It was very refreshing to witness the considerable growth in numbers at the recent classical/liberal schools conference held in Adelaide last week. This was the fourth such conference and with over 90 attendees, it included board members, principals, parents and teachers from these new independent schools.
The fact that these schools are beginning to flower around Australia within different faith traditions in turn illustrates the expansive tent under which liberal arts, imaginative teaching and faith-based common sense can flourish.
The conference was a showcase of sound pedagogical variety, cultural colour, moral and organisational courage and it provided in the afternoon some vivid illustrations of the practical applications being taken by young and creative teachers and their schools.
The conference was an invitational one, organised by Dr Kevin Donnelly who is an articulate defender of sound practice in the “getting of wisdom” in Australia, and a critic of many of the ideological streams that have dominated the curricula of schools.
Kevin is a cultural commentator and educational author, and contributes regularly to The Australian newspaper, News Weekly, The Catholic Weekly, The Spectator Australia and many other publications.
Kevin has also edited and collated a number of books which cast a critical eye on the authoritarian “relativism” of much contemporary Western culture, the latest of which is entitled The Culture of Freedom (2024), in which I contributed a TMC-flavoured chapter on the importance of cultural memory.
It was particularly encouraging to meet up with some long-time friends and to discover some new ones while we were in South Australia at the conference.
Some of these good people came from around Australia and run consultancies, some are part of parent interest groups and active parishes, some are working in politics and others are engaged in the new schools in their early years or have hopeful plans to engage them.
The papers at the conference were stimulating and included papers on the importance of the study of history. Dr Michael Casey of the PM Glynn Institute, a public policy research body within the Australian Catholic University, gave a reflective paper on the role of education and formation in the fostering of virtue and character.
The afternoon papers changed gears into some lively demonstrations of the value of memory, question and response, poetry, art reflection and classical languages, especially in the education of elementary-level children.
It was a particular honour to spend time with our youngest TMC patrons, husband-and-wife team Jack and Lucia Snelling. Jack and Lucia are very engaged in many charitable and community-based projects, including work with the overseas charity, Bright Futures.
Jack is the CEO of Bright Futures, which leads development projects in India, Pakistan, Kenya and Uganda.
Lucia Snelling, along with her other roles, has 20 years of experience and training as a Senior Billings Ovulation Method® teacher. She is part of a team of professionals, teachers and leaders from a range of fertility awareness methods, called Fertility Fundamentals.
Lucia is engaged with assisting and educating in schools and with women and couples to understand and work with their fertility. Lucia is the Billings area supervisor for South Australia and is involved in training Billings teachers face to face and in the Billings correspondence training.
Jack joined the South Australian Parliament’s House of Assembly as its youngest member, aged only 24 in 1997. I remember Jack visiting the TMC as a teenager with one of his Dominican priest teachers even earlier. Jack was preselected and elected as a Labor member for many years for the electorate of Playford until he retired in 2018. During that time he held many important portfolios, including as Health Minister and Treasurer. For four years he acted as Speaker of the House of Assembly.
In 2021, along with other former ministers, Jack decided that the questions of religious and conscientious freedom had become seriously threatened within the existing party structures, so he founded the Family First Party in SA and he presented at this year’s Family First national conference.
One of the most notable of the team-Snelling interests has been its involvement with the newly formed independent elementary school, St Benedict’s in Springhead – a beautiful semi-rural area just south of Adelaide.
Remarkably the school grew from an alliance of young parents at the Holy Name Latin Mass parish in Adelaide and their parish priest, some other parents with concerns about the problems in education and the Lutheran parishioners who owned the property on which the new school was established.
Jack describes the nature of the school in an article:
“The Cavaletti/Montessori-inspired Catechesis of the Good Shepherd has been running in our church community for several years, and it taps the potential for children to slow down, to be still and to contemplate. If I hadn’t seen rumbunctious four-year-olds working quietly in our Atrium, I would not have believed it. We want our school to capture that same environment of festina lente!”
The type of contemplation offered at the school is not merely a type of functional meditation encouraged by secular educational theorists such as John Dewey, but it offers a more perennial contemplation built on Christian anthropology and liturgical prayer.
Jack suggests that the fruit of the school is already clearly evident:
“Children are polite and friendly, welcoming visitors with ‘Salve, et benedicat te Deus’. The school is on beautiful grounds, surrounded by dairy farms and vineyards, and the children keep chickens and an orchard. A creek winds through the property. The children are immersed in God’s creation.”
We hope to find ways to work with Jack, Lucia and our friends in South Australia. Their spirit and interest are exactly what TMC needs in order to develop its important role in bridging different educational and formational experiences and resources more widely.
Tomorrow is the Feast of St John Henry Newman, who continues to inspire so many of these educational projects – including ours at the TMC.
Anna Krohn
Executive Director
Thomas More Centre
