Alphington, fell in love with it and even after leaving that school, wished to continue with Greek. One of my clients, of Turkish extraction, chose to enrol his students at Alphington because as he said: “Of all the schools I have visited, Alphington is the one that accords more closely with the ethos of our own people.” Again, the emphasis here was on community, belonging and a certain view of life, not only academic achievement.
Whenever I hear a car backfiring, I remember the father of a close personal friend, a labourer who would drive his son to Alphington every morning in a barely roadworthy and much battered 1971 Kingswood. Teased by his relatives as to why he was spending on school fees he could barely afford, he replied proudly in words that are indelibly etched in my memory: “I prefer not to eat, rather than deny by son the chance of a Greek education.” It is principled people like this, making immense sacrifices of this nature, that made our three day-schools, the jewels in the crown of our community, possible.
This is also why the State Government’s recent possible inclusion of our schools within the category of those private education institutions it claims have had “a sweetheart taxation deal” and according to it constitute: “elite schools” who should now be liable for payroll tax by virtue of the amount of fees charged, is highly problematic and hurtful to the communities of those schools, to all those who made enormous sacrifices to establish them and to the entire Greek community.
As can be seen above, our schools are not elitist. Nor are they businesses. They are the lifeblood of our community and one of the most important means via which we are able to perpetuate our values, traditions and unique insights into education. Our ability to share these values renders us invaluable contributors to multiculturalism, a concept that we have been led to believe is important to successive governments governing our state. It is hoped that our own commitment to enriching Victorians through our teaching and our trust in our government as partners in this process is not undermined or compromised as a result of the unfortunate mischaracterisation of our schools as elite.
Indeed, our schools, far from being elite, are vulnerable. While truly “elite” schools have enormously large waiting lists where the affluent hope their children may avail themselves of elite social networks, education and training for advancement, our schools are limited in the type of students they can attract. Granted, students of all creeds and ethnic backgrounds attend our schools and are enriched by the experience but the fact remains that our schools reflect the unique aspirations and culture of their founders and are run by community institutions to which mostly members of our own community naturally gravitate. While a truly elite school may expand its intake to absorb losses incurred as a result of payroll taxation, our schools do not have that capacity in any meaningful way. The losses they potentially face threaten their viability.
There exists currently great consternation and confusion within our student community as to the impact of the payroll tax changes on our schools. Some of the parents of Saint John’s meaningfully point out that the school exists in a marginal seat that was only just retained by the incumbent in the last state election. In the cafes of Eaton Mall in Oakleigh, people shake their heads in dismay when discussing the subject, with one old man exclaiming: “Do they honestly think they can fob us off with money for bread and circuses? Don’t they understand that education is our religion, our entire way of life? We have fought for it and we will fight for it again.”
It is perhaps too soon to gauge the damage to multiculturalism and Victorian ethnic communities caused by the announcement of the new payroll tax policy. The criteria for inclusion within the “elite” category is still not entirely clear, nor is the manner in which the Victorian treasurer may exercise his discretion to exclude certain institutions. Our community has sought clarification and awaits both answers and understanding. It is committed to working with the State Government in order to ensure an equitable outcome, one that recognises the unique history and culture of our schools and necessitates compromise.
Just yesterday, I drove past Saint John’s College. As I did so, I remembered, as I always do when in that neighbourhood, the tears in Archbishop Makarios’ eyes while describing to me how, upon his arrival in this country, he found emergency funds to keep the school from closing, at a time when the insistent advice from professional consultants was that it was not financially viable to keep it open in the face of crippling debt. “I couldn’t do it,” he wept. “I just couldn’t do it. What sort of Orthodox hierarch would I be, what sort of Greek, if I closed the school? Schools are holy. They are the heart of our people. We all resolved to make it work.”
So much for the elites…..