Building Character

We advocate that character is built in all venues and arenas. We reject the notion… that the classroom makes no contribution to character development.

Ten years after the Battle of Waterloo, while watching a cricket match at Eton, the Duke of Wellington was overheard to say: ‘The Battle of Waterloo was won here’. Of course, the man who defeated Napoleon at Waterloo did not literally mean that old scholars from Eton College actually had won the battle. He meant merely that the games and sports at British colleges developed qualities in men that made them good soldiers. This original utterance was polished up and made famous as, ‘The Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton’.

Christian character is our business at Calvin.

We advocate that character is built in all venues and arenas. We reject the notion implicit in the Duke’s statement that the classroom makes no contribution to character development. 

“Christian character is our business at Calvin.”

Our approach is holistic. We desire and plan to focus on the whole child: body, soul and spirit. Thus, our academic and co-curricular activities in their entirety make a direct contribution to building character. The ideal involvement by a student is a holistic one. It is ideal that students become involved in classrooms, sporting fields activities (for both their house and school), academic extension activities, debating, chess, service programs, and other initiatives. We are multifaceted people and the involvement in a broad range of initiatives is critical to develop our full persona and attributes. Jim Dailey writes that

"[t]he fires of trial not only test our faith but also refine our character. Scripture is clear that we are never exempt or pre-empted from that. There is no such thing as a victory without a battle. Often people dream of “the victorious life” as being some secret that we arrive at by so completely mastering every circumstance that there are no longer such things as trials. That simply isn’t true.”

This is a point that I am regularly making as I write on the reports of every student in Year 4 to Year 12. The battle is a test of commitment, and our response is a method of developing character. It does not matter in which arenas we experience trials. It matters that we experience as many trials as possible. These learning opportunities build our emotional resolve, resilience and ability to problem solve, and assist in our understanding the reality that our future lies beyond our comfort zone. 

“It matters that we experience as many trials as possible. These learning opportunities build our emotional resolve...”

Providing the opportunity to build Christian character is the vital purpose to the construction of the curriculum and co-curricular program at Calvin. Involvement is wonderful. Improvement in maturity, skill and temperament is precious. 

The most recent contribution to personal growth at Calvin in this regard is a systemic emphasis on setting goals. All students in the secondary school consciously set academic goals in the first few weeks of Term One. Students in the primary school set an expectation through the adoption of the goal, ‘Attitude Matters’. These aspirational targets recruit the best of use. Generally, they enable us to discover and/or fashion better parts of our nature than we knew existed. 

The feedback at the conclusion of this semester will no doubt present challenges. The act of setting goals and determining the approach to achieve them is the necessary element to foster the development of Christian character. 

Everyone in the school is likely to find some Waterloo moment in their reports. It is an opportunity to grow Christian character. 

 Iain Belôt - Principal

Traditional Values

Traditional values are alive and well in this modern world. 

Prospective parents are expressing with increasing clarity which features attract them to consider Calvin Christian School for their children. Four reasons predominate: 

• Being a Christian school;

• Having a reputation for both academic standards and duty of care;

• Having a holistic approach; and,

• Upholding traditional values.

These families have conducted their research and are articulate on the school’s prominent standing in all four of these areas. 

They express their belief that the clear link between all of these outcomes is a value-driven approach around traditional values of a disciplined environment. It is beyond clear that parents are strongly favouring a values-driven approach that they perceive as being eroded in the modern world. Preserving values from generation to generation is a difficult task. However, it is vital for the health of our families, school, community and society at large. The preservation of respect for individuals and authority are two contested value positions. 

The challenge for parents and teachers is that the values we are teaching are all too often very different to those of contemporary youth culture. It is valuable and proper that each generation has its own identity. This is best demonstrated and identified through the generational connection to different genres of popular music. Mozart might be timeless, but the sound of the 1970s is vastly different to the that of today. Classics are timeless, but hits may be popular for a time only. Differences in generational values were once a slight variation on a theme. Changes we once witnessed were only a shift of emphasis around a common thread of generational values. It now is tempting to consider that the core values are altering. For example, honesty was always the best policy. Now, ensuring loyalty and alignment to friends has become paramount, regardless of veracity.

“So, I pose the question, ‘What do we and our children have in common with a frog and a fish?’”

The answer is provided by two old philosophical chestnuts. 

Question: How do you boil a frog? Answer: Place it in cold water and raise the temperature gradually until the frog is boiled. It will not notice the temperature change. 

Question: Does a fish know what it is like to live in water? Answer: Probably not as it doesn’t know anything different?

