Chancellor, Vice Chancellor, Dean, Staff, Distinguished Guests, Graduates, Family and Friends.
It is a delight to join you today at such a significant and happy occasion and I thank the Council for their invitation, especially in this 25th Anniversary year of the University.
I also acknowledge the traditional owners of this land and pay my respects to their elders past and present.
I pondered for some time what to say today, knowing that many of you are graduating today with degrees in education. I’ve been a school teacher, Minister for Education and University Chancellor and I’ve had three careers, in education, politics and now the not-for-profit sector.
On reflection I realise that all I have done was made possible because of the educational opportunities I was given by my family and our nation. I owe them both so much for the gifts in life I have received.
My father left school at the age of 15. Without a trade or further qualifications he remained an unskilled worker his entire working life till he retired promptly on his 65th birthday. Aside from four years in the Army in WW2 he was a delivery boy, storeman, truck driver, milkman and grounds keeper. He knew the value of a formal education because he didn’t have one. Being under the direction of others, working outdoors in the heat of the day, bringing up a large family on limited wages taught him the value of education for his children. In this he was supported by my mother who was an intelligent and cultured woman, denied higher education by the values of the time and by WW2.
Both of them desperately wanted opportunities for their 8 children and education was the key. All 8 children finished high school and went on to further study. Four, including myself, became school teachers. Four married teachers. Three are, or have been, school principals and I was fortunate to become the Minister for Education here in NSW.
Education for all of us was a ticket to a better future. A door to independence and choice, to better remuneration and control over our own lives.
That is, I presume, an experience that many of you have also had.
Today we can almost take that gift for granted. Today there are so many courses, so many opportunities and methods of study. It still takes commitment and effort, but we enjoy the choice and opportunity because of the wealth of our land and the value placed on education by our society. It is a gift that should never be taken for granted as there are literally billions of people around the world who, despite their desire and intelligence, will never have those opportunities.
In my 16 years as a high school teacher in Sydney, I taught the children of the wealthy and some from struggle street. I taught students who went on to great success in art, sport, politics and business. Some played for Australia, some have been elected into the Australian Parliament and many wear better suits than I do.
But I also taught those who have struggled with life. Those whose lives have been diverted from their hopes and dreams by accident, disease, marital breakdown, business failure and mental illness.
I recall one beautiful Year 12 girl who received brain damage in a car accident and the brightest young man I taught who drowned in Sydney Harbour in first year at University.
I remember one Year 10 girl who was caught growing marijuana in the Science Labs and one Year 11 boy expelled for making a series of death threats against teachers. And I wonder what happened to them.
I wonder what happened to them all. Every precious, unique, individual child and young person who came into my classroom. The talented and beautiful, the tormented and challenged.
On reflection now, almost 20 years since leaving teaching, I wonder if I did enough, whether I understood sufficiently the needs of those placed in my care as a teacher.
So I have been reflecting on what were the key lessons I received from those years preparing, marking, supervising, teaching and coaching. I realise that students, especially adolescents, wanted and needed to engage with teachers as adults outside their family circle. Like it or not, a teacher plays a significant role in the adult modelling that all young people need. So you need to be up to it, because what they want you to be are people they can admire. They want you to have integrity and honesty, to be tolerant and kind, even when they, in their adolescent selfishness may not be. They want someone who is understanding and open and compassionate. These may be qualities they see in other adults in their lives, but some will also come from families where these qualities are rare.
So there will be much expected of you aside from all of your other duties in research, preparation and assessment. And in the long term I think it is the influence you will have in the moral and personal development of your students which will be the most significant and lasting.
Having said that, on reflection, I wish that when I was a teacher I had been slower to judge, less demanding of the highest standards, more understanding of the individual challenges faced by students and more appreciative of their qualities. In short, I should have been kinder to them all, especially those who were most challenging.
Since leaving teaching life has taught me that perhaps those qualities are not just unique to successful teaching. My thirteen years in NSW politics introduced me to the best and worst in NSW. I saw the most selfless commitment and generosity of teachers, nurses, rangers and other public sector workers in the remotest parts of NSW and I also came into contact as Minister for Corrective Services and Minister for Police with some of the darkest and most challenging individuals and communities in Australia. If there is a heart of darkness in NSW it is most surely the maximum security prison in Goulburn. It is a brutal and hard place and yet even there behind those imposing sandstone walls, I witnessed prison officers committed to the care of the most violent of men, treating them with respect and kindness.
Now, in the not-for-profit sector, I have been most fortunate to work in health and ageing organisations and there see the most beautiful expressions of humanity. The great loyalty and love of careers devoted to their ageing spouse or parent living with dementia. The deeply compassionate care and understanding provided by nurses and doctors to the terminally ill, in palliative care units.
In a career that started with me working with enthusiastic children and now involves representing the aged in the last stages of their lives, the single, most striking, most moving and most significant lesson for me has been to understand the sheer unstoppable, extraordinary power and value of human kindness. I’ve concluded that if you practice kindness it’s pretty hard to go wrong in this life, whatever your career, but especially so if you are a teacher.
So if I have a message for you on what is such a happy and proud occasion for you and your families, it is simply that to foster, encourage and practice kindness in your everyday lives will bring you great rewards and peace of mind.
Remember, kindness hardly ever goes wrong.
UTS Graduation Speech
July 2014
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