Perspectives on a co-educational school, that wasn’t really co-educational
It is hard to believe that 39 years ago I came to Braddon as one of 49 intrepid boys who would form the initial intake of males to the school community.
What struck me as incredible at the time, was the sheer size of the Year 12 girls; they all seemed like Giant Amazonian Women to us scrawny 12-year-old boys, almost scary!
We didn’t take long to make our mark on the place, a dedicated boys toilet was constructed next to the downstairs science labs, mucking up in class, we caused havoc around the Queen’s Birthday with fireworks - at one stage we had an all-in brawl involving the boys that went to St Joseph’s and the boys that went to St Brigid’s which was broken up and then mediated by the great Sister Mary Macintosh (Sr. Mack) hauling us all down to the front office.
Normally being summoned to the Principal’s office would be a scary proposition (this was still a time for corporal punishment after all!) but Sister Mack was just marvellous. She reminded us of the importance of self, but also the greater importance of community – and how futile it was to be so divisive when there were so few of us boys to start with – it must have sunk in as we all got on pretty well thereafter. She finished up by giving us all a chomp chocolate bar!
At the end of that first year, a decision was made to return Braddon to a girls’ only school. A letter was sent out to boys’ parents suggesting that Daramalan, St Edmunds or Marist might be a better option but that if we wanted to complete our studies at Braddon, that was OK.
Our numbers dwindled – from 49 to 30, down to 15, then 7, then 4 for the last year of 1983. When I tell people about this experience, at first they don’t believe it – until I produce the class photographs. See photo of Year 10 Green 1981 (that’s me pictured below, front and centre).
So what was it like? To draw an analogy, if you recall the movie “What Women Want” it became a little like that. Being one of 7 boys in a population of nearly 1000 girls meant that the whole construct of peer groups and social skills was unique. The immersive nature of that education was enlightening to say the least. Leigh Morel, School Captain in 1981 put it very nicely in her contribution to “Golden Moments”, the 50th Jubilee publication, speaking of the integration of Boys into the school, and I quote “The 30 or so boys that went through Merici graduated from the school perfectly equipped for their future lives as model husbands”. Now, I am not sure my wife Mary would agree completely, but we have been married 31 years this year!)
I joined the Public Service soon after leaving Braddon and undertook study in Communications Engineering at CIT and then Policy Studies at ANU. After 10 years in the Service the opportunity to work for an IT firm in the private sector came up and I took it. I moved to Sydney in the 1990s but was back in Canberra by 2000. Having travelled to Europe, the USA, Mexico, China and Singapore, I still think Canberra is a great place to live.
If I were to boil down some of the lessons learned in my time at Braddon, I would have to say they are:
- Mutual respect - having more female friends than male taught me the importance of open, honest communication and to understand how others might view a situation.
- Emotional Intelligence. This has been developed into an industry recently but something that was picked up “by osmosis” at Braddon.
- Home Science – never underestimate the importance of being able to cook for yourself (I also like the quote “approach cooking and love with reckless abandon”)
- A belief in yourself – that no matter what you think others think of you it is how you think about yourself that counts.
- Mars and Venus? - Quite apart from the well-known book title, from my experience: Men are from earth – and so are women.
It was a truly a unique experience attending Merici and I was blessed to have met some remarkable women and men while there.
I must also acknowledge that we have lost two of the boys who were in Year 10 in 1981, Enrique Mimenza and Matthew Hannah. Both lives cut tragically short in car accidents - Matthew in 1984 and Enrique, in Mexico, in 1986.
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