Each year Beloit College in the USA releases the Mindset List, which was originally prepared by Ron Nief, Director Emeritus of Beloit College Public Affairs; Tom McBride, Professor Emeritus of English; and Charles Westerberg, Brannon-Ballard Professor of Sociology. The purpose of the list was to remind teachers that they must adjust their cultural references in their explanations.

For example, the students commencing their first year of university this September in the USA are mostly 18 years of age and were born in 1999. 

1. These students are the first generation for whom a phone has been primarily a video game, direction finder, electronic telegraph, and research library.

2. eHarmony has always offered an algorithm for happiness.

3. There have always been emojis to cheer us up.

4. It is doubtful that they have ever used or heard the high-pitched whine of a dial-up modem.

5. Whatever the subject, there’s always been a blog for it.

6. Women have always scaled both sides of Everest and rowed across the Atlantic.

7. Bill Clinton has always been Hillary Clinton’s aging husband.

Their cultural soup is of a very different flavour to that of their parents. 

Traditional values can be lost in the passing of one generation. Our position, and the Christian position, is to maintain these values as fundamental to the tradition that has Christ at the centre. Calvin has a reputation for fostering traditional values. So, let us continue our vigilance and be careful to notice subtle changes over time. Let us consider the cultural and social environment within which we live, not allowing distractions and shifting societal norms to cause us to lose track of our Christian principles. Let’s continue to faithfully encourage and instil these values in the next generation.

Iain Belôt - Principal

"It's ok guys"

There is power in the phrase, ‘We don’t do that at Calvin!’

You will hear this phrase uttered in conversations between students, and stafftalking to students and other teachers. It is a simple phrase that defines andreinforces our cultural expectations. Uttering the phrase is an easy, direct and clear way to tell someone that their language and/or behaviour varies from the expected standards. It communicates what we value and the standards we value.

Culture is more than the published rules of an organisation, school or family. Culture is the collection of all the values, assumptions, and expectations, including those that exist but are not stated. We might declare being punctual as an expectation and even establish a rule to that effect. However, if we then fail to comment when people are late to meetings, then tardiness becomes the culture despite any rule. The cultural setting is determined by the response to behaviour.

“ The culture of the accepted norms is more powerful than new ideas and initiatives.”

A clear sense of culture is a critical element in a successful organisation. There is an accepted maxim that, ‘Culture eats strategy for lunch, all day, every day.’ The culture of the accepted norms is more powerful than new ideas and initiatives.

Have you noticed the cultural norm that tacitly accepts using the word ‘guys’
when speaking to a group of men and women? Most familiar to me is the conversational sign off, ‘Thanks guys’. Also popular is, ‘would you guys...’ followed by an instruction. We may trumpet the belief that ‘girls can do anything’, and even build our science initiatives to promote more females in senior science classes; yet if these young women’s visibility remains unrecognised in our speech when sitting with boys then we undermine our initiatives, our strategy, their self- esteem, and our character. The culture trumps the strategy. Accordingly, I have asked Calvin staff to monitor their language with the purpose of eliminating using the word ‘guys’ when talking to a mixed gender group. As parents you are members of our community, and therefore contributors to our culture. I would ask you also to monitor your language in this regard.

A culture absolutely benefits the individual. A culture brings empowerment and significance to people’s lives. An aspirational endeavour ignites the possibility of success. A culture of respect brings the affirmation of individual decency.

A student at Calvin should be advantaged by our culture. The community norms should inspire personal improvement and develop restraint to impulses. The standards of behaviour and application should affirm to anyone that their best isrespected, required and able to be recruited. The collective high expectations of people will become the new normal for the individual.

We build a culture through the twin response of confronting challenging individual behaviour that falls short of our norms, and affirming and encouraging the examples of preferred and ideal choices.

“We must be aware that a strong culture advantages your children. ”

A challenged individual often retorts with, ‘Look at the others! I am not the only one’. This is an appeal to the rulership of theindividual. Such a view only needs to find one other errant example to justify their own mediocrity. It is an appeal that thelowest standards become the rule not the exception. It is a claim of disbelief that greater achievement is not possible.

We must be aware that a strong culture advantages your children. We are working to build such a culture at Calvin. We build it through our response to uniform, attendance, homework, and courtesy. These are the frontlines from which we defend ourselves against more grievous issues.

The protest statement will always be, ‘Look, someone else is doing the wrong thing as well!’ The antidote is the power in actually saying, ‘We don’t do that at Calvin’.

Iain Belôt - Principal