British comedian and author, David Baddiel writes in his provocative book exploring anti Semitism, ‘Jews Don’t Count’, that “Anti-Semitism is a second-class racism.” Baddiel explores numerous examples where he asserts that anti Semitism is ignored by those who oppose other forms of discrimination and he believes that this allows it to flourish. He points out […]
Recently, there have been numerous reports in the print media regarding Victoria’s relative drop in performance in the annual NAPLAN testing conducted across Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 in May this year. There is speculation that the periods of extended lockdowns over the past few years have contributed to a decline in standards. An
The late, inspirational educational thinker, Sir Ken Robinson posited in his world famous TED talk, ‘Do schools kill creativity?’ that “creativity now is as important in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status.” Over the last few weeks we have seen some wonderful demonstrations of the power of the application
What is the special ingredient that bonds a group of similarly aged students into a cohort? A gathering of individuals into a community and turns a school into a home? I suspect that the answer lies in the series of shared experiences – successes and failures on the sporting field, memories of creative assembly dances
Last term I shared with you the significant goal that the School has established to reduce our emissions footprint. There is nothing more important than preserving life and quality of life, so we are determined to strive to be part of the solution regarding climate change, rather than the problem. We also see great opportunity in
Throughout the Hebrew month of Elul we have enjoyed the morning ritual of the shofar being blasted throughout the school. Hearing the ancient notes being sent through a 21st century speaker system is somewhat incongruous but speaks to the longevity and continued relevance of the practice. The three notes – tekiah, shevarim and t’ruah – are said to each serve
Groucho Marx is said to have written a resignation from his membership at a private Beverly Hills Club, hilariously stating that: “I don’t want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member.” This is the opposite of how we aspire to be at King David. We truly believe that everyone has
This week The Age published the results of a survey into teaching workforce challenges across the state. The survey found that nine out of ten principals in the state school system predicted that they would face teacher shortfalls in the coming year and that this would inhibit their capacity to place a qualified teacher in
At the conclusion of his documentary Blue Planet II, Sir David Attenborough famously explains that: “we are at a unique stage in our history. Never before have we had such an awareness of what we are doing to the planet, and never before have we had the power to do something about that. Surely we
On tours with prospective King David families I often state that when accepting a place at our school, one does not merely enrol, one joins a community. Similarly, when we meet with our new parent cohorts we implore them to model for our students what looking out for one another genuinely looks and feels like.