Gerard and Anne, first - congratulations on 36 years of wonderful leadership and curation of the Sydney Institute, it has been a true gift to the city and always positive influence on public debate. When thinking about the track record of Australia’s other organs of cultural influence, you stand tall.
The Institute has lasted longer than Molly Meldrum’s COUNTDOWN (a mere 13 years), Whitlam’s Government (barely three years), the ABC’s Q&A programme (17 years), the insufferable Drum programme (also 13 years). You predated Kevin07 and Kath & Kim, seen off David Marr, it appears; and most impressively, you platformed a range of voices from Chris Patten to Elizabeth Evatt; Dominic Perrottet to Eva Cox, George Pell to Jane Caro, and our own, Jacinta Collins. On behalf of a grateful city, thank you and congratulations.
My task tonight is a simple and important one:
- to offer a course correcting alternative for NSW schooling, one where beauty, wander, awe, and even the transcendent - enveloped in a rigorous school-based curricula, broadly described as the liberal arts - is the antidote for our times;
- while noting the impressive innovation and success of liberal arts schools across the USA and UK, it’s by recalling and then reclaiming the traditions of NSW school education, we can deliver on the promise of liberal arts for the children in schools today; and finally,
- In doing so, we need to choose a side in two competing visions and purposes of school education. My remarks should be received as companionable to the discussion paper published by Catholic Schools NSW – A Return to Beauty, distributed to all this evening.